Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle (BURG) is the university of art and design in Halle an der Saale that was established in 1915. With a student body numbering over 1,000, BURG is one of the largest universities of art and design in Germany.[2] It offers 20 art and design degree programmes in two faculties.
BURG is located on the lower fortress of Giebichenstein Castle above the right bank of Saale River on the city's northern border. Part of the Art campus is on the grounds of the former Hermes print finishing company in north-eastern Halle and the rest is combined with the Design campus on Neuwerk to the east of Mühlgraben, the old water channel for the town's mill.
History and present
Today's Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle is the successor to the Commercial Draughtsman and Artisan’s School of the city of Halle. That school was established in 1879 when the Provincial Trade School Halle (est. 1852) and the Commercial Draughtsman’s School (est. 1870) merged. Today's university of art and design counts the hour of its birth as 1 July 1915, when the architect, Paul Thiersch, began his term as director. The school's name was Halle School of Artisans and the Applied Arts. Thiersch provided new momentum and reformed the lesson plan in the spirit of the German Association of Craftsmen (Deutscher Werkbund) and the ideal of the master craftsmen who collaborated to build medieval cathedrals.[3] The school was a conglomeration of training and producing workshops and art-related classes who taught students without a fixed curriculum. In addition to a cabinetmaker's workshop, there were classes for painting, graphic design, sculpture, architecture, textile design, and photography.
In 1922, the school moved into rooms in the lower fortress of Giebichenstein Castle, where it became Workshops of the city of Halle, Burg Giebichenstein, the state and municipal school of the applied arts.
After the Bauhaus in Weimar closed in 1925, many former Bauhaus staff came to BURG as teachers, including the sculptor Gerhard Marcks, who held the office of director from 1928 until 1933. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Marguerite Friedlaender, Gerhard Marcks, Charles Crodel, and Erwin Hahs were forced to leave the school. The Nazi regime changed the school's remit and allowed it to continue as a centre for education in the crafts.
In the post-second world war period, Burg Giebichenstein was revived as a university of art and design. Under Director Walter Funkat, the foundation for the University for Industrial Design Halle was laid in 1958. Until 1989, it was one of the most influential educational institutions for designers and artists in the GDR. With its educational programme in applied arts, the university was responsible for the particularly artistic quality of the country's applied arts. Between 1965 and 1975, the fine arts were neglected as a discipline in favour of design. BURG did not recover the structure it had in the 1920s until 1975, when several new disciplines were added (glass, media arts, communication design). In 1976, President Paul Jung set up the Theory and Methodology department (under Horst Oehlke and Rolf Frick). In that group, up to 25 academics from a variety of disciplines worked on design methodology and design theory. They also paved the way for using computer technology for design.
The university was re-christened Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle in 1989. The university has met the challenges of social change, internationalisation, and the increasing complexity of art and design. BURG's unique selling proposition has always been the excellent education in artistic-academic fundamentals it provides.
The Design campus has been the site of extensive renovation and expansion since 2003 and is the site of the new library that opened its doors in 2015.[4]
Bachelor's courses in the Design faculty were implemented in 2005 and master's courses in 2008. Diplom courses continue to be offered in the Art faculty.
In 2010, the university's name was changed to “art university” in German to underscore the connection between “art school” and “university”. In 2013, the university of art and design was granted the right to confer doctorates. BURG celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2015 with an extensive programme featuring numerous exhibitions, events, and publications.
Currently, around 1,040 students are enrolled at the university. Approximately two-thirds are taking a design course and the remaining one-third study art.[5] Since winter semester 2014/2015, Dieter Hofmann, Professor of Industrial Design/Product and System Design, has been president. In June 2018, he was elected president for a further four years. Of the 51 professorships that are currently occupied (including guest, substitute, and honorary professors), 25 are held by women.[6] This makes the university of art and design one of the few in Germany with a faculty that embraces gender equality.[7]
Studying at BURG
Central administration located on the Design campus
Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle has 20 Diplom, bachelor's, and master's courses in two faculties and 15 specialist degree programmes. It also offers two post-graduate programmes and since 2013, has had the right to confer doctorates in design sciences. Fifteen percent of BURG students are foreigners.[8]
Students normally receive a bachelor's degree in four years, a master's degree in one year, and a Diplom in five years. A special focus of the degree programmes at BURG is education in the artistic-academic fundamentals of theory and practice, which are uniformly taught to all students in their first two years at the university. Under specialist supervision, students can use the materials and equipment of over 20 specialist workshops on the university campuses. The entrance exam is held in mid-March every year. On average, 1,480 potential students apply to become part of the given year's cohort of approximately 200.
Locations
Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle has three main locations. The Design campus on Neuwerk 7 is one centre of life at BURG. It contains the central administration department, the library, media centre, student information centre, the Designhaus Halle start-up centre, and the central workshops, as well as the Design faculty's classroom buildings. Most of the Art faculty studios and rooms are located on the Art campus on Seebener Straße 1. The lectures for art pedagogy, art (teaching degree), textile arts, and painting take place in the Hermes building on Hermesstrasse 5.[9]
Public events
Presentation ceremony during the 2017 annual exhibition
The annual exhibition in July is the climax of the academic year. For an entire weekend, the students of all courses present their semester and thesis work on the Art campus, Design campus, in the Hermes building, and in other exhibition spaces.[10]
And at the end of each semester in July and February, the fashion design students present their collections in a gala fashion show. During the semester, there is a series of exhibitions in the university's own exhibition space: Burg Galerie im Volkspark. The GiebichenStein Design Award ceremony has been the traditional kick-off to the new academic year since 2012. It is accompanied by an exhibition in the Art Foundation of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.[11]
Potential students can receive an impression of the university, receive tips on their portfolios, and participate in tours on Student Information Day, held in January every year.
And at A Taste of BURG in September, pupils in senior classes have an opportunity to find out about studying at BURG by interacting with students and visiting workshops.
Selection of rectors, professors, lecturers and graduates
In Europe, Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle maintains official university partnerships with 53 universities in 20 countries. The university of art and design also cooperates with a further 11 international universities of art and design worldwide, with a focus on exchanges with Saint Petersburg (Russia), Havana (Cuba), and Tokyo (Japan). Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle is also a partner in the Cumulus association of European universities, a network of 165 art and design universities, and a member of the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA). The partner universities include:
Halle (Saale), or simply Halle (German:[ˈhalə]; from the 15th to the 17th century: Hall in Sachsen; until the beginning of the 20th century: Halle an der Saale ; from 1965 to 1995: Halle/Saale) is the largest city of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, the fifth most populous city in the area of former East Germany after (East) Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz as well as the 31st largest city of Germany, and with around 244,000 inhabitants, it is slightly more populous than the state capital of Magdeburg. Together with Leipzig, the largest city of Saxony, Halle forms the polycentric Leipzig-Halle conurbation. Between the two cities, in Schkeuditz, lies Leipzig/Halle International Airport. The Leipzig-Halle conurbation is at the heart of the larger Central German Metropolitan Region.
Marguerite Wildenhain, née Marguerite Friedlaender and alternative spelling Friedländer, was an American Bauhaus-trained ceramic artist, educator and author. After immigrating to the United States in 1940, she taught at Pond Farm and wrote three influential books—Pottery: Form and Expression (1959), The Invisible Core: A Potter's Life and Thoughts (1973), and ...that We Look and See: An Admirer Looks at the Indians (1979). Artist Robert Arneson described her as "the grande dame of potters,".
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts is a publicly-funded post-secondary arts institution in Singapore, and a constituent college of the University of the Arts Singapore (UAS) from 2024.
Giebichenstein Castle is a castle in Giebichenstein district of Halle (Saale) in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is part of the Romanesque Road.
A Kunstgewerbeschule was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for these schools. From the 1920s and after World War II, most of them either merged into universities or closed, although some continued until the 1970s.
Otto Müller was a German painter and graphic designer.
Erich Consemüller was a German photographer and architect who studied and taught at Bauhaus art school. He worked alongside the photographer Lucia Moholy documenting life at the Bauhaus.
Carola Helbing-Erben is a German artist. She has worked primarily in textiles and in the creation of tapestries, and also as a mosaic artist and painter.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Halle an der Saale, Germany.
Andrea Tinnes is a German type designer, graphic designer and university teacher.
“Andrea Tinnes belongs to that rare breed, creating coherent, functional, innovative type families, and using them within a design practice that includes identity design, decoration, personal work, and teaching, with typefaces that range from the bizarre Haircrimes to the relatively sensible Skopex.” – Jan Middendorp
Heinz Felsch was a German painter and graphic artist. He created a comprehensive oeuvre of oil paintings and mixed media. Since he had also trained as a lithographer, he produced a large number of lithographic prints in his own printing workshop. The themes of his paintings and graphic oeuvre are landscapes, still lives, and also portraits and people.
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Benita Koch-Otte, born Benita Otte, was a German weaver and textile designer who trained at the Bauhaus.
Hans Wittwer was a Swiss architect who worked in Germany and who taught architecture at the Bauhaus art school in Dessau. He was a proponent of functionalist architecture; the idea that form follows function. He worked with the Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer both at the school and in a joint architectural practice in Basel. He also taught at the Kunstgewerbeschule Burg Giebichenstein in Halle.
Gerhard Lichtenfeld was a German sculptor and academic teacher, whose works were installed in public space in the Halle (Saale) and Merseburg districts, and who exhibited internationally. He was awarded the Handel Prize.
Cornelia Weihe is a German painter and sculptor.
Una Helga Moehrke is a German visual artist specializing in painting, drawing, performance art and experimental text. She was a Professor for Art and Art Mediation at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle from 1994 to 2018.
Johann-Peter Hinz was a German artist and sculptor and local politician in Saxony-Anhalt.
Paul Thiersch was a German architect and designer.
Yolanda Klug was a German woman who disappeared on 25 September 2019 and whose disappearance had been linked to Scientology. A walker discovered her remains on February 25, 2023 in the forest area Rödel near Freyburg. The cause of death is currently unclear.
↑ Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle; Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe; Burg Giebichenstein Hochschule für Kunst und Design Halle (Hrsg.): Die hallesche Kunstschule von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Halle/Saale und Karlsruhe, 1993, S. 21.
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