The Museum

The history of the Oberammergau Museum dates back to the year 1905 when in 1905 the Oberammergau retailer of handcrafted goods, Guido Lang (1856-1921), commissioned the Munich architect Franz Zell to design and construct the museum.

In 1910, the "Verleger Lang'sches kunst- und kulturgeschichtliches Oberammergauer Museum" (the Retailer Lang's Oberammergau Museum of Art and Culture) was opened. This unique ensemble was acquired by the local council in 1953 and in the years that followed was considerably expanded.

The main emphasis of the Oberammergau Museum is on woodcarving. Carving has been carried on in Oberammergau for over 500 years, and so the collection displays a wide range of examples of art and handicrafts from gothic to modern times. In the largely authentically maintained and historically furnished rooms on the first floor - the museum in the museum, so to speak - a wide variety of toys, figures of saints, crucifixes and delicately carved genre scenes are on display.

The exhibition "The 20th Century" shows exhibits of contemporary woodcarving, modern sculpture and painting. It is supplemented by media presentations and a databank in which over 1400 Oberammergau carvers and artists are registered.

The Crib Collection includes magnificent Oberammergau cribs, such as the famous historical church crib on which generations of local carvers worked and which King Ludwig II once admired.

In 1955 the local council acquired a large part of the important collection of verre églomisé works (pictures behind glass) belonging to the Murnau master brewer Johann Krötz (1858-1919) to add to the numerous verre églomisé works that the museum already possessed.