Station: [7] Mathematicians, musicians, and stargazers

No one knows exactly where it stood today. But there is no doubt that it existed: Mecklenburg's first observatory was located here in Ivenack!

And that has something to do with a certain Joachim Trumpf, who came to Ivenack as a sexton and organist. Trumpf was probably born in Malchow in 1687, the son of a poor weaver. His father Christoffer earned extra income as a sexton and apparently passed on his musical talent to his son. The young Trumpf spent his youth with his parents and younger brother in neighboring Stavenhagen. As a young adult, he came to the village of Ivenack, which had been severely affected by the Thirty Years' War. Ernst Christoph von Koppelow had just acquired the estate and initiated its revival. The converted and renovated church became Trumpf's place of work. But that was not all. Trumpf was interested in mathematics, experimental physics, and music theory, and he acquired a comprehensive education as an autodidact. He corresponded with some of the outstanding scientists and musicians of his time. And when a large, very bright comet remained near Earth for days in March 1843, Trumpf and his contemporaries were caught up in a veritable comet fever.

The multi-talented Trumpf constructed a 40-meter-long telescope, grinding the lenses himself. In doing so, he drew on the research of his contemporary, the Dutch scholar Johannes Hevelius. With his telescope—probably the longest in the world at the time—Trumpf made astronomical observations that were noted and appreciated by his colleagues but not preserved for posterity.

The same is true of his writings on music theory. The eight quartet volumes in which he recorded his knowledge of organ building have not been preserved. Joachim Trumpf died in 1769 at the age of over 80 while working on the reconstruction of an organ – not in Ivenack, where he had spent almost his entire life, but in Burg Stargard, just a few kilometers southeast of here.

Foto: © Lisa Ruschin