“People Make City's History… goes online!”

The project "People Make City's History!" is a participatory experiment that preserves individual memories of the city's residents throughout constantly changing times. In this virtual exhibit, we are reacting to these changes as we pass on these memories. We have created a multimedia show from selected contributions to the project that have been received so far. The multimedia show exhibits new aspects of Nuremberg's history and makes them available independent of time and place. We take you with us on a journey through Nuremberg's history with this exhibit, which is divided into eight different themes. See and hear what moves and has moved the people of Nuremberg, what makes Nuremberg unique for them, and what their aspirations are for their hometown's future.

1. The Maiden in the Castle

For many city residents, the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg (Kaiserburg) is a special place. The castle has a very special meaning for one particular project participant: it was her home. She lived there in the former secretary's residence (Burg 13) with her family from her birth in 1946 until her wedding in 1966. Starting in 1946, her father worked as a carpenter for the State's Imperial Castle Administration. Rebuilding this Nuremberg landmark was his most important task. Pictures from this time often show him with a broad axe, with which he hewed round tree trunks into square beams.

His parents' house on Beckschlagergasse was destroyed in the Second World War, his parents had died in the event, and his brother fell in the war. When Wölfel returned from the front, he truly stood amid the ruins of his life. In spite of this, he never lost courage. With his own hands, he built "Villa Fritz" out of the remains of his family home and lived there from 1949 to 1963. It was a ramshackle structure where many things were "upcycled" into renewed utility. He also helped his sister sell Kolb pretzels in Nuremberg's schools. Among these was the Panier School, where he would have taught if he had not developed the hearing problem.

6. Candy from Times Gone By

The Quelle candy was once omnipresent, both for customers and employees of the long-standing Quelle Company in Nuremberg. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was in the stores, in the break and meeting rooms, and even in the company's delivery trucks; it made everything a little sweeter. Today, this candy is a symbol of Nuremberg as the home of industry and of the flowering of large, local concerns such as Quelle, AEG, Grundig or Triumph-Adler. The participant herself was a Quelle employee for a short time. She experienced the company's decline and closing, as did many Nuremberg residents, as "the end of an era." The event is an important turning point in the city's recent history. It has had a definite impact, not least upon the city's landscape. Today, the distinctive Quelle tower still stands, simultaneously serving as landmark and reminder.

9. The Little Rascals and the Straggler

The interview for this contribution to "People Make City's History!" was a novelty for the project's staff. Normally, one person was interviewed on a certain topic, and in rare cases, two people contributed. In this case, four siblings came to the interview. The three oldest siblings were born in 1951, 1953 and 1955. They spent an exciting childhood on Beckschlagergasse, where as a band of "little rascals", they got into their share of mischief. In 1970, a little brother came along, and the little straggler quickly became the favorite of his siblings, some of whom were adults by then. At that time the family was living near the Wöhrder See, where the brothers often played together. A film made around 1975 documents one of these excursions. The youngest brother's pedal car, his favorite toy, was, of course, in the picture. While riding in the car with his older brother, he would closely observe the maneuvers; in the film, he demonstrates how well he could drive his pedal car, even backing it into a parking space.

10. Närmbercher Bärschla (Nuremberg hometown boy)

The father of this participant left behind a comprehensive photographic inheritance documenting the childhood of his son (born 1953) and his younger daughter. The pictures depict a happy Nuremberg childhood during the 1950s and '60s with many excursions, such as to the city festival or the zoo that are still common today. However, the favorite day trip was one that many residents of large German cities have in common: their own plot in the allotment garden colony. The first, small garden plots scattered within the city borders were created in the early 20th century. They simultaneously offered a respite from the crowded living conditions in the cities and provided food for the family in times when food was scarce. In the 1950s, the participant's family was lucky to call a plot in the Rechenburg community garden their own, and the participant spent a large part of his childhood there. In the small garden, he played in the fresh air and helped his parents in the garden. His favorite pastime was playing with an unusual garden inhabitant: a tortoise.

To bridge the distance between her hometown, Nuremberg, and her new home in the USA, she developed "chilibread" by replacing ingredients from her mother's Nuremberg gingerbread recipe with ingredients native to the US. The Nuremberg gingerbread recipe's formula is symbolic of the commerce in exotic spices that took place in the medieval city's commercial center. The gingerbread and chilibread cookies were formed to resemble the cobblestones in the Central Market Square, and were given out as thank-you gifts to the participants of the Flüstergewürz project.

13. A Music House for Nuremberg

The Musikzentrale e. V. is an important initiative supporting Nuremberg's lively cultural landscape. On February 12, 1984, the association was founded to promote the regional music scene and to provide a network for musicians. The participant (born 1951) who made this contribution was there on this date. Between 1986 and 2006, he was the volunteer chairman of the Musikzentrale Association. From the beginning, the people involved dreamed of a Music House that would offer room for live concerts, band rehearsals, record labels, sound studios and booking agents, all under one roof. The background for this movement lay in the "concert-hall misery" triggered when many live-concert venues closed, among them the Rührersaal in Reichelsdorf.

Between 1989 and 1991, the association's members thought they had found the perfect location in the former German Rail heating plant (Heizwerk) behind the main train station. For various reasons, the plans did not work out. But the dream of a music house was not abandoned and was finally fulfilled in 2006. The Musikzentrale e. V. (MUZ) moved into a newly renovated building on Fürther Straße, where the facility includes offices, a sound studio and the MUZ Club, and its own concert and event venue. For the participant, this was a very positive closure to his active participation in the Musikzentrale.

15. God Bless America

Some of the previous project contributions address early international relationships formed after the end of the Second World War. It was often the young Nuremberg residents who dared to step out into the world. This contribution originates from a 1950 German-American exchange project. As a student at the secondary school for economics on Webersplatz, the project participant (born 1933) was chosen to go to the Roosevelt High School in Dayton, Ohio, as an exchange student. With no fixed concept of his temporary home, the then 16-year-old traveled via military ship from Bremerhaven through Casablanca to New York. From there, he traveled on to Dayton. Between 1950 and 1951, he went to a "mixed" school at a time when racial separation was common in other US states. To achieve the required number of "credit points", he chose the school choir as an elective class. This exposed him to Gospel music, which originated from Christian African-Americans. While he did not pursue this musical direction when back in Nuremberg, he says that the impact of what he learned and experienced during his time in the USA has lasted the rest of his life.

17. Krakow

In 1987, this participant (born 1943) initiated the student exchange between Nuremberg and its partner city Krakow, Poland. As a teacher at the Johannes-Scharrer-Gymnasium, he initially accompanied what was then a unique pilot project: „Schüler auf Spurensuche im Stadtarchiv“(Students on the Hunt in the City Archives). For the first time, students worked with the original archives of the Nuremberg City Archive. In this case, they concentrated primarily on the "Stürmer Archive" and the recorded life-experiences of Holocaust survivor Bernhard Kolb. They focused on the night of the 1938 November Pogrom and the persecution of the Nuremberg Jews. In 1987, the results of their research were published with the title "Nazipropaganda und Antisemitismus in Nürnberg" (Nazi Propaganda and Antisemitism in Nuremberg). At the end of the project, a student trip to Krakow was organized; at the time, Krakow was located behind the Iron Curtain.

18. Glasgow

The friendship between Nuremberg and the Scottish city of Glasgow has deep roots. Long before the official partnership contract was signed in 1985, exchanges regularly took place. In 1987, a special event was held to celebrate this years-long friendship. From June 11th to June 20th, a delegation from Nuremberg visited Glasgow; the visit was titled "Nuremberg in Glasgow: A Meeting of Twin Cities". Besides officials from the city management, other groups of Nuremberg visitors included musicians and artists. They brought gifts of beer, gingerbread, bratwurst, the Franconian dialect and a most unusual souvenir: a small house.

Today, the participant can remember only one situation involving an unpleasant confrontation with a former French soldier. However, the young students from the four different countries befriended each other without reservations and preferred to spend their free time together "à la plage" (on the beach). This is an instance of an early international exchange that has since grown into a solid alliance. The "European project," however, was not part of the exchange participants' thinking. Enjoying the exciting train trips and the four weeks they spent on the Côte d’Azur was much more important to them.

The response to "For me, Nuremberg is…" captures the individual relationship to the city, which is mostly home, a stopover or already past again.

The responses to "My wish for Nuremberg is…" are a direct look into the best possible future of this candidate for 2025 European Capital of Culture.