"The Habsburgs in the Middle Ages. The rise of a dynasty"

Museum Director Alexander Schubert drew a positive balance: "People are still interested in culture after a three-year break due to the pandemic. The reluctance to visit major exhibitions that was still present in the winter months is increasingly giving way to enthusiasm to return to art and culture." This is evident from the fact that 200 of the 361 registered groups visited the exhibition within the last 5 weeks, in March and April. "The trend is going in the right direction, people are making their way back to the museum. That gives us hope for future projects," says Schubert.

The accompanying effects of the Habsburg exhibition were also consistently positive for Speyer. A large-scale shop window competition at the start of the exhibition involved the local business community in the major project. The state exhibition also prompted the permanent inclusion of Speyer Cathedral in the "Via Habsburg", a cultural route certified by the Council of Europe since 2014.

More than 200 high-calibre exhibits, including magnificent medieval manuscripts, valuable reliquaries and impressive Renaissance works of art, were on display in an impressive exhibition architecture. The unique loans, which were shown together in one exhibition for the first time, included the Tyrolean Archduke's hat, the "Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV", which is part of the world's documentary heritage, figurative architectural elements from St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna and Leopold III's chain mail from Lucerne. One of the most famous documents was the "Privilegium maius" from the Austrian State Archives in Vienna. From the Salzburg Museum, various components were on display that Maximilian I had commissioned for the never-completed monument in Speyer Cathedral. The surviving statues gave an impression of the monumentality of the intended work and were supplemented virtually in the exhibition. A multimedia guide, which visitors could download via the new museum app, offered various exciting audio tours.
The exhibition conceived at the Historical Museum of the Palatinate bore the honorary title "Rhineland-Palatinate State Exhibition" and was held under the patronage of the Minister President of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, and the patronage of Charles of Habsburg-Lorraine. Prominent visitors to the Habsburg exhibition included science journalist and TV presenter Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, former Minister President Bernhard Vogel and various members of the German and European aristocracy.

The richly illustrated catalogue complemented the visit to the exhibition with contributions from renowned academics. In addition to a series of lectures with medieval experts from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the museum organised an XXL cinema evening for Empress Sisi fans with Romy Schneider and Karl-Heinz-Böhm in the title roles. A podcast series on the exhibition was produced for the first time: In dialogue with experts, the podcast "Hörgedeck" was dedicated to a wide variety of topics and aspects of life in Habsburg times.
The comedy spectacle by Bernhard Weller and Götz Valter entitled "Fluch, Fortüne und viele Flinten" (Curse, Fortune and Many Guns), produced especially for the state exhibition "The Habsburgs in the Middle Ages", was performed a total of four times to sold-out audiences in the museum's Forum. The theatre play was sponsored by the Rhineland-Palatinate Foundation for Culture.

Together with various partners from Speyer and the region, an extensive culinary programme was developed: for example, there was a "King Rudolf" beer brewed for the exhibition by Black Stork Braumanufaktur as well as Habsburg wine and sparkling wine from the Deidesheim winegrowers' association. The so-called "HabsBURGER" was created in cooperation with the Speyer meat boutique.