Mühlebach School Museum
The Mühlebach School Museum in Amriswil in the Swiss canton of Thurgau is a supra-regional museum for school history and aspects of Swiss school culture. The collection primarily focuses on objects from the Canton of Thurgau. The museum is supported by the Mühlebach School Museum Foundation .
Museum concept
As a result of its inclusion in the cantonal cultural concept and the classification of the monument preservation as a “building worth preserving”, the school museum established itself in school and everyday history circles. The museum emphasizes the access to school history topics and cultural history through its diverse range of rooms. At the same time, a meeting place was created. Aspects of school history are conveyed in the context of training and further education for teachers. In the area of research, the school museum aims to meet scientific standards.
From school to museum
Compulsory schooling was introduced in the canton of Thurgau in 1833. In 1844 the three school communities Mühlebach, Biessenhofen and Schocherswil united. The Mühlebach schoolhouse was then built and school operations began in 1846. It was not until 1942 that the Mühlebach school community was integrated into the Amriswil school community . Until 1989, classes were held in the old schoolhouse. In 1999 the house should be demolished. An interest group came together and founded the Mühlebach School Museum Foundation. The foundation averted the demolition and created the collection of objects in a painstaking search. In 2002, the first and to date only school museum in Switzerland was opened.
Pisé - old construction technology
The architectural form of the former Mühlebach schoolhouse corresponds to a widespread type; the construction of the school museum as a Pisé building on a clay basis, on the other hand, is unusual.
The collection in 2013
After ten years of collecting activity, the school museum's collection has become very impressive. The school building as a permanent exhibition could be set up as requested. Since 2001, three thematic exhibitions have been carried out and various museum cases available for loan have been stocked from the company's own collection. The collection includes enough objects for further exhibitions.
The collection activity also aims to be comprehensive enough to provide representative evidence of the Thurgau school history. Two different collecting strategies are pursued: exemplary collecting in order to have enough objects in stock for further exhibitions and extensive historical documentation, which in some areas is collected until it is complete. A secondary collection and a core collection are defined from these collection strategies. The decision to forego the expansion of certain sections of the collection was made at the same time as the networking of other school history collections in Switzerland ( Swiss Children's Museum in Baden , Bern and Vaudois collections for school history, etc.)
The collection is built up from the school property of the Thurgau elementary school and supplemented with non-cantonal school utensils. It is limited in time from Helvetic , the construction period of the state elementary school, to the present (200 years of school history). The collection is mainly student-oriented, but there are also bequests from teachers.
Temporary exhibitions
- 1. Crime scene school (2002-2006)
The school museum's first exhibition was on view from 2002 to 2006. One focus was placed on the 1920s and 1930s. The beginnings of the individualized school and the educational reform principle of the work school were documented in the individual experience rooms. Experience - experience , grasp - grasp , measure - measure and be measured - these were the stages of the temporary exhibition. An in-depth look at the 1920s and 1930s was offered.
- 2. Every beginning is difficult - ABC and 1x1 (2006–2012)
The focus of the exhibition, which opened in August 2006, is the core disciplines of reading, writing and arithmetic. The visitors go on a journey through time. Some selected chapters of the 200-year development of the elementary school show the “difficult beginnings” of the school. What would we do without letters and numbers? When is a child ready for school? How did the book school develop into a state elementary school? What worlds do children open up after their first encounter with the alphabet?
- 3. A matter of opinion - the picture in school (since 2012)
Pictures have become indispensable in school lessons, even if word and text continue to dominate. Throughout the history of education, teachers were by no means always in agreement about the educational benefits of images. Some still praise them today as a valuable means of visualization, while others, on the other hand, warn against the danger of distortion of reality, even manipulation. They would rather let school children experience, feel and experience the world than explain it to them with pictures.
Permanent exhibition
- Classroom 1920
The exhibition is complemented by the old classroom on the first floor. The exemplary permanent exhibition makes school history tangible. It faithfully conveys the mood from the 1920s .
A tour leads over ten stations from the cellar to the screed through the entire museum:
- Intuition is the foundation of knowledge
- The story of the picture
- Visual perception
- How does the world work
- Enchanted world
- Home and foreign
- Image and religion
- Artists create school books
- The school photography
- Hans Baumgartner - teacher and photographer (1911–1996)
Mühlebach School Museum Foundation
The Mühlebach School Museum Foundation is represented by a Board of Trustees. The museum director and president of the board of trustees is Hans Weber.
literature
- Juliette Michaëlis, Dominik Joos: Swiss collections for school and childhood history . Swiss Collection for School and Childhood History 2005. ISBN 3-905222-92-2
- R. Bieg, A. Bieger, M. Casutt, H. Giezendanner, D. Joos, A. Salathé: The school building becomes a museum . Mühlebach School Museum Foundation, Amriswil 2002.
- Alfons Bieger: The school writings in the canton of Thurgau . Mühlebach School Museum Foundation, Amriswil 2010. ISBN 978-3-905840-06-3
- Andreas Oettli: Thurgau pioneers of the experiment kit . Mühlebach School Museum Foundation, Amriswil 2013. ISBN 978-3-033-03702-1
Web links
Coordinates: 47 ° 32 '39.8 " N , 9 ° 16'25.5" E ; CH1903: seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand one hundred forty-five / 267 578