Stories of Democracy in Frankfurt. 1848 to the Present
Tourguide from May 13, 2023 through the permanent exhibition "Frankfurt Once?"
In order to provide special thematic access to the museum's permanent exhibitions, the Historical Museums offers tourguides. From "City of Women" to "Frankfurt and Nazism" and offers for families: for each tour there is a pocket-sized bookled that guides the tours and provides information about selected exhibits.
From May 13, 2023, the new tourguide "Stories of Democracy in Frankfurt. 1848 to the Present" can be followed. It leads to 30 exhibits. It places special focus on the section "Representatives of the People", which delves into the history of the Revolution of 1848 and the St. Paul's Church parliament in detail. It offers insights into the continued efforts to gain freedom in the nineteenth century, and reflects on struggles for democracy in the twentieth and up to the very present. In the process, it illuminates not only continuities and accomplishments, but also discontinuities and setbacks in the history of democracy.
The tourguide "Stories of Democracy in Frankfurt. 1848 to the Present" through the permanent exhibition of the HMF is supplemented by another format, an audiovisual immersion track. It discusses 12 of the 30 exceptional objects on the tourguide. The videos, which are around three to four minutes long, can be viewed via the media guide or smartphone (directly in the museum at the objects or at home on the computer). In these videos, interviewees from various disciplines and fields – be it the historians Ute Daniel and Kerstin Wolff, the art historian and director of the Schirn Sebastian Baden, the writer Jörg Bong, the conflict and peace researcher Nicole Deitelhoff, or the director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research Stephan Lessenich – reflect on open questions from the history of democracy and link them to our present.
In this way, it becomes clear that the revolutionaries fighting for freedom and civil rights in 1848/49 stood in a continuum of historical freedom movements and ideals of their time, that various models of society and rule were conceivable in the 19th century, and that there were decision-making possibilities in the historical moment that do not correspond to a linear history of development and the unfinishedness of democratic practice, i.e. its search movements and the constant negotiation and struggle for a society that should bring free development, equal rights, preservation of personal dignity and social peace for all those living in it.
Curators: Dorothee Linnemann and Paul Erxleben
Films (direction and editing): Holger Priedemuth
2nd camera: Ursula Schmidt Pallmer, Sophia Edschmidt
Design: Gardeners.de
Funding: Historisch-Archäologische Gesellschaft
Cooperation: 175-Jahre Deutsche Nationalversammlung Paulskirche Frankfurt
