Freilandmuseum Lehde

We found the museum pretty easily. It's at the junction of two canals/creeks/ little rivers and a couple of bridges. There were a few beer gardens, souvenir stands, in the water kayaks and canoes everywhere, not to mention the long tourist punts. On the land, people wandering around and not paying attention, and people hauling their bikes up and over the wooden bridges.

Dodging all of that, we made it to the museum. Unfortunately the island was inaccessible, so we would be missing one of the houses, but that was fine. It's a combination of your rural open air museum showing "this is how things were in the old days": the old days here being the mid 1800s and then the early 1900s, and also, this one features information about Sorbian life and culture.

For a longer brief on the Sorbs, see the Saxony Christmas Market trip, or just look it up. Short version: they were the Slavic people here before the Germans showed up. There were decades of war, followed by centuries of the Germans pacifying/ assimilating/ what-have-you both the Lower Sorbs (the people from Spreewald) and the Upper Sorbs (from around Bautzen, where we went last December). This included attempted to eradicated Sorbian/ Wendish language and culture, which was partially successful. During the Romantic Era, local culture and language made a come back, partially in the spirit of the Era of Revolutions.

Today, the Sorbs are still working to keep their language and traditions, this time with government approval.

So lots of pictures of the museum in coming because I love these sorts of places.Read more