Museum Diary

When I wrote about the Museum for Early Industrialisation the other week, I promised you a separate post on the Friedrich Engels Haus. So, here it is! Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) is most well know as the co-founder of modern Communism and father of Marxist theory, along with Karl Marx. He was born in Barmen, one of the seven cities and towns that merged in 1929 to form what is now known as the city of Wuppertal. The Engels Haus was built in the late 18th century […]

I’ve written about the Museum for Early Industrialisation (Museum für Frühindustrialisierung) before, but it’s been a while and I wasn’t able to post any photographs at the time. During our recent one month long stay in Wuppertal, I was able to revisit the museum, so while I’m still processing all my impressions from this past weekend’s Hive, I thought I would write an updated post about it. As mentioned in my post about the Bandweberei Kafka, Wuppertal has a very industrial history, so it’s not […]

The German city of Wuppertal has a very industrial history. The Wupper valley (from which the city gets its name) is one of the oldest industrial regions in Europe, and in the 18th and 19th centuries was also one of the biggest. It was particularly known for its textile industry, which made up around 70-80% of its industrial production in the late 19th century, and is, amongst other things, famous for its history of ribbon weaving mills. One of these ribbon weaving mills – the […]

Every now and then, a new museum gem gets added to a city (unless you’re Washington, D.C., where they seem to be building new museums all the time…), and for Wuppertal this comes in the form of the fantastic sculpture park ‘Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden’, which already stuns you with artworks as you approach. Set in one of Wuppertal’s many woodlands along one of Wuppertal’s many hillsides, the sculpture park covers around 30 acres. Parts of the grounds occupy the estate of the Villa Waldfrieden, which was […]

“I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.  No time to say “Hello, Goodbye”. I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, clutching his pocket watch and muttering about his tardiness, is a familiar figure in popular culture. Perhaps he should have instead borrowed one of the many clocks from the hidden gem of a museum I have for you today, to keep him on time. The Wuppertaler Uhrenmuseum (Engl: Wuppertal Clock Museum), in western Germany, is the private […]

After visiting all those museums last year, I thought I would do a kind of ‘Museum Awards’ to pick out some of the highlights. Best Food No question, the award for best food experience has to go to the National Library of Scotland, simply for their selection of gluten free cakes! No, they’re not made fresh in house, they are pre-packaged from a gluten free range, but at least they recognise that they have customers with a need for this and they have three or […]