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Why on earth do these 8 weird German museums exist?

Visited all of the usual tourist hot spots and now looking for something a little more niche? Take a look through our list of the quirkiest museums Germany has to offer.

Published: 22 March 2017 14:53 CET
Why on earth do these 8 weird German museums exist?
An exhibit at the Clown Museum, Leipzig. Photo: DPA

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1. Pig Museum, Stuttgart

The museum's 'biggest' piece of art on display. Photo: DPA.

The Schweine Museum in Stuttgart claims to be the largest pig museum in the world. Inside, you can feast your eyes on a porky 23 rooms worth of piggy paraphernalia.

The collection was originally started by a lady called Erika Wilhelmer and is today displayed in three stories of the old slaughterhouse in Stuttgart.

The main focus of the museum is the cooking, mythology and history of pigs. But you can even get married here! 

Once you’ve worked up an appetite taking in more swine than you will ever see again in your life, you can enjoy a pork-based meal in the restaurant-cafe.

Just one of the many pig figurines to be found at the Stuttgart museum. Photo: DPA

2. German Additive Museum, Hamburg

Photo: DPA

Do you really know what you’re eating?

Under the motto “additives belong in a museum, not in food,” this museum spreads information regarding the function, manufacturing, risks and side effects of the additives in our food.  

Dropping the bombshell that many additives do not have to be declared on food packaging, and that even organic foods are allowed to include additives, this museum will destroy any faith you had in your control over your food.

But can this undoubtedly interesting topic be stretched out into a whole museum?

3. Potato Museum, Munich

Photo: DPA

Claiming to be the only museum in the world dedicated to presenting the potato through the lens of art and art history, eight themed rooms take you through the life of the potato, from its employment as a currency to its multi-faceted food uses. 

The museum also hosts a collection of books from the Otto Eckart Foundation, which document the historical importance of the potato. 

4. Easter Egg Museum, Sonnenbühl, Baden-Württemberg

Photo: DPA

This unique find explores the historical intertwining of eggs with Easter, and of course displays Easter eggs of all shapes, designs and sizes, both natural and made from porcelain.

From the beautifully intricate and tasteful to displaying the brash logos of well-known brands, these eggs surely are a feast for the eyes. 

The collection was created by women from Sonnenbühl-Erpfingen in 1980, from which the museum was born in 1993. 

5. Lipstick Museum, Berlin

René Koch posing with some of his collection. Photo: DPA

Make-up artist René Koch opened this museum as a way to show off his private collection of lipsticks, as well as posters and cosmetic formulas from baroque times to the present. The museum also includes films from the post-war period to today.

Adding a touch of celebrity to the exhibit, you can also revel at the kiss marks of stars such as 1970s-80s Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler and German cabaret artist Ute Lemper. Plus visitors can pick up some expert tips on how best to apply their lipstick.

6. Clown Museum, Leipzig

Museum owner Hans-Dieter Hormann with three of his many figurines. Photo: DPA

Okay, so this one actually sounds pretty fascinating.

Clowns were expelled from the theatre of famous German director Caroline Neuber in Leipzig in 1737. In 2007, they retaliated, forming a clown association and a museum.  

In an attempt to support clowns, this museum provides a home to more than 3,000 clown figurines from around the world, 350 circus posters, film recordings, costumes, newspaper articles, clown marionettes, and indeed “many gifts from famous clowns”.  

7. Mustard Grinder Museum, Cologne

The mustard grinder in Cochem. Photo: DPA

Boasting to have the oldest mustard grinders in the world, this museum can actually be found in two locations, one being in Cologne and the other in the small town of Cochem in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Each museum has one grinder, both manufactured in 1810. And after restoration, they are still used to make mustard today under the motto “quality not quantity”.

If you are asking who on earth would create a museum around a single object, the clue might be in the shop which adjoins the museum, where you can buy rather pricey “historical mustard.”

8. German Bee Museum, Weimar

Photo: DPA

Do you know who Ferdinand Gerstung and August Ludwig were? That knowledge gap is about to be filled. The astute pair noticed the glaring need for a bee museum way back in 1910. 

Renovated in 2002, the museum exhibits everything you need to know about the biology of bees, the history of beekeeping, as well as present-day apiculture (for those of you who don’t know, that’s the fancy word for beekeeping).

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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