Design and structure of the Glaucha Institutions

August Hermann Francke had a vision of a comprehensive improvement of society in the Christian sense, by means of education. To this end, he purposefully built an entire school town with numerous buildings, some of them unusually large, whose impressive architecture to this day appears both majestic and pietistically restrained.

After only a few decades, the ensemble comprised school and boarding school buildings with separate houses for the accommodation of the noble pupils, a library, meeting and dining halls, a brewery and bakery, a hospital as well as a printing shop and warehouses, along with buildings that housed the first Bible institute in the world. In addition, there was a farm with fields and gardens.

The institutions had their own modern drinking water supply and advanced hygienic facilities. Surrounded by a wall with lockable gates, the institutions functioned like a city of their own, where up to 3000 people lived and worked. The commercial enterprises such as the printing shop, publishing house, bookshop, pharmacy, medical shipping company and others generated income for the upkeep and further expansion of the institutions. Francke’s school town was admired by followers as a New Jerusalem and attracted people from all over the world.