 | Thuringia, Germany Tourism Attractions  |  |
A visit to the "Museum für Thüringer Volkskunde"
(Thuringian heritage museum) in Erfurt, Thuringia, Germany
Contact Information:
Museum für Thüringer Volkskunde Erfurt
Juri-Gagarin Ring 140 a 99084 Erfurt Germany Phone 011 49 361/ 6 55 56 03 |
Opening Time:
Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 am to 6:00 p.m.
Mondays closed For prices and events please visit the official German web site:
Museum für Thüringer Volkskunde Erfurt |
I think we should spend at least one week in Erfurt in order to be able to give you an impression of this town. We missed still so many things which we should see and do. Our Internet tourist guide needs much more work, to cover at least the most essential attractions and events. We hope that more Thuringians will help us in a similar way as Mr. Enders and his wife are doing. They told us to visit the heritage museum if we are interested to learn something about the living conditions in the past of Thuringia.
The Enders family owns a pastry shop in Erfurt and all of their advises were a great help.
The "Volkskundemuseum" or "Museum für Thüringer Volkskunde" how it is officially named is very close to the "Augustinerkloster" (Protestant Augustinian Priory). I call it a Thuringian heritage museum. Depending how much time you want to spend you may be able to combine both visits.
We found paid parking across the street which was very convenient on this hot day. Obviously we were the only visitors and we became our personal German speaking guide for free. The lady was very knowledgeable and friendly as almost everybody. Our intention was to see also especial time limited exhibition about carved cookie molds, But we were too late for that. |  Many thanks for the map to the "Verein Städetourismus in Thüringen e.V." |
 Attached to the museum is a nice looking restaurant, but Elizabeth my wife rejected to eat something and I gave in. I hoped my chance will come later. Unfortunately it didn't! |
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Elizabeth was very excited when she saw that the special exhibition was about cats. She loves cats and for that reason we have three of them in Canada.
Unfortunately, she could not read all the educational and very interesting information which had been added to the various displays. I used many of them in our web site. Originally cats were unknown outside of Egypt. It is assumed that already 1000 BC Phoenicians smuggled cats out of the country and sold them for a fortune. After the Romans conquered Egypt cats started to become known in Italy and the surrounding countries. They were considered to be useful because of their capabilities to catch mice. Around the year 936 a law was issued in England that everybody who killed a cat was charged with a fine. |
Despite the fact that even monasteries kept cats some Christian extremists were against the cats. As a reason they used none Christian customs which were practiced in the past and the typical behavior of the animals. The poor animals were blamed for almost everything. This caused almost the extinguishing of cats in Europe. Even the pope dammed cats. A woman who had a cat was considered to be a witch and were tortured and burnt in public. I am sorry but I can't see too much difference to the acting of the Talibans.
It were the nobles who started in the 17 th and 18th century to rehabilitated the cats and finally at the end of the 19th century cats were used again to fight an overpopulation of mice and rats in the big cities.
Many artists, writers and other intellectuals adopted cats and lived together with them. The first cat door were installed to allow the animals access to the outside. Missing cats were posted in newspapers and sometimes cats inherited a fortune when their owner died.
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Cats found their way into story books for children. Just think about "Puss'n Boots". Examples like that below were shown in this little part of the museum.
The German word "Katzenmusik" (cats music) is used for all terrible sounding music. I don't know wether the picture below was the reason for creating this word which is still in use.  |
Soon cats were not only used for advertising of all kind of articles - also cat furs and even underwear made of cat fur were offered. It was claimed that these products help against rheumatism, nerve pains, shortage of breath and more.
I remember my mother had a cat fur and she used it occasionally. When our cats do not behave I threaten them that they will end as a fur. But they do not listen and do still whatever they want to do. I think that these temporary exhibitions are a great idea to attract especially local people over and over again to this heritage museum. It may be a little bit difficult for elderly people to see everything because the historic building does not have an elevator and you must climb stairs to get to the different sections of the museum. But Thuringians should be used to that. They have stairs everywhere. I belive a collector of antique furniture will become very excited in this museum. Elizabeth is one of them and I lost her all the time when she stayed in certain places while I walked away. Our guide kept running for and back between both of us. |
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 Climate control is mandatory in all the rooms to prevent cracking of the very valuable and refurbished furniture |
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 We are not showing everything what you can find in this great museum. I do not belive that anything is missing to show you how people lived in Thuringia in the past. |
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You do not find only one of the largest displays of painted furniture in Germany, you also can see the typical folks dresses (Trachten), household utensils, furnishings and much, much more.
You also learn about the living conditions in this country. Many people had to leave the places where they grew up to find work in the cities. Many of them immigrated to North America. New jobs had to be created to reduce poverty. On of the was that of a mask maker. The masks are made of paper maché which was produced in Sonneberg, Thuringia. This new material was also used by doll makers. Thuringia was well known for dolls. We sold years ago dolls from Waltershausen another village in Thuringia. Unfortunately most of this business had to close after the unification of Germany and it will never come back. We spend quiet a wile in the museum and we were still the only visitors on this week day. It is a shame, but I believe our local museums in Canada are not doing much better. We were most the time also the sole visitors. A big difference to our local museums in Welland and St. Catharines was that I received outstanding support - here in our area I was not allowed to take any pictures for our German language travel guide which we made for Ontario. |