World Grain - December 2008 - 49

THE COMPANY

BestFlours No. 11/08

The art of the ﬂour sack in Wittenburg

A museum as a tribute to millers
The 10th of June was the great day. The ﬂour art museum - the ﬁrst ﬂour sack museum anywhere in the world - opened
its doors in Wittenburg in the presence of Dr. Harald Ringstorff, Minister-President of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. It
provides a digniﬁed home for the collection of over 1,600 ﬂour sacks started in 1998 by Mühlenchemie's owner, Volkmar
Wywiol. Angela Jannelli, free-lance curator and cultural historian from Hamburg, devised the concept for the exhibition.
BestFlours interviewed the two about this unique museum.

BestFlours: Angela, you did the research
for the world's ﬁrst ﬂour sack museum
and realized it together with Volkmar
Wywiol. How did you come by this
project?
Angela Jannelli: Two years ago I had
a phone call from Volkmar Wywiol.
He said, "Mrs. Jannelli, I hear you
can make exhibitions. I've got over a
thousand ﬂour sacks, and I want to
set up a museum for them." My ﬁrst
thought was: ﬂour sacks? The whole
thing sounded so crazy that I didn't want
anything to do with this ominous ﬂour
sack collection and its owner. But to my
surprise, once I had seen the exhibits,
I was gripped by the idea, because the
ﬂour sack as packaging material proved
to be a wonderful carrier of information
and meaning. You might say the sacks
opened themselves up to me with a
message of the vital energy stored in the
corn.
BestFlours: And what happened next?
Angela Jannelli: The ﬁrst step was to
inspect and sort all the sacks and ﬁnd
the key to their motifs. More and more
sacks kept arriving. Then we looked
for ideas on how to present them so
that their spirit would convey itself to
visitors. Together with the Hamburg
architect Carsten Falkenberg we
searched for ideal premises to match the
powerful topics: How could we present
the sacks on a 450 m² exhibition area
in such a way that their message would
reveal itself to the spectator?
BestFlours: What made you choose
Wittenburg as the place to set up the
museum?

Angela Jannelli presenting the "Kleiekotzer"

New highlight in Wittenburg:
the ﬂour art museum

Volkmar Wywiol: Our production facility
SternMaid is in Wittenburg. The town
has become our second home. The
mayor and town councillors agreed to
let us their most beautiful building, the
former District Court House, a listed
monument with a long and fascinating
history. Within ten months the building
was converted into a museum at great
expense. After days and nights of
research, discussion and planning we
are proud the ﬂour art museum was able
to open its doors in June.

show the natural and supernatural
aspects of wheat, the tales and legends
surrounding grain and ﬂour. The next
room shows the strong symbolism of
the motifs on the sacks that ﬁnds many
different forms of expression. Many of
the sacks depict the rising sun, glowing
wreaths of wheat ears, dragons, lions,
eagles and cocks - all of them symbols
of the sun that stand for the strength,
splendour and majesty of wheat.
Another room is devoted to the spotless
purity of white ﬂour. You suddenly ﬁnd
yourself walking inside a big sack. Then
you come to the heart of the museum,
the "Sackotheque". There you will
ﬁnd the major part of the collection,
a worldwide encyclopaedia of ﬂour
sacks, where you can browse to your
heart's content and wonder at the beauty
and diversity of the motifs from every
corner of the earth. The tour ﬁnishes
with a replica of a "Kleiekotzer". These
Kleiekotzer - literally "bran pukers"
- used to be attached to the ﬂour bin
in which the ground corn was sieved.
Their eerie, demonic features were said
to frighten off evil spirits. But here at the
museum the Kleiekotzer just serves as

BestFlours: You're making us
curious. What do visitors get to see in
Wittenburg?
Angela Jannelli: We send our visitors
on a colourful journey of discovery
along the trail of wheat. I don't want
to give away too much at this point,
because everybody should come and
let themselves be fascinated by the
museum. I'll just tell you this: ﬁrst of
all you ﬁnd yourself in a big, light room
where 32 ﬂour sacks suspended from
the ceiling take you on a trip around the
world. In the "Myth Room", ten windows

World Grain - December 2008

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