2000 years Varus Battle

The Permanent Varus Battle Exhibition

Since 2002 a fictitious private investigator named Stahnke has accompanied museum visitors on their way through the exhibition. He allowed visitors to participate in their endeavor of questioning, speculating and mulling over their search for traces of the Varus Battle. But as fascinating as such a discovery might be, after 20 years of multidisciplinary research about the Varus Battle on the Kalkrieser Berg site, this aspect inevitably begins to fade into the background to make room for new findings.

»2,000 Years Varus Battle« provided enough of a reason to restructure the permanent exhibition in its entirety in 2009.

In collaboration with Cologne-based architects hollenbeck.plato and graphic designers of resD, likewise from Cologne, the exhibition concept was revised both content- and design-wise. The former mysterious, shimmering labyrinth was disassembled and has been replaced by a light, well-organized round tour. In the future, expectant searching and surprising finding will no longer be the focus, but instead evaluation and explanation. To this end, light and space are required.

The new round tour is divided in six chapters and begins with the different worlds of Roman and Germanic everyday life as well as with the Roman politics of power in Germania. Thanks to modern technology, Varus and Arminius can meet now to discuss matters openly. Will they have something to say to each other? Actors Thomas Thieme and Max Engelke lent them their heads and voices and present three different possible courses of conversation.  At the center of the exhibition is now research regarding the ambush attack by Germanic warriors at the Kalkrieser Berg site. The archaeological findings offer detailed insights into the Roman troops, their equipment and military organization. Of course, modern technology plays an important role in research. At various points, the involved scientific disciplines put their evidence on the table, and certainly a wide range of it, so one thing is certain: Researching the Varus Battle is just as exciting as a thriller!

The new permanent exhibition explicitly addresses children and youths. Descriptive models, surprising effects, new media, detailed illustrations, and drawers to investigate aim at piquing visitors’ interest in history and science. For those who prefer a less playful approach, scientific books offer enough reading material and discoveries, and while you can listen to well-known narrators reading ancient texts, your gaze can wander unrestrained through the exhibition and from there to the landscape. Thus the new exhibition offers visitors of all ages an individual approach to history.