In Forum SchlossKirche, institutions cooperate to fill the area around the Wittenberg castle courtyard with life. Currently, the Forum includes the Research Library for Reformation Studies, the Wittenberg Protestant Seminary for Preachers, the Evangelische Akademie Sachsen-Anhalt, the Evangelical Wittenberg Foundation and the Christian Art Foundation. The forum serves as an exchange of information and mutual support, and joint events are also organised.
Further information on Forum SchlossKirche can be found via the contact addresses of the individual members. You are also welcome to direct questions and enquiries to the secretariat of the Research Library for Reformation Studies:
Email: sekretariat@rfb-wittenberg.de
Tel.: +49 3491 5069-200
Melanchthon Study Day 2018
Forum SchlossKirche hosted its first joint event on 18 August 2018 with the Melanchthon Study Day. The occasion was the arrival of Philipp Melanchthon in Wittenberg 500 years ago. The cooperation partners invited visitors to look at the biography, work and history of the learned reformer through various approaches.
Focus was on Melanchthon’s inaugural speech “De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis” – “On the necessity of reshaping the studies of youth”, which he delivered on 28 August 1518 and which caused a sensation in view of its reform programme. Prof. Dr Martin H. Jung, ecclesiastical historian at the University of Osnabrück, first gave a keynote speech entitled “Philipp Melanchthon and the educational offensive of the Reformation”. Subsequently, selected sections of Melanchthon’s speech were read and central aspects were discussed. On this basis, participants considered together the questions of what sort of education is needed today and whether Melanchthon’s inaugural speech, written 500 years ago, can still be used to draw useful suggestions for the present. The study day ended with the opening of the cabinet exhibition “Philipp Melanchthon as a polymath” in the Research Library for Reformation Studies with coffee and prosecco.
Theme Day 2019: In die Fremde – Migration als universelle Erfahrung und Herausforderung (Into foreign lands – migration as a universal experience and challenge)
Migration is one of humanity’s universal phenomena. It can have a variety of causes, but it always tears gaps in the society of origin and poses challenges for the migrants as well as for the people of the host society; but migration always brings opportunities and new perspectives. The Forum SchlossKirche’s 2019 Theme Day invited visitors to deal with the topic of migration from different perspectives. The programme included a lecture by migration researcher Prof. Dr Jochen Oltmer, a source work under the guidance of Dr Matthias Meinhardt, an art viewing of Kokoschka’s “Rest on the Flight to Egypt” by Pastor Christian Beuchel, reports on the experiences of vicars of the Wittenberg Protestant Seminary for Preachers who were not born in Germany, as well as the multimedia performance “Home.Run – A Border-Violating Family Saga” by and with Hartmut El Kurdi.
Exhibition 2023
Die Engel bedenken sich (The angels contemplate). Heidrun Feistner - Sculptures
From April 17 to July 16, 2023, Forum Schlosskirche in Lutherstadt Wittenberg will be showing the most comprehensive exhibition of sculptures by Heidrun Feistner to date.
The artist usually creates her works from stone. Casts are also made of some works. She describes the process of creation as the gentle exposure of the forms hidden in this material, very similar to an archaeological approach. But it is about more than just discovering hidden forms. It is also about making the genesis of the form visible, letting the stone become the narrator of a story.
The exhibition includes more than 50 works. The majority of the sculptures are on display in the rooms of the Research Library for Reformation Studies. Other locations are in the Protestant Seminary for Preachers, the Christian Art Foundation, the castle’s Visitor Centre, the Castle Church and the Evangelische Akademie Sachsen-Anhalt. The result is a synthesis between the sculptures and the spaces – they appear made for each other.
Further information on the exhibition and the accompanying programme can be found here.
