Friedenstein Castle Gotha: "Stolperstein" laying in memory of Behrendt Pick

In his 41 years of service at "Friedenstein", the internationally important numismatist and historian Behrendt Pick promoted international science as well as Thuringia's educational landscape. In 1893 he became the first director of the legendary Gotha Coin Cabinet, which at the end of the 19th century was on a par with the collections in Paris and Vienna. With some 30,000 new acquisitions, Pick was one of the great collector personalities of the "Friedenstein". As director of the Duke's Library in Gotha, professor at the University of Jena for many years and co-founder of the Gotha Adult Education Centre, he also rendered outstanding services to broad cultural education.

Under the Nazi state, Pick was humiliated and disenfranchised in 1933/34 because of his "Mosaic faith" and finally forced into retirement. A few years later he moved with his wife Gertrud to Berlin, where he died in 1940. In 1942, shortly after the first "old-age transports" from the "Anhalter Bahnhof" in Kreuzburg to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, Gertrud Pick took her own life.

On 19 December 2021, at 2 p.m., in the presence of the artist and "Stolperstein" inventor Gunter Demnig, a "Stolperstein" in memory of Behrendt Pick will now be laid under the east arcades of Friedenstein Castle – in the direct vicinity of the historic Numismatic Collection and its former workrooms. Another stumbling block will be used as a potential exhibition object to expand the collection on the city's history, thus linking past and present.

One stumbling block will be donated by Wolfgang Kümpfel on behalf of the "Freundeskreis Kunstsammlungen Schloss Friedenstein e. V.", one privately by Christoph Mauny, Marjanko Pilekić and Uta Wallenstein (Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha). Alexej Barchevitch, 1st concertmaster of the Thuringia Philharmonic Orchestra Gotha-Eisenach, donates a piece on the violin. The staff of the three institutions at "Friedenstein" also collected flowers and candles together in memory of their "colleague".