Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Museum of History Society The Friends of Thann is housed in the former wheat hall of Thann, built in 1519 by architect Remy Faesch, also in charge of the college. This building, backed by the north wall of the city along the Thur, initially served as a weekly market until the 19th century, before becoming a dance and performance hall. Almost entirely destroyed during the First World War, it was restored in identical fashion and then again damaged during the Second World War. After its second restoration, it has hosted the museum since 1947.

The museum's collections originate from objects and documents saved during World War I, when Thann was a front city. They have enriched themselves with elements related to local history: Alsatian folk art, old crafts (sabotier, carpenter, roller engravers for the textile industry), viticulture (including an 18th century oak press), and industrial past (chemistry, printing on fabrics). An important place is given to the panels of the bandards, wooden paintings painted by these volunteer rural guards from the Middle Ages to the Revolution, which added their names, trades and details of their year of service.

The museum showcases the cult of Saint Thiébaut, patron saint of Thann, through polychrome wooden statues such as a 13th century Virgin with Child, as well as religious objects and memories of the wars of 1870, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. He also preserved works by local painters, including Joseph Conrad, and porcelain, as well as testimonies of the twinning between Thann and the Italian city of Gubbio. The building itself, classified as a Historic Monument in 1920, bears the stamp mark of Remy Faesch and illustrates the Renaissance Alsatian civil architecture.

The fields covered by the collections include medieval archaeology, Christian religious art, decorative arts (furniture, costumes), military and local history, as well as elements of mineralogy and paleontology. The remarkable pieces include an 18th-century faience stove, prints, old photographs, and objects related to local industrial families (Kestner, Scheurer, Boucher).

External links