Sweet and sour

This digitization project is dedicated to creating the technical requirements for digitizing collection items and implementing them in digital offers. A focus is placed on the collection holdings of the industrialization of agriculture from 1863 onwards.

Heucke, Kemna, Lanz, Borsig, Fowler and Wolf were the six largest manufacturers of steam engines. In the field of agricultural use, three of them had their main plants (Heucke and Wolf) or dependencies (Fowler) on the territory of present-day Saxony-Anhalt. Fowler (Leeds, England) operated a second office in Magdeburg and over 80% of the company's sales were made through Magdeburg in 1910. In addition, they had test sites in the Magdeburg Börde area where they perfected their technology. In addition to manufacturers, there were also several contract plowing companies in Saxony-Anhalt. August Sauer's was located in Eilsleben and was one of the largest. Sauer owned up to 12 steam plow sets at times. The usual scope of the smaller companies was one to two steam plow sets.

With the phasing out of steam plow technology, the then director of the Börde Museum, Heinz Nowak, made an effort to acquire them for the collection and preserve them for posterity. He laid the foundation for the Börde Museum to have the largest collection and exhibition of historic steam plow technology in the EU today. The Börde-Museum has always dedicated itself to this subject area in its analog exhibitions and projects and has been able to build up a good expertise and a network. This is now to be extended into the digital realm and made publicly available.

Project contact persons: Dr. Nadine Panteleon, Uwe Schmidt, Guido Skirlo

Funding: Cultural Investment Program (KIP) EU-REACT