Seite - 70 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

70 The statutes of 1 December 1811 reveal how the founder, Archduke Johann, saw the tasks and goals of his institution: ‘The necessity to set well-founded knowledge in the place of superficial pseudo-knowledge, to turn one’s atten- tion unremittingly to the highest national matter, to education, has never rec- ommended itself so dearly as in our times. To participate in this great purpose and to at least bring it closer in a great province of the imperial state, in Inner Austria, is the aim of the national museum. The same shall be understood in all objects belonging to the circle of national literature. Everything that nature, the change of time, human diligence and perseverance have produced in Inner Austria, what the teachers of the various public institutions present to their inquisitive pupils. It is intended to sensualize them, thereby facilitating learn- ing, to stimulate the appetite for knowledge, that of independent thinking, and thus to help with the independence of such a detrimental mere memori- zation, to fill more and more that harmful gap between the concept and the view, the theory and the practice.’ With these remarks in which the educational intentions of the museum are ex- pressly emphasised, it is generally held that Archduke Johann is caught up in the world of ideas of the late Enlightenment, and that the goal of his donation consists in serving it. Supplemented by and from the view point of historical museology, it can be added that Johann also represented an approach which can be traced back in terms of the history of ideas to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Claudius Clemens and Johann Valentin Andreä up to Samuel Quiccheberg, the founder of modern museum theory. The philosopher Leibniz (17th c.) saw in chambers of art and rare items only collections of didactic aids. In his view, the role of a museum was primarily to communicate a better knowledge of its objects. The French Jesuit Claudius Clemens declared in his programme of an ideal museum published in 1635 ‘The structure of a museum or a library, whether for private or public use,’ that real objects are necessary in order to understand written content: ‘To a complete library belong not only good books of all types, but also certain instruments and devices without which the books can hardly be fully understood nor cer- tain knowledge acquired.’ In 1618 Johann Valentin Andreä pointed out in the draft of his Utopia, Christianopolis, that acquired knowledge from books only leads to education when it is supplemented by an engagement with authentic objects which are exhibited in collections. Foundational motivation and its classification in the history of museums