Julius Misselbacher (1903-1963) și Muzeul de Istorie Sighișoara
Julius Misselbacher (1903-1963) and Sighișoara History Museum

Summary/Abstract: In 1899 a history museum was established in Sighișoara, organised in the most emblematic building in the old medieval fortress, namely the Clock Tower. The initiative to organise a museum was taken by the doctor Josef Bacon, who, together with a series of collaborators around the Sebastian Hann Association, gathered objects necessary for the collection and organised the first permanent exhibition of the institution. One of his collaborators was Julius Misselbacher (1903-1963), who came from a family famous for the commercial activities carried out in Sighișoara. Julius Misselbacher's activity is divided into two stages: the interwar period when he worked on the inventory of museum objects, the work of preserving the collection of weapons, the organisation of an exhibition in the Church on the Hill and the post-war period when his business was nationalised, and he managed to ensure for a short period an income for his family by making in 1953 a model of the city as it looked like in the year 1735 and also making records of the heritage objects in 1958. Unfortunately, a collaboration with the museum was no longer permitted, as the Communist authorities continued to be narrow-minded, and the museum was left without the information that an old collaborator of the institution could provide, knowing not only all of the museum´s heritage but also the origin and provenance of the objects in the museum's collection. As we can see, we are dealing with a complex personality who, taking the example of his forerunners, dedicated his entire life to the local community. Although he was not a historian by profession, his love for the past of his city or the community he belonged to determined him to collaborate with the museum, both in terms of how to exhibit and record the heritage, and especially through the documented study from a multitude of historical sources for the construction of the historical model of Sighisoara; to this day this remains a historical source of the city, used by a multitude of historians, archaeologists, architects. It is also a pedagogical object, whole generations of Sighisoara students learning from the model about the secular history of their city. In this way, we pay our homage to a lesser-known personality of Sighișoara, who invested a lot of the time of his life in the service of the community.

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