Past temporary exhibitions

Who doesn't know them: the advertising characters “Lurchi and his friends” from the Salamander shoe factory in Kornwestheim? Since 1937, the brave fire salamander has experienced exciting adventures together with his friends Hopps, Piping, Mäusepiep, Igelmann and Unkerich. Over 150 comic books have now been published and have delighted countless young and old shoe buyers for generations. The company took children's hearts by storm with the likeable advertising characters, all of whom naturally wear Salamander shoes. In addition to the booklets, there were soon also plastic figures, tags, stickers, toys, radio plays and much more.

But how are advertising figures and their stories actually created? What do the illustrators and copywriters think? Günther Bentele from Bietigheim knows! He worked as a teacher in Kornwestheim and in 1995 was commissioned by the Salamander company to write the texts for the Lurchi booklets. Together with the illustrator Dietwald Doblies (1962-2021), he created episodes 115-129.

Never-before-seen designs, unpublished stories, historical advertising materials, figures, comics, films and much more await you at the Hornmoldhaus Stadtmuseum!

Fire protection regulations, historic bakehouses, spacious squares in densely populated old towns - there are still many reminders of fires and fire disasters of the past. Like most towns in south-western Germany, Bietigheim consisted mainly of half-timbered houses in which wood was used for cooking, heating, washing and lighting. If a fire broke out, it was not uncommon for an entire street to go up in flames. This was also the case in 1921 when the area between the town hall and the town church burned down. The exhibition recalls the various town fires and their effects, which still have an impact on the townscape today. Numerous historical views of the town and objects from the volunteer fire department and the district chimney sweep are also on display.

The Bietigheim physician Erwin von Baelz spent 29 years in Japan and amassed a remarkable collection of around 6,000 objects by Japanese artists and craftsmen, including works by Kawanabe Kyôsai, some of which ended up in the Hornmoldhaus Stadtmuseum's collection.

Kyôsai was born in 1831 and grew up in Edo, today's Tokyo. His artistic talent was recognized early on and he began training with the woodblock print master Utagawa Kuniyoshi at the age of seven. During his further training, he acquired an extensive repertoire of artistic styles by copying other works of art, which he was later able to draw on. He established himself as an independent painter, illustrator and graphic artist and produced caricatures and humorous pictures.

The exhibition not only showed the works from the Hornmoldhaus collection, but also a large number of prints and woodcuts from the private collector Günter Beck.

A publication on Baelz and Kyôsai has been published and a virtual exhibition with all of Kyôsai's works in our Baelz collection is available. You can view the Kyôsai exhibition again and again via this link.

[Translate to Englisch:]

The color orange dominated the color spectrum in everyday life in the 1960s and 1970s. It was the trend color in the home, design and fashion. To this day, orange is used as a signal color in public life, for example by the municipal building yard, the suburban railroad or waste collection. Orange stands for the everyday, the new, the energetic, the daring and the creative

Like no other color, orange embodied the changes and upheavals of the time. The peace movement, flower power, the Cold War and the economic boom influenced the design of the products. The space age and the hippie movement continued in living rooms, where furniture and wallpaper were now colorful and flashy, sometimes taking on pop proportions with flowing shapes. The new plastic material made it possible to use new shapes and to manufacture and process them cheaply

The exhibition focused on design and everyday objects. From vacuum cleaners and bathroom curtains to baby carriages and folding bicycles, objects from numerous private collectors were on display. You can view the Orange exhibition again and again via this link.

Since March 2020, corona virus and social distancing rules have dominated our everyday lives. As a result, the bicycle - whether as an e-bike or with a conventional propulsion - has once again become an attractive means of transportation. The exhibition shed light on the 200-year history of the two-wheeler, which began with the invention of the bicycle by Baron von Drais and is still subject to constant change today.

A large number of historical and modern two-wheelers, jerseys, etc. were loaned for the exhibition and clubs such as the RSV Bissingen and the ADFC Bietigheim-Bissingen also contributed numerous exhibits.

You can view the bicycle exhibition again and again via this link.

Whether bathtub, mobile home or cartoon character - after around 5,000 years of tea history, there is hardly a subject area that has not been depicted in the form of a teapot. The numerous, diverse and colorful teapots from Roland Schmitt's collection are complemented by tea cultures and the various tea ceremonies around the world. Discover the wonderful world of teapots. You can view the teapot exhibition again and again via this link.

Due to the Corona crisis, the Hornmoldaus Stadtmuseum was closed from March 17 to May 14, 2020.

A group of 16-year-old students with an LGBTIQ+ background has been meeting at the office of Mobile Youth Work – Das Netz since 2018. LGBTTIQ is the collective term for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersex and queer people.

As part of the creative project “Colorblind? - Colorful is the most beautiful color!”, these young people, in collaboration with their social workers of the Mobile Youth Work and the Hornmoldhaus Stadtmuseum, have depicted their own experiences and their world(s) in pictures, comics and graffiti. The exhibited works not only show the diversity of lived sexual orientations, but also scenes of discrimination and intolerance towards LGBTQ+ people.

The young people wish to be perceived in society not as something special, but as self-evidence. The aim of the exhibition is to educate people about the diverse sexual concepts of gender identity.

The exhibition documents the euthanasia crimes of 1940 and how they have been dealt with in the post-war period from 1945 to the present day.

Operation T 4 began in Grafeneck in 1940. 10,654 people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses were murdered there in one year under National Socialist rule. The exhibition commemorates the victims and is directed against forgetting in contemporary discussions.

The traveling exhibition designed by the Grafeneck memorial near Gomadingen (County of Reutlingen) is supplemented with information about Nazi euthanasia victims from Bietigheim-Bissingen. The project is being carried out in cooperation with the Bietigheim-Bissingen town archives and the Stolpersteine e.V. initiative.

The text panels were displayed in the Protestant town church from January 16 to March 30, 2020. The opening lecture was given by the renowned historian Prof. Dr. Götz Aly.

Numerous Japanese dolls were on display in the small cabinet exhibition, some of which were donated to the town of Bietigheim-Bissingen by the Japanese twin city of Kusatsu. In particular, an ensemble of dolls that Japanese families set up in their homes every year for the children's festival on May 5 was on display.

The town twinning between Kusatsu and Bietigheim-Bissingen dates back to 1962, and the sulfur spring town of Kusatsu still honors Erwin von Baelz, a physician from Bietigheim-Bissingen, who lived in Japan for 29 years and promoted the hot spring culture, for example.

A publication has been published to accompany the exhibition (see Publications). Available for 3 euros at the Hornmoldhaus Stadtmuseum.

Almost every household has a container in which buttons are kept: from simple laundry buttons to unusual specimens, these random collections, usually created over decades, make you want to take a closer look at buttons.

It is particularly interesting to delve into the history of this fastening technique, which has been in use since the Middle Ages, and to learn interesting facts about the materials and manufacturing techniques of buttons. Fashion and the rules of the estates promoted button production and allowed the button-making guilds to flourish. Industrialization and population growth led to changes in production conditions. Soon, many buttons were mass-produced by machines, but this has not completely replaced handcrafted button production to this day.

The exhibition was loaned to the Museum Weiler Textilgeschichte in Weil am Rhein from 2019 to 2021.

Nature prints preserve perishable materials such as leaves, feathers or even fish. Many naturalists, including the physician Conrad von Butzbach, used the process of nature printing to document newly discovered plants in distant lands. The precision of these prints reproduced all natural forms in their original size and helped, for example, in the training of apothecaries through herbaria produced by reprinting. In Japan, the fish print “Gyotaku” is still particularly cultivated today. As only small print runs are possible when printing with natural materials, processes have been developed since the 18th century to print natural prints with metal printing blocks in larger print runs. It was only after the invention of photography that interest in this method waned significantly. However, the technique continues to offer many opportunities to preserve or develop a special view of the diversity of forms in nature.

Websites, magazines and books with “DIY” - “do it yourself” suggestions are booming. Crocheted hats, preferably designed and made by young men, are setting trends. The new desire to do it yourself has long been reflected in the balance sheets of manufacturers of creative materials. But where does this new desire for handicrafts come from? The exhibition traced the historical developments of what used to be mainly female handicrafts. Sewing, mending and knitting were necessary activities for the production of household linens and clothing. Girls learned these skills at the industrial school in Bietigheim, for example, and from 1908 at the women's work school. Linen seamstresses, pearl bag knitters etc. earned their living with this, while girls from the upper classes tended to pass the time with fine embroidery.

Objects from the museum's collection were supplemented by loans and exhibits of modern textile art from Germany and Switzerland.

To coincide with the Martin Luther Year (2017: 500 years since his theses were posted), the Hornmoldhaus Stadtmuseum presented an exhibition that explored traces of the Reformation locally and in the region. Interactive stations, such as a printing press, media and games, were used to present various facets of the Reformation and the 16th century period in which the Hornmoldhaus was built. The person of Sebastian Hornmold and his function as the first church council director of the Duchy of Württemberg also played an important role in the exhibition‘s concept.

A publication on the subject of the Reformation by Prof. Dr. Peter Rückert from the Stuttgart Hauptstaatsarchiv, the main state archive, has been published and is available from the town archives and the Hornmoldhaus Stadtmuseum.

The biological origin of the domestic dog has long been established beyond doubt: it is descended from the wolf (canis lupus). Bone finds at the homes of Stone Age prey groups suggest that wolves served as a source of food and fur and that sedentary humans began to domesticate wolves. Domestic dogs developed and were used for various tasks: hunting, guarding the house and farm, herding, as war and fighting dogs, as draught animals, as meat and fur suppliers, as experimental animals and as search and service dogs for various needs and emergency situations.

The exhibition dealt with questions about the changing significance of dogs for people, especially in communities. It traces how the dog, which was mainly kept as a farm animal in earlier centuries, has developed into a beloved family member and leisure partner today and encourages reflection on the positive and negative aspects of this change