151 - Medal Technische Universität "Otto von Guericke" Magdeburg, Magdeburg hemispheres, bronze

Medal Technische Universität "Otto von Guericke" Magdeburg, Magdeburg hemispheres, bronze Bronze, partially enamelled, Guericke medal of the Technische Universität "Otto von Guericke" Magdeburg, in red case. Obverse with high-relief bust of Otto von Guericke facing, long hair, moustache and chin beard, wide collar with tasselled cord, field enamelled dark brown, legend "OTTO VON GUERICKE 1602-1686". Reverse with the Magdeburg hemispheres with ring eyelets on dark field, open above, closed below, between them "MAGDEBURGER HALBKUGELN", legend "TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT 'OTTO VON GUERICKE' MAGDEBURG". Case with red grained covering, silver-coloured hook clasp, light lid lining and red insert. Mentioned in the "Monumenta Guerickiana". Good condition. D. 7 cm. Otto von Guericke, who lived from 1602 to 1686, was mayor of Magdeburg and refuted the doctrine of horror vacui with his vacuum experiments. In his famous hemispheres experiment, the external air pressure pressed two evacuated copper hemispherical shells together so firmly that teams of horses could not separate them; the experiment was demonstrated, among other occasions, in 1654 at the Imperial Diet in Regensburg and in 1657 in Magdeburg. The Magdeburg university founded in 1953, one of the first newly founded universities in the GDR, bore Guericke's name from 1961, became a technical university in 1987 and was merged into the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität in 1993. After 1957, mainly the city of Magdeburg and the Technische Hochschule issued commemorative medals for Guericke in larger numbers, with a first peak in the 1970s and 1980s. A first compilation of these medals, coins and emergency money notes was published by Eckbert Busch in 2001 in the "Monumenta Guerickiana", the journal of the Otto-von-Guericke-Gesellschaft in Magdeburg.