The Orphanage Cabinet Exhibition

With the foundation of the Orphanage and the projects associated with it, August Hermann Francke made it his task to fulfil the fundamental demands of the Reformation.

Francke took up Luther’s concern for comprehensive educational measures to improve the common good and, with the Glaucha Institutions, created a Pietist social and educational organisation with the aim of fundamentally improving the social conditions of the time in a Christian sense, through the education and training of people from all social classes. The conception, growth and influence of these institutions – with their various schools and boarding schools, orphanage, teacher training college, medical and economic facilities, as well as a Bible institute – were unique. From the school town at the gates of Halle, Francke’s reform ideas spread far beyond the borders of Germany and stimulated the emergence of modern civil society.

Today, the Francke Foundations form an educational cosmos that is unique in Europe. In the historic ensemble of buildings, with their valuable collections, a dense network of cultural, scientific, educational, social and Christian institutions has emerged that takes up the initiatives and reforms of their founder and aims to make them productive for the present and the future.