Cloppenburg Museum Village

The Cloppenburg Museum Village and Lower Saxon Open-Air Museum (German: Museumsdorf Cloppenburg – Niedersächsisches Freilichtmuseum) in the Lower Saxon county town of Cloppenburg is the oldest museum village in Germany.^[1] The museum is a research and educational establishment in the field of cultural and countryside history.^[1]

The Lower Saxon Open-Air Museum is a non-profit organisation. Although the museum does not set out to compete for visitors, in 2009 the Cloppenburg Museum Village had more visitors than any other museum in Lower Saxony (250,000).^[2] In 2004 the visitors included about 60,000 children and young people, who took in what the museum had to offer as part of their school curricula.^[1]

Cloppenburg Museum Village

History

The Museum Village was laid out in 1934 by the Cloppenburg senior schoolmaster, Heinrich Ottenjann. It was ceremonially opened on Ascension Day in 1936.^[3] On 13 April 1945 six houses in the museum village were destroyed by artillery fire, including the Quatmannshof farm.^[4] By 1962 this farm had been reconstructed true to the original in detail.^[5] The second museum director after Heinrich Ottenjann was his son, Helmut Ottenjann (1961–1996). Since 1996 Uwe Meiners has been the director of the open-air museum.^[6]

Purpose

The Lower Saxon Open-Air Museum acts today as a research and educational establishment for cultural and agricultural history. The museum education facilities are always activity- and product-oriented.^[7]

The museum village is also a research establishment. Research work concentrates on folklore, regional history and house research. A team of three scientists, constantly supported by volunteers and project partners, investigate e.g. historic sources, advise on the construction of new houses, plan exhibitions etc. This work is documented not just in scientific journals and volumes; the museum village also publishes its oown books and papers.^[8] The scientific staff are supported by craftsmen, who maintain the museum village and who demonstrate traditional crafts for the visitors.^[9]

Since 2009 the museum village has been donated €50,000 annually for the maintenance of its buildings by the Carola Wüstefeld Foundation.^[2]

Facilities

Timber-framed church from Klein-Escherde

Moorland plough next to the Museum Village car park

Wehlburg (an Artland farmstead)

View from the joinery

On an area of about 20 hectares (49 acres), the Lower Saxon Open-Air Museum portrays the history of the rural life in the Lower Saxony region from the 16th century to the present. Over 50 historic buildings with their associated rural gardens and surrounding agricultural fields serve to illustrate the relationship of man to his environment over the course of time.^[7]

In the early days a form of reconstruction was chosen that showed the houses in their original state. Important construction variants of the Low German house and East Frisian Gulfhaus are presented in this way. Since the 1970s the houses have been reassembled, conserving the traces of their history and with aspects of the biographies of their former occupants.^[5]

In addition to buildings that underpinned farming and crafts and the residential homes of country folk the museum terrain also has a timber framed church from Klein-Escherde (built in 1698) and a village school from Renslage (built in 1751).

Outside the actual museum village terrain, north of Höltinghauser Straße, a large moor plough displayed.

More information about the individual exhibits is available in an interactive location plan.^[10]

In 2011 the construction of a new entrance hall with integrated cultural-historical centre is planned to start. Funding is to be provided by the state of Lower Saxony, the district and the town of Cloppenburg. In the same year the home of a Stellmacherei from 1564 will be completed. This building will then be the oldest one on the museum village site.^[2]

Agriculture and crafts – living and working buildings

Of the many buildings that were used for farming, the Quatmannshof (from Elsten, built in 1805) and the Wehlburg (from Wehdel, built in 1750) are especially worth mentioning. As well as farmhouses, servants' houses (Heuerhäuser) and farm workers' houses there are numerous examples of rural tradesmen's houses: a turner's, a whitesmith's, a farrier's, a blacksmith's, a coppersmith's,^[11] a leather shoemaker's, a clog maker's, a joiner's, a carpenter's workshop, a brewery, a cooper's, a blue printing works, a saddlery, a pottery,^[12] a goldsmith's and a silversmith's as well as technical cultural artefacts like grinding mills and engines.^[5][13][14]

The Cloppenburg Museum Village aims to display as complete a range as possible of the different types of old country crafts and their associated tools and equipment being used.

Mills

Since 2008 the Museum Village has been a stop on the Lower Saxon Mill Road. Those following this tourist route will be able to see the following:

• a post mill (Bockwindmühle or Ständermühle) from Essern (Nienburg district), probably built around 1638
• a smock mill (Kappenwindmühle, Galerieholländer, Achtkantwindmühle or Holländer) from Bokel (Landkreis Cloppenburg|Cloppenburg district) from the year 1764
• a Kokerwindmühle windmill from Edewecht (Landkreis Ammerland) dating to 1879, originally conceived as a water scoop mill (Wasserschöpfmühle)
• a horse mill from Mimmelage (Osnabrück district); a wooden mill or horse gin, for milling corn, built around 1850 to 1890. Grain was milled with the aid of horses. The horse mill found in the threshing and grain barn of the Wehlburg farm from the year 1868 is the last of its kind in Lower Saxony that has been preserved.^[15]

• 

  Post mill

• 

  Smock mill

• 

  Koker windmill

• 

  Horse gin in the barn of the Wehlburg farmstead

Collections and exhibitions

Münchhausen Barn Exhibition Hall

Quatmannshof during the garden party in 2006

Amongst the museum's collections is the famous Oldenburg meteorite^[16] ('Bissel' fragment, 4.84 kg) which fell from the sky in 1930 onto the villages of Bissel (parish of Großenkneten) and Beverbruch (parish of Garrel).^[17][18]

The results of the extensive work of the museum are presented to the public by means of selected examples in regularly changing special exhibitions in Arkenstede Castle (Burg Arkenstede) and the Münchhausen Barn (Münchhausenscheune). ^[19]

Outing

Since 2002 an annual garden festival has taken place between Ascension and the Sunday before Pentecost on the terrain of the Cloppenburg Museum Village.^[20]

The Genius loci

The museum's founding year of 1934 has given rise to the question of whether the Cloppenburg Museum Village was an expression of Nazi "blood and soil" mythology. This assumption has been inadvertently fostered by the Centre for Educational Media on the Internet (Zentrale für Unterrichtsmedien in the Internet (zum)) because they listed the history teachers of the Museum Village under "Cloppenburg Museum Village (NS)", the NS standing for Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), not Nationalsozialismus (Nazism).^[21]

Horses' heads on top of the gable on a hall house

In fact the foundation of the Cloppenburg Museum Village needs to be seen more in the context of the growth of the local history movement in Germany:^[22] This had arisen as early as 1880 as a reaction to the urbanization of Germany and from the desire of many towns to remember their agricultural roots. From this movement, in the state of Oldenburg, the Ammerland farmhouse in Bad Zwischenahn in 1910 and the Rauchkate in Neuenburg in 1912 emerged as places where memories could be brought to life. In 1922 a local history museum was founded in Cloppenburg itself.^[22]

From this movement Heinrich Ottenjann developed the concept of the Cloppenburg Museum Village, which came to fruition in 1934. The national socialists supported the idea of local history and exploited^[23] and ideologised the site which had in fact been based on folk and farming history, but never in the sense of becoming a Nazi cult site like the Stedingsehre project in Bookholzberg which was also supported by Gauleiter Carl Röver.^[24]

Today staff at the Cloppenburg Museum Village react rather irritatedly at the insinuation that there is a similarity between local history and Nazi ideology: the museum village not only holds regular events intended to throw light on Nazi 'demons',^[25] but its employees are also well enough informed that, for example, when asked, they can comment on the theory that the horses heads on Lower Saxon farmhouses (Lower Saxon houses) are relics of the sacrifice of horses, a myth widely disseminated by the Nazis, but which does not stand up to the critical investigation by historians.^[26]

See also

• Open-air museums in Germany

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Niedersächsischer Bildungsserver: FÖJ-Einsatzstellenliste 2004/2005. p. 113.
2. ^ ^{a b c} Heinrich Kaiser: 250.000 Gäste im Museum. Oldenburgische Volkszeitung. 30 December 2009. p. 14
3. ^ Hubert Gelhaus: Das politisch-soziale Milieu in Südoldenburg von 1803 bis 1936. Dissertation 2000, p. 108
4. ^ Evaluation des Museumsdorf Cloppenburg, Holger Höge, Carl von Ossietzky, 2001, p. 14.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Geschichte des Niedersächsische Freilichtmuseums Museumsdorf Cloppenburg, Dr. Hermann Kaiser. Retrieved 23 Feb 10.
6. ^ Agrargeschichte - Prof. Dr. Uwe Meiners. Retrieved 2 Mar 10.
7. ^ ^{a b} Niedersächsischer Bildungsserver: FÖJ-Einsatzstellenliste 2004/2005. p. 121
8. ^ Homepage des Museumdorfs. Abschnitt Forschung
9. ^ Homepage des Museumdorfs. Abschnitt Zimmern, Hobeln, Malen - Die Handwerker des Museums
10. ^ Interaktiver Lageplan des Museumdorfs Cloppenburg
11. ^ Kupferschmiede im Museumsdorf at www.museumsdorf.de. Retrieved on 23 Feb 10.
12. ^ Töpferei im Museumsdorf at www.museumsdorf.de. Retrieved on 23 Feb 10.
13. ^ Historische Handwerke und handwerkliche bäuerliche Tätigkeiten (overview) at www.museumsdorf.de. Retrieved 23 Feb 10.
14. ^ Traditionelles Handwerk im Museumsdorf at www.museumsdorf.de. Retrieved 23 Feb 10.
15. ^ Landkreis Cloppenburg: Press release of 23 May 2007 on the 14th German Mill Day
16. ^ Oldenburg (1930) at www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/. Retrieved 23 Feb 10.
17. ^ OLDENBURG METEORITE: 10 SEPTEMBER 1930 FALL. Retrieved on 3 Mar 10.
18. ^ Oldenburg at www.astroamateur.de/meteorite. Retrieved on 3 Mar 10.
19. ^ Dauerausstellungen at www.museumsdorf.de. Retrieved on 3 Mar 10.
20. ^ Homepage of the garden party
21. ^ ZUM: Museen im Land (List of museums which are suitable as education centres outside schools)
22. ^ ^{a b} Suche nach Geborgenheit. Heimatbewegung in Oldenburg. Exhibition at the Cloppenburg Museum Village
23. ^ Hubert Gelhaus: The politisch-soziale Milieu in Südoldenburg von 1803 bis 1936. Dissertation 2000, insbesondere der Abschnitt 1.3.4: The politische Instrumentalisierung der traditionellen Heimatbewegung. S.91-113
24. ^ "Stedingsehre" - NS-Kultstätten in Nordwestdeutschland at www.museum.uni-oldenburg.de. Retrieved on 3 Mar 10.
25. ^ Carola Lipp, Uwe Meiners, Waldemar Röhrbein, Ira Spieker (Hg.): Volkskunde in Lower Saxony. Referate der Tagung vom 28 February to 2 March 2001 in the Cloppenburg Museum Village - Niedersächsisches Freilichtmuseum, insbesondere das Fachreferat von Heidi Rosenbaum, Oliver Doetzer and Sigrid Anna Friedreich zum Thema Zum Stellenwert biographischer Forschung in der Sozialgeschichte von Familie and Kindheit – am Beispiel of the Projekts „Kinderalltag im Nationalsozialismus“
26. ^ Kirsten Reinhardt: Warum haben die Niedersachsen Pferdeköpfe am Dach?. The Tagesspiegel. 27 March 2006

Sources

• Hermann Kaiser, Helmut Ottenjann: Museumsführer Museumsdorf Cloppenburg - Niedersächsisches Freilichtmuseum, Stiftung Museumsdorf Cloppenburg (1995)- ISBN 3-92367-514-3
• Hermann Kaiser: Ein Haus und eine Familie in schweren Zeiten: Der Wiederaufbau der Hofanlage Wübbe M. Meyer aus Firrel, Ostfriesland im Museumsdorf Cloppenburg , Stiftung Museumsdorf Cloppenburg (2003) - ISBN 3-92367-592-5

External links

• Official homepage (German)
• Centre for educational media on the Internet (about the): Cloppenburg Open-Air Museum (German)

Coordinates: 52°50′56″N 8°03′04″E / 52.84889°N 8.05111°E / 52.84889; 8.05111