Me outside the Zeppelin Museum.
As I mentioned earlier, the Zeppelin Museum was one of the two places I felt compelled to see in the Lake Constance area. I almost didn’t make it, and my stay was shorter than I thought. But, what I experienced justified my compulsion.
Why did I want to visit this museum? Well, I’ve been fascinated with zeppelins for many years. I found it impressive that massive, lighter than air ships once plied their way back and forth across the Atlantic as precursors to today’s aircraft. My grandfather also spoke about seeing an American version of a zeppelin (probably the Macon) flying over the San Joaquin Valley. He described it as “a floating whale” that gently passed overhead. Given these images, I wished that I could see a zeppelin myself. When I heard about the Zeppelin Museum, it seemed like the best way to satisfy this curiosity that I’ve had since childhood.
The information I had read before getting to the museum said that it was open until 6 p.m. So, I wasn’t too worried when Kelly dropped us off at the museum’s entrance at 4:30 p.m. However, when we got to the museum’s front desk, the ticket office staff informed us that the museum closed at 5 p.m.! To compensate for the limited time that we had inside the museum, we were only charged €3.50, instead of the usual €7.50 adult admission.
With only a half-hour to work with, we quickly set out to see as much as we could. Fortunately, the museum isn’t very big, and is centered around one big display: a recreation of 300 feet of the LZ 129, more commonly known as The Hindenburg. At first, I wondered where this display was located. I thought it would be in a large, hangar like structure. But, the exhibit actually sits right in the middle of the museum. My initial inkling of this layout came as I entered the first room. The only thing in the room was a Maybach, which sat beneath a low ceiling. I wondered why the museum’s designers built the ceiling so low. Later, I was to find out that the “low ceiling” was actually the underbelly of the Hindenburg display. After looking at the Maybach for a few minutes, we went to a staircase that gave no indication of where it led. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, we found very tight hallways that didn’t seem to be of importance. Only when we followed one of these hallways to a large room with tables and a bar did I realize that we were in the Hindenburg display. Once that fact dawned on me, I began to appreciate the care put into the recreation. The bar/lounge had a true art deco elegance to it. The tight hallways that seemed to go nowhere in fact led to cabins that were snug, but comfortable. I got a real sense of what it must have been like to have been aboard the Hindenburg. If that was the goal of the exhibit, then it succeeded. However, our search highlighted a small downside to the museum: the lack of signage. It was difficult to find signage explaining what one was viewing. In those areas where there was signage, the signs were in German (with the exception of some interactive displays, which were in English and German). Now, I’m not advocating putting English signs around all the displays. But, I did think that some additional signage in any language would have been helpful.
The rest of our tour was quick, but informative. We went through the room where engines that powered the zeppelins, and the room where various zeppelin staff uniforms (both military and civilian) were displayed. We also toured the third floor, which is an art gallery dedicated primarily to the works of Otto Dix and Max Ackermann. I wasn’t familiar with Ackermann’s works, but I am a big fan of Dix’s work. So, finding this collection of his works was a real treat for us.
We saw the entire museum (except the wing holding the special exhibit of Maybach cars, which didn’t interest me much) in our allotted half hour. A half hour was a bit rushed to see the museum. However, I think an hour would have been just right to see everything that one wanted to see. Despite our rushed visit and the lack of signage, I enjoyed our visit to the Zeppelin Museum. It justified my initial impression that it was one of the “must sees” in the Lake Constance area.
Pictures below:
1) Dianne in front of a zeppelin engine
2) The internal framing for a zeppelin.
Home September 28