The Gertrud Weinhold Collection

The religious year and its celebrations

More than 6,000 objects document the calendrical festivals of the church year along with the associated customs and ritual object on a worldwide comparative basis.

The collection and its presentation are the work of the Berlin patron Prof. Gertrud Weinhold (1899-1992), who bequeathed it to the state of Bavaria. In the course of her global travels, she collected a beautifully rich cosmos of customs as they take place throughout the year, as they are celebrated with devotional materials, and in all of their confessional variety. These are now displayed across 2,000 square metres.

Gertrud Weinhold is to be credited with being the first to document religious folk culture in its international dimension. The red thread uniting the different objects is the attempt to create a comparative ecumenical display of celebratory practices developed on the basis of the Holy Scripture.

In its time, the desire to display of the “religious year” as a cultural dialogue showed great foresight and today it continues to have great didactic potential for teaching school children and adults to better understand the confessional variety of our modern society.