Funding projects

Cults are omnipresent - from religious cults to star cults, body cults, cult books, cult brands, cult films and technology cults. As rituals of worship, they satisfy the human longing for belonging and community and create identity, especially in times of crisis. They are highly emotional and affective. In the exhibition, the Zeppelin Museum examined the cultural-historical phenomenon of the cult in society, politics, religion and pop culture 100 years after the death of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and 80 years after the accident of LZ 129 Hindenburg in Lakehurst. The heroization, sacralization and ironization of the airship were juxtaposed with positions of contemporary artists.

Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Is this looted art? This is the question the Zeppelin Museum is asking itself for its own collection. Through meticulous provenance research, the object histories of almost 400 works of art and the biographies of relevant art dealers have been investigated for the first time. With over 40 works, the exhibition discusses both controversial and harmless cases, both solved and unsolved, and makes the actual scope and hurdles of the research work tangible. In this way, the exhibition sheds light on a still underestimated chapter of the consequences of Nazi art theft as well as the gigantic relocation of cultural assets in the 20th century.

Supported by the German Lost Art Foundation Magdeburg

The themes of the exhibition "Beyond States. On the Limits of Statehood" have become more relevant than ever due to the coronavirus pandemic. The three constitutive features of a state - territory, citizenship and state power - reflected in the exhibition showed the current conflicts in the corona crisis as if through a magnifying glass. On its digital discourse platform, debatorial®, the Zeppelin Museum invited visitors to actively participate in the debate on the topic. Divided into five main topics that discuss the current and future significance of states, current developments were reflected upon.

Funded by the Bundesverband Soziokultur and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the Neustart funding program

Some were bored, others enjoyed themselves, others found their own soul in Lake Constance. Whether Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Hermann Hesse and Hans Purrmann, Martin Walser and André Ficus or Henry van de Velde and René Schickele: numerous artists and writers who lived on Lake Constance cultivated close connections. The interdisciplinary exhibition focused on Lake Constance as a creative location and examined the reciprocal relationships between literature and art. Participation was an essential part of the exhibition. With a call for participation on nextmuseum.io, artists and writers were able to submit their own contributions on the topic of "Art and Literature on Lake Constance". The winners were selected by public voting and then became part of the exhibition.

Supported by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation

As part of an interdisciplinary research network, the Zeppelin Museum has developed the first CGI-based digital sign language avatar in the German-speaking cultural sector: AVATASI. The avatar translates text information into 3D animated signs, making text-based content accessible to hearing-impaired and deaf people.

Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, dive.in

Under the motto "Zeppelin History - Under Construction!", the political dimensions of the Zeppelin Museum's technology collection are critically reflected upon and examined in a differentiated way in dialog with the urban society. After all, zeppelins were not only a means of travel and transportation, but were also used as a propaganda tool under National Socialism and for war purposes. In cooperation with experts, the collection will first be re-read with a focus on the culture of remembrance and industrial history, before a strategy for the critical handling of the collection is developed in a second step and new formats are tested, whereby the citizens are also constitutively involved.

Supported by the Center for Cultural Participation Baden-Württemberg

The Zeppelin Museum hosted a free weekend of activities at the ZeppLab from August 20 to 21, 2022. The aim of this open workshop was to create a collaborative space where people could be creative together, facilitating encounters and overcoming language barriers. Thanks to the help of an interpreter, all workshops were held bilingually in Ukrainian and German as a special summer holiday program.

Supported by the Kulturstiftung der Länder (KSL) and the state of Baden-Württemberg

In order to meet the changing needs of a society in transition, to strengthen the identification of Friedrichshafen's urban society with the museum and to achieve a diversification of the dialog groups, this project was intended to create an active opportunity for co-design. The city's population will be given the opportunity to decide on the spatial and content-related design of the "CoLab" open space, which will be part of every temporary exhibition in the future, with the help of an analog voting tool that can later also be used digitally. Through this participatory approach, the Zeppelin Museum hopes to break down barriers and strengthen the dialog with urban society, which is an essential component of mediation work at eye level.

Supported by the Kulturstiftung der Länder

"Tell me what you see" is a podcast format from the Zeppelin Museum with and for visually impaired people and anyone who wants to look at art and technology from a new perspective. The podcast deals with fundamental, relevant questions of museum work, such as how viewers look at an object and how it can be adequately described. The first season of the podcast comprises six episodes, which have been published on the Zeppelin Museum's channels.

Supported by the Center for Cultural Participation Baden-Württemberg