Lego exhibition in Bonn 600 models at Lego exhibition at the Deutsches Museum
Bonn · The Lego exhibition “Brick on brick” has opened at the Deutsches Museum in Bonn with more than 600 models. So what else does the special exhibition offer visitors?
The “low loader with crane” Lego kit lay under the Christmas tree for the seven-year-old Christian Lange in 1970 in his home town of Eschede and marks today the start of a collection that has since grown to around 2900 models and has now aroused the interest of the Deutsches Museum in Bonn. “Playing around with the bricks is anything but ‘kids’ stuff,’” says museum director Andrea Niehaus. She sees working with the bricks as promoting creativity and imagination, and spatial and abstract thinking as a basic form of learning. On Sunday, the exhibition “Brick on brick – brick worlds from the Lange collection of Lego bricks” opened.
It all began in 1949 in Billund, Denmark, with simple plastic building blocks under the name Lego, short for “leg godt” (Danish for “play well”). With their eight knobs on top, they corresponded to a normal brick on a scale of 1:7. Almost 70 years later, a brick world with more than 78,000 parts in 96 colours has developed. And the company founded in 1932 by the Danish master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen has become Europe’s largest toy company.
Development of Lego since the sixties
The development of the world of Lego since the 1960s can now be marvelled at in the Deutsche Museum in Ahrstraße through the collection belonging to married couple Andrea and Christian Lange. The spectrum ranges from construction vehicles to racing cars and on to helicopters and ships. There are whole streets of “modular houses” and space flight scenes can be seen with the “Star-Wars sets,” which today have become one of the brick company’s greatest successes. Now, entire themed worlds can be recreated.
The Düsseldorf collector Dierk Reinke, who is a friend of Lange’s, has added to the exhibition with a Lego set showing the Panama Canal’s hoisting technology. The set is only available in Panama and is already being traded on the German collector’s market for around Euro 1000. The Deutsche Museum is offering an extensive programme alongside the exhibition. It includes a study of the raw material plastic, includes the construction of a large ball transporting machine throughout the museum and various workshops.
Even such a well-known company is not immune to problems. In September it was announced that 1400 of the 18,000 employees would be made redundant by the end of the year. In happy contrast: the National Association of Toy Retailers announced recently that the Lego City Jungle Research Station ranked fourth among the best-selling toys this Christmas.
The exhibition will run from now until 13 April 2018. It is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm.
(Original text: Stefan Hermes. Translated by Kate Carey.)
