G.01 · Stories from Germany
Germaneum
More about – Germany!
Castles, inventions, composers, railways – told with a light touch and a twist you won’t see coming.
New in the house: AURA – Castles and Palaces of Germany
Step inside
The Germany that won’t fit on a postcard
Yes, the mind goes to fairy-tale castles, beer gardens, Bach and the Berlin Wall. But Germany is also a country of side roads: quiet inventions that somehow end up everywhere, and people who changed everyday life without ever asking for a pedestal. Germaneum collects exactly these stories.
Detour
Side roads, not motorways
We tell what’s behind the postcard view – and what’s just out of frame.
Twist
Told lightly, researched properly
Dry humour, solid facts and, nearly always, a turn nobody saw coming.
DE · EN
Two languages, one voice
Every story exists in German and English – told, not merely translated.
Special exhibition · G.11 + G.12
A series from Germaneum
AURA
Castles and Palaces of Germany
Not a travel guide. Stories about places that know more than they let on: castles on basalt, palaces with poise, and the traces that travelled from here out into the world.
Out now
Volume 1 · Dresdner Land – Pracht und Legende
In German, as e-book and audiobook.
Coming soon
Beyond Dresden – Splendour and Legend
The English edition of volume 1.
In progress
Volume 2 · Middle Rhine – Tolls and Tales
Downstream from Bingen to Koblenz.
The tour
Where to first?
Every room a subject, every number a drawer in the big archive. Some rooms are open already; in others, the hammering is still going on.
G.02
Composers
Geniuses with cash-flow problems: who composed what – and who ended up paying the bill.
Room being set up
G.03
Cars
From the first refuelling stop at a pharmacy to a rotary engine that drove off ahead of its time.
Room being set up
G.04
History
Not a history lesson. More the footnotes that deserved a place in the main text.
Room being set up
G.05
Architecture
A cigarette factory dressed up as a mosque – and other buildings leading a double life.
Room being set up
G.06
Places
The world’s largest brick bridge, a Roman frontier wall – and a town Hollywood keeps casting as somewhere else.
Room being set up
G.07
Railways
From narrow-gauge toy trains to the ICE: Germany runs on every gauge – and occasionally even on time.
Room being set up
G.08
East Germany
The Wall, the Stasi and a gift for making do: a country that turned shortage into an art form.
Room being set up
G.09
Immigration
They came, they stayed – and changed more than the history books let on.
Room being set up
G.10
Painters
Painters who painted Germany the way it would have liked to see itself.
Room being set up
G.11 · AURA
Castles
A countess behind basalt, a fortress nobody ever took – and castles that know more than they let on.
G.12 · AURA
Palaces
Hunting lodges, pleasure gardens, porcelain dreams – and patrons who never had quite enough.
G.13
Food
More than bratwurst and sauerkraut. Then again, those have a story too.
Room being set up
G.14
Inventions
Coffee filters, thermos flasks, MP3: things you use every day without knowing whom to thank.
Room being set up
G.15
Films
Stories from behind the screen – from Babelsberg out into the world. The seats are still being bolted in.
Room being set up
G.16
People
Names everyone knows – and the people behind them whom almost nobody remembers.
Room being set up
From the workshop · G.14
“The horse does not eat cucumber salad.”
Philipp Reis, 1861 – test sentence for his telephone
How a schoolteacher from Friedrichsdorf built a telephone and still slipped from memory – that story opens soon in room G.14, Inventions. Eight stories are already finished, from the coffee filter to the thermos flask.
Way out
Seen enough?
We doubt it. Germaneum grows room by room – and every new room brings a story you haven’t heard quite like this before.
All stories told by Andreas Schulz.