NH Nurnberg City

Here at Schillerplatz 26 in Bamberg is where the author and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann lived from 1808 until 1813, just across from the theater which now bears his name.

His position as music director of the theater didn't last very long, so he soon had to make his living by giving music lessons to the daughters of well-to-do Bamberg families. One of these girls, Julia Marc, was only thirteen when Hoffmann started giving her voice lessons, and by the time she was fifteen he was hopelessly in love with her. Unfortunately he was twenty years older, and Julia's mother had already arranged for her to marry a rich merchant from Hamburg. Also Hoffmann was a rather small and unattractive man, and in any case he was already married to someone else.

Julia liked him well enough as a teacher and fatherly friend, but that wasn't what he wanted, and the whole thing turned out very badly, as do most of the love affairs in Hoffmann's stories and novellas.

In this house Hoffmann began writing his opera Undine, which was first performed in Berlin in 1816 and can still occasionally be seen in German opera houses. In fact, it was performed several times here in Bamberg last April, in a guest production by the Theatr Wielki in Poznan.

Nonetheless, Hoffmann is best known today as the hero of an opera, not as a composer.

Hoffmann's house is now a museum, which is open Tuesday-Friday from 16.00 to 18.00, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10.00 to 12.00 (from May to October). Admission is EUR 2.00 (EUR 1.00 for students).