Rothenburg-A stroll through the Rothenburg Museum

The old stone building tucked away at the southern wall of the city has housed this historical museum since 1936 and was formerly known as the Reichstadt Museum. They recently changed the name which I was glad about because no one could pronounce it!
It was originally used as a convent for nuns of the Dominican Order from 1258 until it was closed after the Reformation of the church in 1554. So the building is really really old! (Martin Luther played a major part in this movement and you can read more about that in our previous visit to Coburg Castle.)

The museum exhibits lots of photos of the fateful day near the end of WW2 when Rothenburg was bombed. March 31, 1945 will live in the minds of the older people of the city forever. My neighbor was a young child and remembers their family fleeing out of the city walls to escape. The next day they came back to see what was left of their home and recalls stumbling through the rubble when it was still smoldering. The house we live in now, was completely destroyed and rebuilt several years after the bombing. 
I think of it every year and can imagine what it must have been like to see and hear the bombs falling on this beautiful little city. 

The rooms of the museum hold not only artifacts from Rothenburg‘s nearly 1000-year history, but also interesting centuries-old stone statues. We wondered why the statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments had horns. Apparently it was a misunderstanding at the time, due to a translation error from Hebrew into Latin. 

Another interesting section was the old kitchen of the Dominican Nunnery that is still preserved from the 13th and 14th centuries. I think Rudi could still smell the smoke of the wood fires that burned there and I could imagine the wonderful stews that the nuns must have cooked. They weren’t allowed to have meat but each nun was allowed 2 gallons of wine per day!