Hagen – Freilichtmuseum Hagen – Deutsches Schmiedemuseum
Image by Daniel Mennerich (subsequent stop Hà Nội)
The Hagen Open-air Museum (LWL-Freilichtmuseum Hagen – Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Handwerk und Technik English: "LWL Open-air Museum Hagen – Westphalian State Museum for Craft and Technics") is a museum at Hagen in the southeastern Ruhr location, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded, together with the Detmold Open-air Museum, in 1960, and was first opened to the public in the early 1970s. The museum is run by the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL, regional authority for Westphalia and Lippe within North Rhine-Westphalia). It lies in the Hagen neighbourhood of Selbecke south of Eilpe in the Mäckingerbach valley.
The open-air museum brings a bit of skilled-trade history into the present, and it requires a hands-on strategy. On its grounds stretching for about 42 ha, not only are urban and rural trades merely "displayed" along with their workshops and tools, but in a lot more than twenty of the almost sixty rebuilt workshops, they are nevertheless practised, and interested guests can, occasionally by themselves, take component in the production.
As early as the 1920s, there were efforts by a group of engineers and historical preservationists to preserve technological monuments for posterity. The initiator, Wilhelm Claas, even suggested the Mäckingerbach valley as a great spot for a museum to that end. The narrow valley was selected, as wind, water and wood had been the three most essential location aspects for business in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1960, the Westphalian Open-Air Museum was founded, and thirteen years later, the gates opened to the public. As opposed to most open-air museums, which show daily life on the farm or in the country as it was in days gone by, the Hagen Open-Air Museum puts the history of these activities in Westphalia in the fore. From the late 18th century by way of the early years of the Industrial Revolution to the extremely industrialized society emerging in the early 20th century, the visitor can encounter the development of these trades and the industry in the region.
Crafts and trades demonstrated at the Westphalian Open-Air Museum include ropemaking, smithing, brewing, baking, tanning, printing, milling, papermaking, and a lot far more. A favourite attraction is the triphammer workshop shown in the image above. After the hammer is engaged, a craftsman goes to operate noisily forging a scythe, passing it amongst the hammer and the anvil underneath in a approach known as peening.
The Hagen Westphalian Open-Air Museum is open from March or April until October.
