Wendisches Museum

Description

In Lower Lusatia, the Wendische Museum (Lower Sorbian: Serbski muzej) in Cottbus holds primary responsibility for preserving the culture and history of the Sorbs/Wends. The museum houses the largest Lower Sorbian collection of traditional dress, which includes numerous Spreewald costumes.

The roots of the collection go back to 1908, when a Wendish farmhouse parlor was installed in the Cottbus local history museum and remained in place until the Nazi era. After World War II, the objects then on display were lost. During the GDR period, in 1980 a presentation of Lower Sorbian literature was created at Branitz Palace, initially as a permanent exhibition and later as a touring exhibition; the holdings were subsequently put into storage. From these stored holdings, after 1985 a new exhibition concept was developed that, in addition to literature, was to present music, folk culture and visual arts and to provide a newspaper and book collection for public research. The long-standing efforts in the 1980s and after reunification ultimately led to the opening of today’s municipal cultural-historical collection on 3 June 1994.

The museum has 15 exhibition rooms and has to date presented more than 40 special exhibitions on a variety of topics. All presentations are bilingual, in German and Sorbian (Wendish). After a renovation phase that began on 1 January 2016, a special exhibition on the history and culture of the Sorbs/Wends was temporarily shown at the Stadtmuseum Cottbus. Work on the museum was completed in 2019; with a new permanent exhibition the museum reopened on 28 October 2020.