Notched woods, bone sledges, herds of cows

Alpine folklore" was already listed as an area of interest in the first collection programme of the Alpine Museum of Switzerland in 1903. However, the young institution was not able to open an ethnographic department until 1919 / 20, when it received a donation of over 100 everyday objects from the Swiss Alpine valleys from the Austrian ethnologist Eugenie Goldstern. Collections from private collections continued to shape the expansion of the folkloristic collection. In 1920, Father Lauterburg from Saanen donated a collection of toys from his home region. In the 1980s, an extensive collection of notched wood from the estate of Bernese law professor Max Gmür came to the museum on permanent loan. And in 2014, the "Tessel Collection" of the forage scientist and ethnographer Friedrich Gottlieb Stebler was donated by the ETH Zurich. Numerous treasures with surprising stories - of notched timbers, bone sledges and herds of cows - can be found in this new Alpine Museum postcard book.