Halle - Donkey fountain and Beatles Museum at Old Market

Friday, 13 April 2018 07:15
Written by Portal Editor

The next day was to be followed by another tour of downtown Halle, so Detlef did not just have the Old Market with its donkey well in mind, but also the only existing Museum of music history of the Beatles.

Old Market - Fountain over the centuries

The name of the place "Old Market" keeps its promises, so the place still reminds us that in the early Middle Ages Halles there was marketplace here. At the foot of the Michaelis Chapel, which no longer exists today, fresh water is supposed to have flown from a water pipe from 1480 into a so-called "Röhrenbrunnen". The fountain was already adorned with a male stone figure in 1593. This old plant was replaced in 1868 by a simple zinc fountain.

In 1905, a merchant whose shop had been standing on Alter Markt for half a century, donated a large sum of money to build a new, more durable fountain. A double-shell fountain system made of concrete cast in Art Nouveau design was built. In 1906 the plant was in principle completed, but it still lacked the crowning ornament. The Halle sculptor Heinrich Keiling emerged victorious from an open competition.

The miller's boy and his donkey go over roses

His bronze sculpture takes up a legend that is very popular in Halle. This tells of the miller boy and his donkey, both unknowingly come to honor. They walk over roses, which had actually been scattered by the expected Emperor Otto I. Only this had had to change because of floods of the Saale kings route to the city needed to be changed in short term. The story has been told differently over the centuries. Sometimes the donkey driver is also a worker from the salt mines in the valley of Halle. Already in the year 1583 the topic was taken up and represented on the north-east side of the market church as a relief. In any case, the fully plastic execution of the Halleschen landmark, the "donkey who goes for roses", immediately met with approval from the Halle residents. The inauguration of the until today popular fountain figure took place in the summer of 1913.

The Beatles Museum - rarities of "Pilzköpfe"

The Beatles Museum initially showed exhibits from a previous traveling exhibition of the Liverpool music band The Beatles. The museum founder Rainer Moers began to collect everything that existed about the Beatles in 1964. From 1975, the collection was to be seen as a traveling exhibition in about 25 cities in Germany and abroad; from 1989 in Cologne on almost 60 m² of exhibition space. On 31 July 1999, the Beatles Museum in Cologne was closed, to reopen half a year later in Halle. The founders of the museum: Rainer Moers (in Cologne and Halle) and Matthias Bühring (in Halle), who died in October 2000.

In the search for a permanent location, the decision was made on the Händelstadt Halle. After previous renovation, the building Alter Markt 12 could be handed over to its new use on 8 April 2000. Initially, there were about 350 m² of exhibition space, meanwhile it is almost 600 m². It is the oldest institution of this kind; since 2007 on three floors. In April 2009, it was agreed that the museum will remain in its original location in Halle for at least ten more years. In 2013, an agreement was reached that the Beatles Museum will remain permanently in the city hall.

Rare records of the Beatles in the exhibition

Around 3500 exhibits are on display in the museum, which is only one fifth of the collection. On display are photos, newspaper articles, fan souvenirs, autographs, posters, curios, Beatles stamps, a puzzle game, and there are also visual and acoustic exhibits such as films and music on sometimes rare records from 1960 to today. Some of the presentations are chronologically ordered, for example in the 1970s, 80s or in the Sgt. Pepper room. Film contributions and listening stations complete the exhibition. Even the solo careers of the Beatles in the 1980s and 1990s are documented. A group photo with original signatures of the four mushroom heads on the back is one of the most valuable exhibits in the collection.

The Beatles Museum has about 20,000 visitors a year. It is largely financed by entrance fees, the sales of Beatles products and the Beatles magazine THINGS, which appears once or twice a month.
A comparable, public and also very large exhibition "The Beatles Story" is only in the Albert Docks in Liverpool.

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