Musée Alsacien

The museum is located in an intricate complex of five bourgeois half-timbered buildings, mostly from the 18th century, grouped around an inner courtyard. A tour of the museum, which opened on May 11, 1902, immerses the visitor in the urban and rural life of the Alsatians in the pre-industrial agricultural period, characterized by numerous folkloric peculiarities.

The founders of the museum wanted to set a sign of cultural independence in the time of the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine, which was administered like a semi-colony by Berlin and was also characterized by Germanization tendencies. The collections were intended to help the locals to reassure themselves of their regional identity.

Diverse collections with a focus on the 18th/19th century

The epoch focus is on the 18th and 19th centuries. The museum boasts more than 5,000 individual exhibits. The permanent exhibitions include the staging of a farmhouse parlor including alcoves from the commune of Wintzenheim, near Colmar, and an apothecary's household. It also highlights the art of reverse painting on glass, little known outside Alsace in France. This type of folk art was dominated by religious motifs painted in a particularly naive manner. Pieces of furniture, toys, traditional costumes and household objects, etc., as well as agricultural tools complete the vivid collections.

Special eye-catchers are the coarsely called "flour vomiters", imaginatively carved Ausrinn masks on shown flour boxes of the mills. Also noteworthy is the diverse collection on the everyday life of Jewish Alsatians. There is also detailed information about the main focus of the "Golden Age of Alsatian agriculture (1750 -1860)", namely dairy farming and viticulture.