Former Eastern Europe boasts lots of open-air museums

In the 19th and most of the 20th century the word “museum” referred to a building housing cultural material with public access.  Today the emphasis on the building itself is less dominant.  Moving museum exhibitions out of museums to conference centres or music halls is one of the newer trends.  Another better-known option is open-air museums that may be found worldwide.  Open-air museums focus on buildings, objects and visitors.  Often open-air museums are more official and national/regional in their perspective.  In opposition to this, the Eco-museums represent a more recent movement that grew out of France.  They expand the concept of open-air museums by preserving, interpreting and managing their heritage.  Eco-museums are often community-based with volunteers, and not only authorized paid staff.  They focus on heritage, place and community.  Fortunately the categories are busily merging.

Many countries recognize that the modern world is bulldozing its heritage. Open-air folk museums and eco-museums designed to save something of the good old days, are therefore an excellent way of remembering the ways of the past.  They also help us preserve ancient breeds of animals, but also rural techniques and other local lore.

Popular museums
Open-air folk museums have always had a broad appeal.  Grandparents bring their grandchildren to them and all of a sudden among typical buildings history, roots and childhood memories merge.  But also the Nazis promoted open-air museums.  In Unteruhldigen Neolithic and Bronze Age Lake settlements were reconstructed to boost public German patriotism.  As Hitler used the museums to create a skein of Germanic pride, so have communists in Eastern Europe also used the open-air museums.  They have been used as a means to gain awareness of people’s roots, so as to ensure that the people understood that they had left a world of peasantry and kingships behind on their journey towards a socialist society.  At other times communist leaders closed the museums as in Sibiu, Romania for “ideological reasons” – or should we say, they perhaps feared that people would dream of better times.

Fires
Sadly many of these open-air museums have not protected their holdings sufficiently, so rare collections and restored buildings have been lost in recent years.   Fires have occurred at open-air museums in Latvia, Poland, Estonia, Romania and the Netherlands.  In many cases the cause of the fires has never been determined. With buildings that are 100, 200 or 300 years old made of wood and straw, they are enormously susceptible to the dangers of fire.  These museums are often situated in large areas surrounded by forests, fields and other natural habitat, making it difficult to protect the museum buildings.  Chemical protection is environmentally hazardous, and while the radical changes took place in the former Eastern Europe, open-air museums didn’t receive due attention.  People and institutions responsible for safety at these museums were occupied elsewhere.  Today the transition from communism to capitalism has taken place, and energy can once again be given to open-air museums.  This includes proper monitoring of the sites.  The founder of open-air museums is Swedish Arthur Hazelius.  His words are still appropriate many years later: “The day may come when all of our gold will not pay for the ability to see scenes from the past in nature.” 

Picturesque Disneyworld

When travelling in Eastern Europe one can understand that people preferred the more comfortable, but ugly concrete high-rise buildings in the cities rather than the very basic small rural dwellings.  Nonetheless, the architecture of the old houses is so much more charming than the skyscrapers of our era.  A visit to open-air museums always seems to strengthen this perception.