For a long time we had been planning an annual theme "Nature" - in 2022 the time had come. As always, it was founded on the interviews of people who have experiential knowledge due to their activity or in the daily observation of the landscape. From their reports and the accompanying photographs, the exhibition, the workshop book, the stage production and the topics of conversation are developed. We are professionally supported by the Landschaftspflegeverband Mittlere Oder e.V., whose fellow campaigners helped us to describe the typical habitats of the Oderbruch and their flora and fauna in their basic features.
With the exhibition "Whole People - Conservation Personalities in the Oderbruch" we started the year on the first weekend of April. Kurt Kretschmann, Hans Ohnesorge and Alfred Böhme were not only in the Oderbruch the formative conservationists and local historians in the first decades of the GDR. The symbol of the nature conservation owl, designed and spread by them, still shapes nature conservation today. The exhibition was created in cooperation with the children and companions of these nature conservation pioneers. The salon conversation with them about the work and life of their fathers gave a vivid impression of their impact.
In the resonance room with the description table, we presented nature photographs that were sent to us as part of an or break-wide photo competition. From hoarfrost on the field to the brightly shining moon, from long-exposure insect flights to deer in the park: the motifs and handwritings gave a diverse picture of what nature in the region has to offer.
In the park and in front of the fisherman's house, we planted flower strips in a joint effort with NABU and the Altranft kindergarten, the "Bad Freienwalde hums" initiative, and the visitors to the first day of the program, which provided us with various flowering aspects throughout the year.
In May we were able to present "Cis, Trops, Blaps and the others" as the main project of the season, an exhibition that gave great pleasure to many visitors, laymen and experts alike. Peter Herbert showed here a selection of the 6,000 different beetles he collected in many years in the Oderbruch. A surprising result is that the species diversity has increased but the number of individuals and thus the food supply for birds, among others, has decreased. Not least because of the precise macro-photographs of Enrico Schefter and the species lists, which are interesting for scientists, a special natural history show has succeeded.
The first Museum Night in the history of the Oderbruch Museum took place in June. Students of the University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde and the TU Dresden presented in this context the results of a summer school on the topic of nature in the Oderbruch. Based on 20 conversations with "nature experts," they had designed a series of display cases, written texts, and created dance performances to illuminate the topic. Equipped with light traps, entomologists provided insights into the world of nocturnal insects.
In July, as always in recent years, the focus was on our discussion partners. We met in the park for an extensive conversation about nature and nature conservation in the Oderbruch and afterwards opened together the annual exhibition consisting among others of portraits of the actors, photographs of typical habitats, plants and animals of the quarry, a TV film of the GDR about the fishery and the fish of the Oder as well as nature picture collages from motifs of the Märkische Oderzeitung.
"Tagpfauenauge im Februar" (Day Peacock in February) is the title of the scenic-musical collage that actor and director Kay Dietrich and musician Martin Klingeberg brought to the stage for Program Day in November. This production was based on the texts of the conversations we had held at the beginning of the year. The result is a play that takes the viewers and listeners into the landscape of the Oderbruch, honors the commitment of these people and traces their conflicts.
A final highlight in the year's program was the opening of the exhibition "F(r)isch & Wild - the Taste of Break" with photographs by Christina Bohin, Heike Zappe and Stefan Hessheimer of dishes by chefs Kerstin Rund, Marcel Fragola and Uwe Behrens and accompanying artist's books by Mathilde Scholz in the dining room of Altranft Castle.
The workshop book on the annual theme entitled NATURE has been published by Auflandverlag and is available in the museum store as well as in bookstores.