Two Musuems on Firday

Day 50 (Friday)

Mainz is full of great museums.  Yesterday we checked out the Landesmuseum (State Museum) and the Carnival Museum.  I didn’t get a chance to write up yesterdays adventures because we went to Dagmar & Matthias’ for dinner.  Not much of a history lesson in this edition either – its our last night in Germany – we head home tomorrow morning.

You'll see why I picked this as the first photo a bit later

The Landesmuseum is in a beautiful Baroque building that, in a former life was the stables for the Prince Electors doesn’t have a huge collection compared with other museums we’ve seen but it gives a pretty detailed account of the history of Mainz, from before Roman times to the gorgeous-ness of Art Nouveau.  Enjoy some photos.

This tiny Roman dog is from about 200BC and he's made of glass

A recreation of the Prince of Pading's grave

and his real helmet

Madonna & Child carved from an elephant tusk

Religious paintings of the middle ages sometimes showed how people died - check out the lady in green

St Martin - him of the Dom namesake

I love this - its the 3rd (and bottom) layer in an Architect's travelling work-case from 1714

A Picasso among the paintings

Divine Art Nouveau painted glass

Next stop was the Carnival Museum – housed in the basement of the lovely old building, it covers the history of Carnival from 1837 to today. 

Carnival traces its history back further than the 1830’s though, there are aparently records from the end of the 15th century describes carnival as an unorganized folkfest comprising masquerade, meals, drinking and dancing during day and night.

Carnival kicks off at 11.11am on the 11^th November (a time and date chosen long before the Armistice) and culminates in a giant street parade.  Over the years the various carnival clubs were formed and each held their own celebrations, dinners, gala entertainment nights etc. 

During the 19th century celebrants began using the carnival as an opportunity to mock the military forces occupying the city's fortress. The uniforms of the carnival guards are still reminders of the uniforms of the Austrian, Prussian, and French troops which were present in the town between 1792 and 1866.

In Mainz, Carnival culminates with a huge street parade with floats (that have become more an more political as the years have gone on) and marching bands (in uniforms based on the foreign troops from the 18^th century) and a LOT of drinking.

The museum also has 5 of the remaining ‘schwellkoppe’ (swollen heads) on display.  Dagmar tells us that getting people to march with them is getting more difficult – they weigh over 25kg and the parade route is 7km long.

Carnival club band uniforms

Now the duck at the top makes sense ..... doesn't it

Even in 1936 th floats were political

And to top off a fantastic day we had dinner with Dagmar, Matthias & Alissa at their home in Nackenhiem.  We caught the train (its only 12 minutes) and Alissa met us at the station to walk us to their place – I remembered the street name but given my luck with google maps on this trip may not have actually found the house.

What a wonderful night – we caught the last train home and arrived at our stop just before midnight.