Farmer's life in Cloppenburg (Germany) it was before....
In 1934 the construction of this oldest regional open-air museum in Germany called "Museumsdorf" began in Cloppenburg. It's founder and first director Dr. Heinrich Ottenjann who died in 1961 wanted to remove historic buildings to a museum as documents of the rural culture of different epochs.
In 1961 the museum was transformed into a legal foundation of the Land Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) with the additional designation "Niedersächsisches Freilichtmuseum". Since then, the main task of the museum consists in conserving the rural historical monuments of Lower Saxony. In the meantime about 60 original buildings from the 16th up to the 20th century have been re-erected in the ground of the museum, measuring 15 ha in total. All kinds of farmhouses, workshops of rural craftsmen as well as different types of mills were placed together and arranged according to their age, their region and the social class of their former owners.
The Cloppenburg Museum offers an intriguing insight into the traditional crafts and trades of the region and illustrates various aspects of domestic, social and cultural life. To achieve this, the museum focuses on the individual history of each building and its occupiers. This requires continuous research , the results of which are presented to the visitors through varying types of exhibitions. Folklife, agriculture and cultural history are topics not only displayed in an educative way in these exhibitions but also documented in catalogues. Thus the "Museumsdorf Cloppenburg" makes a permanent effort to fulfil its threefold task: collect - research - exhibit.