24.10.2018 to 31.3.2019 in the Ernst Moritz Arndt House

An exhibition by the Stadtmuseum Bonn on Bonn university life and Bonn society in the first decades of the Prussian Rhine University founded in 1818 - conceived and curated by Dr. Ingrid Bodsch in cooperation with Dr. Ursula Brandis.

Biographies of students who later became famous tell of stimulating societies in Bonn professors' houses. We know how long Friedrich Nietzsche corresponded with Sophie Ritschl after his year of study in Bonn, and it is not uncommon to read about the delight of pretty young students over the charming young wives of their often much older professors. This was apparently a phenomenon to be found at many universities, which E.T.A. Hoffmann was able to portray so well in his "Lebensansichten des Katers Murr". It is rarer to hear about the activities of Bonn professors' wives in social institutions and then to be surprised that they not only sat on the board, but were highly active participants.

These clues make it easy to guess that their role in social life in Bonn was far greater than the university historiography, which has so far largely focused on the exclusively male staff of the university and its exclusively male students in the 19th century, has taken into account.

Thanks to the estate of the Brandis and Hasse professor families, which is still in family ownership, the Stadtmuseum Bonn was able to recreate the impression of a salon in a Bonn professor's household in the first half of the 19th century - and not only in the only surviving Bonn professor's house from this period. In addition to edited sources, it was also able to draw on previously unpublished family chronicles, letters and diary entries by Caroline Brandis, née Hausmann, and Caecilia Hasse, née Poelchau.

This was possible thanks to Dr. Ursula Brandis, who for many years has devoted herself to the extensive estate of her late husband Dr. Henning Brandis (1916-2004). Henning Brandis worked as a full professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Bonn from 1967. He was the grandson of Sir Dietrich and Lady Katharina Brandis, née Hasse, and the great-grandson of Bonn philosophy professor Christian August Brandis and his wife Caroline Brandis, née Hausmann, whose villa (see photo) stood in the immediate vicinity of the Arndt family's home and close to the Alter Zoll.