The Marxzell Museum in Germany ^Featured

Written by Guus Docen

Marxzell is a town located on the picturesque Alb Valley in the North Black Forest of Germany. The museum in Marxzell is one of the largest privately owned German mobility museums with over 3600 square meters of exhibition space, The collection includes around 200 automobiles, from the early beginnings of automobile fabrication to the present day, over 350 motorbikes and mopeds, more than 170 bicycles, at least 20 fire trucks, a fire fighter helicopter, carriages, over 80 tractors, some trams and locomotives but also agricultural machinery. The place is not a museum, it's more like a warehouse full of stuff.

The Marxzell Museum was opened in 1968 in a former sawmill in Pfaffenrot, part of the Marxzell municipality. The founder, Bernhard Reichert, died unexpectedly in 1984 before the completion of a larger hall, which he had just started to build, as the collection was bursting out of it’s seams. Now his sons are running the museum. From the entrance cars and motorbikes are displayed surrounded by display cases stuffed with objects like model cars, tobacco tins, car brand emblems and mascots, dollhouses, advertising signs, old radios and turntables, tools, and toys. It’s a hoarders place, stuff, stuff, and more stuff. It's a kind of hide and seek game to see who can find more strange and weird objects. Only a narrow passage in the middle is left for the visitors. Finding your way through the museum is more like an expedition. You'll discover more details, more little things and more funny settings again and again.
Don’t expect that the cars and motorbikes are restored but many of them are driveable. Each treasure has its own story, like the 1936 Rolls Royce Phantom, whose first owner was Queen Mary! Just by coincidence a friend of father Reichert spotted the car in an English front garden. They got in contact with the he owner who decided to sell them the Phantom for a considerable amount of Pounds but today the car is worth a fortune.
Another rare and valuable car is the 1954 Mercedes-Benz 220 Sport Cabriolet with Wendler bodywork. The company Wendler was a carriage builder founded in 1840. From the 1920s they started to design and make carbodies. Wendler is best known for the aluminium bodies of the Porsche 550 Spyder. The Wendler-bodied Mercedes-Benz in this museum was custom-made for a rich German industrialist.
Without doubt this is the messiest, and weirdest museum I ever visited. It’s a jungle of passenger cars, small trucks, tractors, fire trucks, ambulances, motorbikes and even a small helicopter all surrounded by a giant mix of memorabilia". It’s a hoarders palace but that’s the reason why this museum is so much fun to visit! Pictures by Guus Docen