Heimat- und Heringsfängermuseum

Catching herring inland? Far from the coast, on the Middle Weser? That seems absurd at first glance. But the largest contiguous residential area of German herring fishermen, in the Minden - Stolzenau - Stadthagen - Bückeburg quadrangle, tells a different story. After the Thirty Years' War, from around 1650, there was also a lack of jobs on the Middle Weser. Craft businesses and farms were unable to employ enough able-bodied men, and this need gave rise to the so-called "Hollandgängerei": men from numerous communities moved to Holland to earn money and thus became acquainted with herring fishing for the first time. The herring fishermen spent a good five months of the year on land in their homeland and the rest at sea. The museum expresses this fact architecturally with two separate areas. The main building presents the professional world of the herring fishermen by explaining the course of a fishing trip, the "loggers" and fishing methods. In three rooms, the "Disasters at Sea" section commemorates the over 500 deep-sea fishermen who remained at sea in the exercise of their profession. It is complemented by a memorial stele in the museum courtyard in the form of an upright crankshaft of a six-cylinder ship's engine. ln the museum courtyard as the second section, the "Herring fishing homeland" is shown in three half-timbered houses. Visitors are given an insight into the maritime culture of the inland, the traditional costumes of the herring fishing country and the social and economic relationships of local herring fishermen, who were still active until the middle of the last century and for whose retirees and relatives the museum celebrates the "Day of the Herring Fishermen" every year in October. The broader public also looks forward to the "Matjestage" in spring.