Audio guide: Schwarzwaldsammlung [EN]
Welcome to the audio guide for the Oskar Spiegelhalder Black Forest Collection. What comes to mind when we hear the words “Black Forest”? Fragrant fir trees, mighty farmsteads, traditional hats and cherry cake? Our ideas about what is typical for a region can change. However, we are often unaware of where clichés come from and how they shape our perceptions. The ideas of artists, authors, and collectors play an important role in this. One such collector was the watch manufacturer Oskar Spiegelhalder, who was born in Lenzkirch in 1864 and died in 1925. He assembled three extensive collections of objects from the Black Forest, which were sold in several stages to Freiburg, Karlsruhe, and Villingen. But Spiegelhalder did not just preserve what already existed. His collection and the image of the Black Forest it conveys must themselves be understood as created works, influenced by the idiosyncrasies of the collector and his time. The aim of a research project completed in 2015 by the Franciscan Museum and the Technical University of Dortmund on the “museum production of region” was to reveal the ‘invisible’ behind the “visible” collection. This audio guide presents some of the results of the research. It focuses on questions such as: Is what we see really typical of the Black Forest? What was collected and why?
