Lobby · 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 · Castles and Palaces
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 – and behind every door a little more than you’d expect. Some rooms are open already; in others, the hammering is still going on.
More about –
the Traveller!
Who’s showing you round this house? Someone who’d rather take the train and bus, and always stays a moment longer than planned.
More about –
Castles!
A countess behind basalt, a fortress nobody ever took – and castles that know more than they let on.
More about –
Palaces!
Hunting lodges, pleasure gardens, porcelain dreams – and patrons who never had quite enough.
More about –
Inventions!
Coffee filters, thermos flasks, MP3: things you use every day without knowing whom to thank.
More about –
Cars!
From the first refuelling stop at a pharmacy to a rotary engine that drove off ahead of its time.
Room being set up
More about –
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
More about –
Composers!
Geniuses with cash-flow problems: who composed what – and who ended up paying the bill.
Room being set up
More about –
Places!
The world’s largest brick bridge, a Roman frontier wall – and a town Hollywood keeps casting as somewhere else.
Room being set up
More about –
Trains!
From narrow-gauge toy trains to the ICE: Germany runs on every gauge – and occasionally even on time.
Room being set up
More about –
Architecture!
A cigarette factory dressed up as a mosque – and other buildings leading a double life.
Room being set up
More about –
History!
Not a history lesson. More the footnotes that deserved a place in the main text.
Room being set up
More about –
Painters!
Painters who painted Germany the way it would have liked to see itself.
Room being set up
From the workshop · Inventions
“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 the room “More about – 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.