Exhibitions and German Regionalism: An Overview of Two German
Exhibitions, 2003

Reported for H-German by Susan R. Boettcher, Department of History,
University of Texas at Austin


Tantalizing exhibition advertising gets a hearty welcome in the corner
of southeastern Lower Saxony where I am currently slogging away at my
book manuscript -- aside from early modern books and my scintillating
colleagues, there's not much entertainment in Wolfenbuettel. Over daily
coffee at the Herzog August Bibliothek, scholars calculate: how far can
one travel to see the exhibitions advertised on the bulletin board and
still make it back in a day? Choices abound. I could easily have visited
an exhibition a day for the entire three weeks I spent driving through
Germany on vacation with a like-minded friend. On energetic days, we fit
in two museums and a Gothic church and still found time for a visit to
the local _Traditionskonditorei_. _Kaffee, Kuchen, und Kultur_! In the
cafe, determined scholars flip through the weighty exhibition catalogs
purchased as penance for not scrutinizing every object in the museum. It
is vacation, after all. The museums were as hot as anyplace else during
this summer of record-breaking temperatures. The multiple exhibitions to
be visited can be hard to find, however--many are not advertised
supra-regionally and one discovers them through one's connections or
tourist information. Two exhibitions of a number I visited this summer
in particular called to mind questions about how exhibition marketing
(or its absence) interacts with popular assumptions about regional and
particularist identities--in some ways reinforcing them, in other ways
flattening them.

Promotion for the exhibition _Die Friesische Freiheit des
Mittelalters_[1] in Emden and Aurich clearly functioned along such
lines. Event publicity asked visitors what they associate with the words
"Eala Frya Fresena" -- a phrase (Hail, Free Frisian!) ubiquitous in
Frisian iconography but completely unknown to the average German. It
recalls the region's autonomy in comparison with western European feudal
law: after the repulsion of the Normans in the ninth century and the
Saxons and Westfalians in the eleventh, Frisian law guaranteed the
independence of peasants, even those without land. In the legal
tradition codified after the fourteenth century, this "freedom" was
traced to Charlemagne. Thirteenth-century Frisian chronicles and faked
privileges recount a battle between Charlemagne and the Romans in which
"naked" Frisians fighting in the first rank emerged victorious--as the
legend goes, they demanded as their reward that "all Frisians should be
completely free, as long as the wind blows from the heavens."

The wind blows pretty well all the time in Emden and Norden and
Marienhafen, in Greetsiel and on the Krummhorn. If the exhibition
documents the end of autonomy, first under local chiefs and later under
Hannover and Prussia, no one much notices in a region where locals who
visit other parts of the _Bundesrepublik_ are asked upon return about
how their visit to Germany went. The autonomous East Frisian heritage is
a staple of _Heimatkunde_ in elementary schools northwest of Oldenburg.
It functions as a nostalgic force in a region troubled by the withdrawal
of major employers and the contagious German disease of empty
storefronts in pedestrian areas. The exhibition was not well advertised
south of Bremen, though while traveling between Emden and Aurich by car
I saw at least four roadside posters promoting it. Because the
Dutch-German border arbitrarily divides Frisia, the supra-regional
audience for this event seems to have come primarily from the
Netherlands. Maybe the organizers thought no one else would be
interested. The periodic museum program of the _Sueddeutsche Zeitung_
ignored it. Probably most Germans who made the hot journey to Emden
wanted to catch the island ferry at Norddeich or sink their feet in the
_Wattenmeer. We should not forget the ways in which East Frisian
particularism is marked and interpreted in Germany south of
Oldenburg--both by the ubiquitous jokes and the proliferation of blue
and white tea stores in pedestrian areas and train stations.

But people who went to Borkum and Norderney instead missed a lot. The
main exhibit was housed in one of the most stylish exhibition spaces in
Lower Saxony -- the Johannes a Lasco library, a church bombed in 1943
whose surviving ruined walls were renovated in 1996 to combine
traditional Emden red brick with modern glassy features. The planners'
discomfort with the large, open space caused them to interrupt it with
conical cloth pillars hung from the ceiling, which were supposed to
imitate the church towers of the region (never mind that Frisian church
towers are square). Most visitors didn't get it. The library was crowded
with paper banners reproducing translated quotations of Latin legal
texts and medieval testaments to Frisian fearlessness and piety. But
what splendid texts! The archaeological finds, the antique weapons, the
medieval jewelry and the barely-lit _Urkunde_ added rhetorical weight to
the message of the exhibition--Frisia means more than tea with
_kluntjes_. The other locations of the exhibition in Aurich, which
traced the end of Frisian autonomy and the reception of the idea, were
more conventionally organized and less amply illustrated, though also
intriguing. As the exhibition suggests, the idea reached a nadir during
its manipulation by Nazis, who not surprisingly used the _Upstalsboom_,
the traditional _Thingstaette_ of the Frisian tribes, for their own
nationalistic ceremonies. But by that time, the original trees had long
since been replaced by a nineteenth-century pyramid anyway.

Local patriotism aside, it's hard to contest that the exhibition
documents an idea whose historical moment has passed. East Frisians have
been elided into Lower Saxony, their church is an arm of the Hannover
Provincial Church, both Frisian language and East Frisian _platt_ are
disappearing, and the mass state has problematized definitions of
freedom. A well-meaning film in the exhibition that intersperses
time-lapse photography of clouds crossing the region's boundless sky
with statements by East Frisians about what they think "Friesische
Freiheit" means is thus a bit aimless. One individual associates it with
the feeling he gets while walking on the dike; another says it means
that East Frisians keep their word. Most important for defining the
broader reception of the scholarship on Frisian Freedom is thus the
exhibit catalog. This work, in contrast to the exhibition itself,
documents the historical relevance of a region on the German periphery;
it takes the Frisian particularity and makes it a significant one--at
least for the benefit of scholars.

On another German border, a similar effort was underway within the
framework of the annual _Bayerische Landesausstellung_. [2] This event
was exhaustively advertised in the region, in the publications of the
_Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft_, in the _Sueddeutsche Zeitung_, and
even in the Wolfenbuettel library. All roads in Bavaria led to
Amberg--on every Autobahn exit approaching Amberg for several hundred
kilometers, a poster reminded about the exhibition. We needed the
reminder. These days, Amberg is peripheral to everything except the
Czech Republik, and unlike Emden, it doesn't have a beckoning seacoast.
Amberg does have the sincere charm of a town that has escaped both the
last three hundred years of economic transformation and the hordes of
tourists that regularly clog the streets of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.
Bavarian exhibitions are abundantly funded and have become a regional
must-see with audiences as diverse as schools and travel agencies, and
they are an occasion for communities to spruce up the _Heimat_ (so get
ready for next year's event in Forcheim, covering the history of the
Franks from 500-1500). This year the topic was the life and times of the
unfortunate Palatine Elector Frederick V, whose acceptance of the
Bohemian crown after the revolt of the Bohemian estates in 1618 paved
the way for the Thirty Years' War. The _Oberpfalz_ is still recovering
from its marginal position before the _Wende_, and the attempt to direct
Bavaria's attention to it reminded me of last year's _Oberlausitz_
exhibition in Zittau, which examined the heyday of the area under the
Habsburgs. As in Zittau, which hosted Polish and Czech visitors, the
Amberg exhibition was designed to assist the historical interest of
visitors from Bohemia. Clearly, border crossing was expected of the
Amberg visitor.

What modern historians might not consider is that despite the dramatic
quality of Frederick's story (married a Habsburg princess; lost his
electoral vote; fathered thirteen children; suffered a more sumptuous
exile in the Hague than Slobodan Milosevic; died while fighting for
Gustavus Adolphus), Frederick is a curious _lieu de memoire_ for
Bavarian history. His association with the _Oberpfalz_ was shaky, since
it only fell under Electoral Palatinate sovereignty after 1499. His
family were relative newcomers; though they were related to the Upper
Palatine nobility, their actual seat of governance was Heidelberg.
Though the exhibition publicity stressed that it wanted to rescue
Frederick from negative historical judgment, one wonders for whose
benefit. Moreover, the whole wretched story of Frederick's demise is
contingent on his neighbor, Maximilian of Bavaria's, willingness to ally
with the Holy Roman Empire--a narrative that makes the Bavarian
sovereign look less than savory, though the exhibition presents him from
his best side. Since all of this admittedly happened 500 years ago, the
effect of these considerations on most "Bavarian" visitors is probably
limited. At the same time, however, a friend who spent much of his youth
in Ansbach (Mittelfranken) confessed to me, before we had even spoken to
anyone in Amberg, how alienating he found the people in the _Oberpfalz_:
"die Menschen hier haben alle einen Schlag." If the marketing concept of
the East Frisian exhibition simply ignored outsiders, here we see a
contrasting attempt in marketing and exhibit planning to make the
persisting Bavarian identities and sub-identities correspond with the
contemporary borders of the region.

From the early modernist standpoint, the exhibition is grand--if
sometimes overwhelming. It was air-conditioned; parking was cheap.
Numerous multi-media stations were effectively designed-- the bed where
Frederick deflowered his wife is surrounded with slide art, music, and
videotapes simulating their wedding entertainment. Computer podiums
allow a zoom-in close up of each museum object. A Czech film of the
Defenestration of Prague half-way through the exhibit offers a welcome
rest and a hilarious perspective on this legendary event. A musket
reconstruction can be lifted and examined. Effective graphics untangle
the lineage of the Palatine nobility The objects themselves are
noteworthy: a notebook from Frederick's study of the catechism
demonstrates Frederick's adherence to Calvinism, a troublesome question
that plagued the empire after 1555. Vivid broad-sheets responding to
Frederick's election and expulsion are displayed in retractable drawers
that allow the visitor to control how much he sees. Paraments sewn from
Frederick's Bohemian finery after he fled demonstrate the annihilating
attitude taken by the Catholic victors. Items excavated from Heidelberg
transmit a notion of the everyday life of Tilly's army. The exhibition
presents scores of portraits of famous figures.

By the time I got to the end, though, I felt a little bit like a guest
in the house of a hostess who wanted to press a third _Knoedel_ upon me
after I had already eaten two of them drowned in duck gravy -- I wanted
more, but I just couldn't face it. I ran through the rooms dealing with
Frederick's exile in and the fate of his children. Luckily for me, the
catalog includes a CD-ROM with zoomable pictures and detailed
descriptions of all the objects. Look for an H-German review of the
catalog and its multiple scholarly essays by Howard Hotson of the
University of Aberdeen in Spring, 2004.

Exhibits dealing with German history before 1848 were particularly
numerous this summer (to mention a few: the Berlin Stabi incunable
exhibition, the Otto Schaefer Bibliothek's Merian exhibit, the Georg
Schaefer Enlightenment art exhibit, the Ferdinand I anniversary in
Vienna). Both early modernists and modernists are familiar with the
mobilization of the past in German museums. It struck me repeatedly this
summer, though, that promotion, marketing and advertising play an
integral role in these processes, working both for and against regional
particularism. We may tend to think of the identification with _Heimat_
as a leftover reinforced by strong German federalism, but as recent
research on tourism suggests, both these exhibitions make clear that
regional identification is also a tool with which cultural organizations
and marketers catering to potential tourists play at ease.


Notes

[1] Die Friesische Freiheit des Mittelalters
<http://www.friesischefreiheit.de/>. Sponsored by the Ostfriesische
Landschaft <http://www.ostfriesischelandschaft.de/>. Ran through
September 14, 2003 at the Johannes a Lasco Bibliothek Emden
<www.jalb.de>, Kirchstr. 22, Emden, the Historisches Museum Aurich
(Burgstrasse 25, Aurich), the Staendesaal der Ostfriesischen Landschaft,
Georgswall 1-5, Aurich, and the Upstalsboom in the vicinity of Aurich.
Catalog with the same title, ed. Hajo van Lengen, ISBN 3-932206-30-4
(cloth), 45,00 Euros, available in German bookstores.

[2] "Der Winterkoenig. Friedrich V. Der Letzte Kuerfurst aus der Oberen
Pfalz" <http://www.hdbg.de/winterkoenig/index.htm>. Bayerische
Landesausstellung 2003 under the supervision of the Haus der Bayerischen
Geschichte, Augsburg. Runs through November 2, 2003 at the Stadtmuseum
Amberg, Zeughausstrasse 18, Amberg. Catalog with same title, ed. Peter
Wolf et al., ISBN 3927233846 (paper), 18,00 Euros, available via the
exhibition website.

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