CID Institute Museum - Collection Waldmuseum

Waldmuseum Natural History Cabinet Collection

THE FOUNDATION HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM

The History of the Emmershäuser Hütte Waldmuseum is the history of a small girl born 4 years before the outbreak of the last war. Rosemary Elisabeth Klinge moved in these years together with her parents from the small Taunus-town Usingen to the house of her grandmother situated inside the paradisiac nature environment of the Weil Valley near the village of Emmershausen. Here she spent happy times before here father left his family to join the military campaigns that the then german government organized in France and later also in Russia.

Bound to her daddy in a deep emotional relationship his sudden leaving influenced her profound, even if he tried during his absence to not loose the contact to her and her mother by countless letters and postcards that he sent to his home with the military post service. Not long time after Rosemary entered school in the Emmershausen village, the news of the disappearance of her father in Russia in July 1942 struck her heavily. Fortunately she found in her country school teacher Mister Wies a personality that was understanding and able, to fascinate her for the knowledge and mysteries of nature history and nature science, a subject that should accompany and occupy her interest during her whole later life.

From her mother and her grandmother, Marie Weil-Leber, both wise woman that preserved and applied the thousands of years old knowledge of mankind of using plants for healing purposes, she learned about the preparations and effects of medicinal plants and studied inside a treasure that belonged in that time to her household, an hand-colored exemplar of the 1543 edited „New Kreüterbuch“ of Leonhart Fuchs.

But most fascinated she remained by minerals and fossils, being the Weil Valley during the first decades of the last century an intense study field for geologist and naturalists that investigated this Taunus region with uncountable mining sites – and not at least, because her own house at Emmershäuser Hütte belonged to an former iron smelting plant that abandonded this function during the 1860ies.

During her working years as secretary of the district administrator Heinrich Müller in Usingen she came in touch with the topic of the regional history of the so called „hill-graves“ that were attributed to medieval and earlier cultures setteling inside the Taunus region – a question that she followed over all the later decades of her life.

In 1956 Rosemary married her husband Rolf Zanger and her fascination for nature, nature history and archaeology soon cast a spell over him. Together they studied literature about foreign cultures and their customs and constructions, red the descriptions of cientific voyagers and started to visit roman and celtic archeological sites in their surroundings. So, it would be surprising if Rosemary hadn´t also understood how to get her children excited about nature. She succeeded in the latter at least in the case of her first son Peter, who was born in 1957.

During the 1960ies and 70ies every family trip led to a mineralogical or archaeological interesting site. The travel destinations had been previously selected by intense studies of literature and topographic maps, that Rosemary hold in her free time. Also she used the frequent trips to her husbands optical factory business contacts to visit mineralogical sites and stores specialized in minerals and fossils. So every stay in Limburg became a reason to visit the mineral store of Lilo Hess, where a lot of amazing stone specimen of her later natural science cabinet exposition were acquired. There she learned, that the town of Idar-Oberstein is considered as capital of precious stones that houses numerous gemstone grinding shops. Since then she urged her husband Rolf to organize a common family trip to a supplier of his optical factory in that town, to visit one of the there setteling gemstone producers. During a visit to that amazing workshop she and her family received an introduction into agate stone refination, the appreciation of precious minerals by gemstone grinding and the production of synthetic gemstones. Rubies, amethystes, aquamarines, tiger eyes, agatas and other worthful precious stone specimen came so to her collection.

It would have been astonishing when not also the families yearly summer holiday travels would have been under the guiding star of “finding fossils”. From the study inside the volumes of her most worthful considered library collection - Goethes collected works - that had been estimated as “so worthful” that her ancestors during their emigration escape from the Danzig region in 1918 carried these 30 volumes inside their backpack, she knew about the mineralogical importance of Bad Harzburg and the Harz Mountain Range. Other sources indicated to her the famous southern german fossil areas in Franconian Jura and Franconian Switzerland, such as Pottenstein, Solnhofen and Noerdlinger Ries. Exept the latter, that sadly she never reached to visit, all other selected places have been visited and fossil findings could be brought from there to Emmershausen in the later 1960ies.

With the years the storage possibilities inside the small living rooms of her house became scare so that the idea of an own “homeland museum” exposition inside the attic of the old house was born. The impetus for that step was ultimately initiated by one of the best family friends of this era, the russian emigrant, aquarist and enthusiastic nature scientist Mister Klimowitsch, who often visited the neighbour “Guesthouse Pension Waldlust” at Emmershäuser Hütte for the purpose of nature collections. Together with Rosemary and her husband he moved out with them during the 1960ies to long hikes through the Taunus woodlands what led also to the occasional discovery of an socio-historic regional relict inside the wood margin of the ancient Hessenstrasse Tradeway that passed nearby the Emmershäuser Hütte between Hasselbach and Haintchen, where a Boletus edulis stone-mushroom that grew under a stone lifted the latter, what impressed the hikers and inspired them to a photography. Then with growing curiousity the stone was turned away and released the view on an rusted barrel of an historic front-loader pistol. As interpretation of that mysterious finding the naturalists explained, that probably the weapon must have belonged to the medieval “Schinderhannes” gangsters that “worked” along Hessenstrasse and Rennstrasse-Tradeways hidden in the forest, lurking and ambushing travellers that they robbed or kidnapped.

Amazingly that that historic alien-to-nature-object didn´t remain the only weapon exposed inside Rosemary´s Museum. Soon later, searching barefoot stones and river insects inside the Weil River at the river weir near her house, she herself found a second rusted gun, a several centuries more modern but still historic revolver pistol that later became identified due to her smallness as a “woman´s pistol” from the 19^th century. And who would wonder about, soon after the opening of the museum exposition to the first visitors at 27^th May of 1968 the fact of the presentation of these two no-nature objects between seashore shells and snails, starfishs, rubies and amethystes, dried mushrooms and fossils attracted one more gun to be shown there. In 1969 a schoolfriend from Riedelbach College of Rosemary´s oldest son Peter, who managed the Museum in that era, brought to him an old double-barreled front-loading pistol that he found during the demolition of an old barn of his house in Steinfischbach – for the obulus of 2 D-Mark in exchange.

The museum remained open for visitors from May 1968 until May in 1973 and attended 72 visitors that registered themselves inside the Museum Guestbook, some of them several times. It collected during that time 27,35 Deutsche Mark as full-amount donations for the television campaign “Help for the threatened Animal World” of Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Bernhard Grzimek, the then director of the Frankfurt Zoological Garden. The campaign was supported at the personal initiative of Peter Zanger, the oldest son of Rosemary, whom she named the museums administrator and manager. The campaign support intended to strenghten the construction of an outdoor zoological garden in the Taunus Mountains called “Animal Freedom” by it´s promotor Dr. Grzimek.

About this topic several letter correspondences between Dr. Grzimek and the museums administrator took place between September 1968 and April 1970.

Reply letters from Prof. Dr. Bernhard Grzimek

as answers to the correspondence directed to him

by the Waldmuseum administrator Peter Zanger between September 1968 and April 1970

During the museums 5 opening years the collection specimen raised considerably in number. New found exposition elements from holiday travels and regional excursions became added and some museum friends and visitors contributed with object donations. Between those deserve to be named the cristals, fossils and minerals that brought the museums administrators local schoolfriend Dietrich Wagner from own excursions to the exposition. His older brother Wolfgang visited the exposition in June 1968 and documented as photographer the decorations of one museum room. Another museum donator was the museums administrators cousin Klaus Zanger who brought an object determinated as „celtic spearhead“ that he had found personally at the Rod an der Weil archaeological site „Rentmauer“. The greatest object donation the museum ever received came from Peter Zanger´s teacher from Riedelbach College, Dr. Hinrich Jantzen, when he left his employment as school-teacher in 1969 to start a new occupation in the district capital town Wiesbaden. It included especially a stuffed bird of prey and a type case with nature objects from northern Germany between those highlighted remarkable „witch-bowl“ stones (Hexenschüsselchen).

During the late 1960ies Rosemary Zanger added a number of potsherds of obviously roman procedence, that she had found personally near the Roman fortress Saalburg Castle, to the exposition. These objects in company with the celtic spearhead and the 3 guns awakened soon the curiousity of public officials from the regional conservation authorities, soon after the regional newspaper Usinger Anzeiger was contacted by Rosemary´s family to request an informal visit of an reporter with the intention to make the museum better known through a newspaper article. Instead a state functionary presented himself, claiming the handover of the finds under public control. That claim was considered as unacceptable and outrageous by the whole community of the museums organizers and friends, with the consequence, that that attack of the state employee, that was considered as intent of opression of private scientific efforts, could be retaliated under heavy protests from numerous sides.

Parallel to the museum opening in 1968 started the move of Rosemary´s family establishment from Emmershausen to Weilmünster, where a new optical factory building and two living houses for the company owners were raised. The family itself left mostly their house at Emmershäuser Hütte in late 1969 with exception of Rosemary´s mother, Maria Klinge-Weil, so that the there remaining museum became somewhat abandoned. Due to the absence of it´s promotors the number of visitors declined until May 1973. Then the exposition objects started to be packed in cartons and were transferred to the new living home, where it remained stored inside the basement rooms during the following 3 decades.