How the Günter Grass House Celebrates 60 Years of "The Tin Drum

2019 marks the 60th anniversary of Günter Grass' novel. The Grass House in Lübeck is commemorating the occasion with a replica of a grocer's shop and is focussing on VR.

The Günter Grass House is being remodelled. In future, anyone entering the exhibition will find a Colonial goods shop. And not just any old one, but the one from the "Tin Drum". The novel, which is one of the most important novels in German post-war literature and probably reminds some people of their grammar school days, celebrates its 60th birthday next year. The shop commemorates this as well as the small shop that Grass' parents ran in Labesweg in Gdansk.

There are old boxes of Persil and Ata scouring salt on the shelves, all elaborately researched and true to the originals from the 1920s and 1930s. There are demijohns, bags, pots and boxes. Sausages hang in rows, onions and potatoes peek out of sacks - albeit in plastic. Playing cards are reminiscent of the legendary "Tin Drum"-Skat in the shot-up Gdansk post office. There are chestnuts, carpet beaters and sweets with the Tin Drum logo. And Sheet metal drums are of course also available, neatly stacked in red and white paintwork. There's a massive old set of scales on the counter, and if you're small like Oskar Matzerathyou can disappear through one door in the counter and slip out again through another.

This is no coincidence, says Grass House director Jörg-Phillip Thomsa. The house should be "a museum for everyone" and appeal to children and adults alike. And the museum will continue to emphasise modern media. Although the replica shop also has listening and smelling stations that allow visitors to experience the novel through their senses, where they can reach through a fabric door and guess what they suddenly have in their hands, the next room will turn the analogue world into a virtual one from early summer.

Using virtual reality glasses, visitors will be able to experience how Oskarchen fatefully falls down the cellar stairs and much more. "We are trying to convey literature in a new way," says Thomsa. Although the Grass House will not become a gamer stronghold, there is "an incredible amount of potential" in the new media.

Source: ln-online