Through Gottfried Silbermann's front door

Gottfried Silbermann is known as one of the most formative European personalities relating to instrument manufacturing of the 18th century. The house in Freiberg/Saxony beside the
city´s castle, built in the 16th century, in which Silbermann resided and worked in has been preserved until today. It is one of the few historical places identifying the union of culture and craft trade in this town. It stands for music and manual skills as much as world fame and local tradition. Between 1711 and 1753 Gottfried Silbermann had his workshop here, continued for another half century by his journeymen. Today the chair of the society for Gottfried Silbermann is located here.

The chair is namely in the first floor of the Silbermann-house with offices as well as the so far installed exhibition to be found. But hard to reach because of the entrance on the backside of the house the presentation has been concealed for many people. This will be different as soon as the exhibition about the works and accomplishments of Gottfried Silbermann will be opened in early summer on the ground floor of the house. The reconstruction of the whole ground floor for tourist purposes by the city government makes it possible for us to make the presentation available from the side of one of the central places of the City of Freiberg, the castle square. Therefore, beside the targeted audience, we will reach a great amount of drop-in customers, too.

In the exhibition the visitors will be introduced to organ building by informative boards with text and pictures, films, audio examples, a computer based organ model and a little organ workshop patterned on a historical one. Our playable organ model, built according to Silbermann, shows the inner parts of an organ and can be even played by visitors.

For interested people there will be guided tours, lectures or projects for students and children. They can actually take action in the little organ workshop and, for example, build their own wooden organ pipe.

We want to make Gottfried Silbermann and his worldwide valued work down to the present day directly and easily available. By opening the ground floor of the Silbermann-house we allow an easy access into our new exhibition rooms. Therefore we will appeal numerous people, no matter what age: Silbermann- and organ-fans, school classes, families, cultural and manually interested people, day tourists or simply people passing by, who would like to take a look inside.

Support this project to make an important historical place available for a big audience. Gottfried Silbermann characterized the German organ building for centuries like nobody else. His personality and his manual skills are versatile and of interest for everybody. Silbermann is one of few citizens of Freiberg who find worldwide attention until today. With your support we will be able to honor this adequately.

The money will be taken for designing the new rooms. On a surface of about 100 square meters we show life and works of Silbermann as well as give fascinating views on the techniques of organ construction. Many exhibits like our organ model, the computer based model or the utilities for our organ workshop exist and will be moved from upstairs to downstairs. Objects that have to be newly purchased are for example presentation boards, audio- and video units, organ pipes for illustrative purpose, illumination, cash and shop area.