Blog
Your own stove is worth its weight in gold
Episode 14 of the journey through the cultural heritage sites
Local history rooms and village museums are the soulful places of the cultural heritage in the Oderbruch and they are true time capsules. For decades, often much longer, people collected everyday objects there - of course only when they were replaced by more modern or new ones - when they were no longer needed. Some of these collections of earlier life, earlier culture, are now members of the Cultural Heritage Initiative network. Now, the term museum should not be taken too literally in this context. The range of these places extends from individual rooms in community centers to completely converted buildings. We will visit the smaller ones in this episode.
Like the inhabitants of many rural regions, the people of Oderbruch also feel a commitment to tradition. It would never have occurred to them to carelessly throw away beloved but "worn out" objects. They were often repurposed for new uses. After the Second World War, for example, steel helmets were converted into cooking utensils, not only out of material necessity. Long before the peace movement made "swords into plowshares" its motto. Other metal objects were given new life in the blacksmiths that once existed in many villages. Recycling or upcycling were common practices in the countryside before these terms were "invented".
But not only that, agricultural tools were often adapted to local conditions or developed into unique devices. What was then really "no longer of any use" ended up in the scrap yard. Some committed people, like Helmut Hulitschke, now 90 years old, who felt this unique passion for collecting, recovered the devices and took care of their preservation. "In 1998, my wife Ursula and I founded the Friedrichsau Village Museum. It is housed in the former cultural centre, which later became the Konsum restaurant. Since 1947 I have been collecting what other people threw away - old farming equipment, tools and documents. The Friedrichsaue state domain was completely shot up after the war. Everything was lying around; you just had to bend down to find it. A lot of equipment ended up on the scrap heap. If I hadn't picked it up, it would have been gone. I took the trouble to put it back together. After people saw the first exhibition, some came to me with a whole trailer load of old equipment. And so the exhibition gradually grew," explains Helmut Hulitschke. In his small museum, the sections are sorted according to the crops grown in the Oderbruch, sugar beet, grain, potatoes - ridging ploughs, shredders, potato rattles and a soil roller that is over XNUMX years old.
Non-metallic household items ended up in the attics or lofts and were forgotten for a shorter or longer period of time. The "historically matured" objects were usually rediscovered during renovation or reconstruction work and then found their way into the collections of the local history rooms. It is astonishing what has survived the test of time in this way: entire kitchen furnishings with furniture, dishes and storage containers or room furnishings also with furniture, bedding and textiles as well as farming equipment. Voluntary caretakers of the local history rooms have put together scenes of earlier farming life from individual collection items. Such exhibitions show the Heimatstuben von Bliesdorf, Neulewin, Wollup or Letschin. There are also other mini-museums dedicated to specific topics, such as the Neuhardenberg village school or the Buschdorf basket-making museum. We will visit both in other episodes of our journey through the cultural heritage sites.
The half-timbered house of the local history room in Neulewin, a day labourer's house, was built in 1885. "Despite its modest size, two families once lived in it. Each with their own kitchen," says Monika Kaiser, who, along with four other members of the local history association, looks after the preservation of the collection. Farm workers or day labourers used to live in such houses in very poor and cramped conditions. Until 1989, one half of the house, the other half was already dilapidated, was still inhabited by an old woman. After she died, the community bought the house and converted it into a local history room. The rooms now house much of what a household needed a hundred years ago. Above the brick cooking appliance in one of the two kitchens is the saying "Your own stove is worth its weight in gold." Below is a collection of old kitchen utensils. Even if the conditions were modest, the residents at least had a roof over their heads. Although the rooms are relatively bright today, you can still get a good impression of how cramped they once were. "People used to only come here to sleep. They spent most of the day in the fields doing their wage labor," Monika Kaiser adds.
A similarly authentic impression of modest country life in the Oderbuch, as the Heimatstube Neulewin can also be seen in the local history room in Bliesdorf. It is also very cramped there. Visitors should find out in advance about the opening times of the small houses. The volunteers are often willing to open the doors to interested parties outside of these times. Contact details can be found in the brochure "Look into the Bruch". It is available free of charge at tourist points and in the museum.
For more information about the Oderbruch Museum and the cultural heritage in the Oderbruch, please see here.