Village history
Life in the old village – the world of our grandparents
Villages are changing. Many originals from the past centuries are still preserved in the open-air museums. This is also the case in the Neuhausen ob Eck open-air museum in Donaubergland.
The rural world of the last few centuries has all but disappeared. The villages have fundamentally changed their appearance. Only in a few places in the countryside have farmhouses been preserved as they used to be.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, evidence of rural life has been systematically collected in open-air museums (or regional farmhouse museums). You can still see them there today. In the museum village, they are brought to life again and again with exciting guided tours, a wide variety of demonstrations and many events.
Houses go on a journey
In the last decades of the 20th century, many farmhouses and rural buildings that were once so typical of a village disappeared. Or they were converted and repurposed because the needs and living conditions of the inhabitants had changed.
From time to time, individual buildings have been saved from demolition and relocated (or translocated, as it is called) to an open-air museum. This has also been the case since the 1980s in the Neuhausen ob Eck open-air museum.
Initially, the old houses were carefully dismantled at their previous location and transported in parts to the museum. Gradually, they were rebuilt there as faithfully as possible.
Gradually, the implementation technology improved. It was now possible to pack and move entire sections of the building as large parts. This means that entire ceilings or wall sections can be saved in their original state.
The Pfeiffer department store from Stetten am kalten Markt on the Heuberg dating from 1925 is one such example in the Neuhausen ob Eck open-air museum. When visiting the museum village, it is easy to understand how the house came to be in the museum village. You would think it had always stood on the village square in the museum village.
What can you see and experience in the open-air museum?
Since 1981, 26 buildings have been faithfully rebuilt on an area of around 18 hectares where no house stood before. The houses come from the Swabian Alb (Albdorf), from the eastern Black Forest (Black Forest building group) and occasionally from the eastern Lake Constance region, i.e. from the most popular vacation regions in Baden-Württemberg.
Craft demonstrations bring old houses and workshops back to life.
All visitor information about the Neuhausen ob Eck Open-Air Museum
Immerse yourself in an almost forgotten world
