Rediscovering History: The Revival of the Cluj Pharmacy Museum

Among the oldest known public pharmacies in Transylvania, established by city magistrates and operated by tenant pharmacists, are those in the most important and wealthiest towns of the Transylvanian Saxons: Sibiu [German: Hermannstadt, Hungarian: Nagyszeben] (1494), Brașov [German: Kronstadt, Hungarian: Brassó] (1512), and Bistrița [German: Bistritz, Hungarian: Beszterce] (1516). Those pharmacy foundations are based on models from the German-speaking area. The same applies to the third largest city in Transylvania, although the establishment of the first municipal pharmacy in Cluj [German: Klausenburg, Hungarian: Kolozsvár] is not documented, but the existence of this is suggested by the fact that Wolfgang Theke, a pharmacist from Buda (today: Budapest), moved first to Brașov, then to Sibiu, and later to Cluj in 1543.