Here the Bible, the Koran and the Torah scroll stand side by side, here you can turn the pages of an almost 1000-year-old giant Bible and look in the mirror and answer today’s questions with passages from the Bible. The creators of the first Bible Museum in Bavaria wanted to combine modernity and antiquity. The new facility in the Lorenzer Hof in the center of Nuremberg opposite the Lorenz Church will open its doors on April 8th. The Bavarian Bible Center is responsible for the new facility.
At the presentation of the museum on Thursday, the chairman of the board of directors, Stefan Ark Nitsche, pointed out that in times of scientific, social or philosophical upheaval it was necessary to dust off the Bible and put it in the public eye. For the Evangelical Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, the Bible Museum is an important future project for the church. It is his great hope “that this Bible Museum can make an important contribution to bringing the Bible back into the conversation, to discussing it, to wrestle with the right interpretations and to rediscover its contents as a source of strength and orientation”. The bishop said that modern museum education would help young people and school classes in particular to open up new access to the Bible.
The first special exhibition is dedicated to the Nuremberg town clerk Lazarus Spengler
The “Bibel Museum Bayern”, according to the word mark, with 450 square meters of exhibition space cost 2.4 million euros. Nitsche announced that the Bavarian Evangelical Church would take on 1.6 million euros of this. The annual maintenance will amount to 600,000 euros. In times after the corona pandemic, around 20,000 visitors per year are expected. The highlight of the exhibition is the digital Gumbertus Bible. Measuring 67 by 45 centimeters and weighing 40 kilograms, it belongs to the category of “giant bibles”. The first so-called thumb bible, the Wilkin’s bible or the miniature of the sculpture “Swords to Ploughshares” by the Ukrainian artist Yevgeny Viktorovich Vuchetich are surprising exhibits. The museum’s media guide is sophisticated, with which you can be guided through the rooms in 30 minutes, but you can also listen to more than 50 in-depth stations in German, English and Italian. A children’s track and a sign language track are integrated.
There was a change in personnel at the museum when the museum opened. Claudia Harders, former director of the Bavarian Bible Museum, said she had done pioneering work for ten years and was now happy to have created something that would last. She handed over the key to the facility to Astrid Seichter, her previous deputy and head of the museum’s educational department. A first special exhibition is dedicated to the Nuremberg town clerk Lazarus Spengler (1479 to 1546). According to Seichter, his example shows what a difference the commitment of a single person can make. “He pulls the necessary political strings and is a dedicated lay theologian who writes his own creed.” Even Martin Luther recognized its importance for the Reformation.