Weather Vanes @museum.de

Here we are, on the top floor of the museum and...

There we go – he's at it again! Up here, we'll be making the acquaintance of the weathercocks ... which have not only adorned church steeples for centuries, but also show how the wind is blowing. In farming areas, information about the wind direction is really important!

There are weathercocks that crow, and others that proudly stalk along. Some weathercocks have a magnificent tail and some look a bit battered and are getting on in years....

... and then there are the elegantly, smoothly gliding weather swans!

Weather swans?! Never heard of them! What's something like that supposed to look like?

Well now... you'll need to take two steps to the right and focus on the wall above the doorway.

What do you know! An actual weather swan! Where would you find a thing like that?

In East Frisia. Way up north.

In East Frisia?

Exactly. In East Frisia, they have weathercocks and weather swans. Depending on the church.

Um... In what way? How does it depend on the church...? Big or small churches, thick or thin churches, or what?

Nonsense. Lutheran Protestant or Calvinist Protestant. That's what this is about.

Lutherans? Calvinists? How do the different birds come into this?

It's quite simple: in East Frisia, the weathercocks (or weather swans) not only tell you the wind direction, but also which denomination you belong to. Of course, they're all a variety of Protestant. But some follow the teachings of Martin Luther – and they're the ones with a swan on their church spire. And others follow the reformer John Calvin, who lived in Geneva. They call themselves "Reformed", and they've stayed with the commonplace, boring old cockerel on the roof.

I see. And the Lutherans decided to have something different. But... why?

Because the swan is Luther.

Luther? Martin Luther? A swan?

Well, that's what one of his predecessors said – the Czech reformer Jan Hus – whose name actually translates as "goose". As he was being led off to be burned at the stake, he apparently said:

"The awful fires that you have lit

This day will roast a humble goose,

A century hence will come a swan,

That shall you leave uncooked".

And exactly 100 years later – surprise, surprise! – Martin Luther arrived and ... well, you probably know what he did.

He reformed the church. And ensured that from then on, there would be Catholics and Protestants.

And among the Protestants: Lutherans and the Reformed tradition – swans and roosters.

And the sheet metalworkers in East Frisia?

Well, they have to be able to make both: swans and cockerels. Depending on which steeple they're roofing at any given time.