Welcome @museum.de

F: Hello, and welcome to the Dr. Carl Häberlin Frisian Museum in Wyk on the island of Föhr.
This house can look back a hundred years of tradition. Built in 1908 as a museum, it originally consisted of just the two rooms at the front, where you are now. But over the years, the collection expanded so rapidly that the museum and the exhibition space had to be enlarged several times.

M: A significant contribution to that process was made by Carl Häberlin, a doctor of medicine and the museum’s first director. He filled that role for many years. Having arrived on Föhr from Swabia in 1902, he worked here as a general practitioner with his own practice, and as a thalassotherapist, exploring the curative properties of the sea. Perhaps you’ve already come across his house on a walk along the Sandwall esplanade here in Wyk.

F: Häberlin, who had a humanist education and was interested in history, became involved in Föhr’s local Science and Cultural History Society and played a major part in setting up the museum. As a GP, he spent a lot of time travelling around the island. Whenever he discovered an especially interesting object in one of his patients' homes, he usually managed to convince them to hand their historic item over to the newly founded museum.
For almost half a century, until his death in 1954, Häberlin managed the fortunes of the Frisian Museum, which now bears his name.

M: This first room on our tour is devoted to regular special exhibitions on the art and history of Föhr.
If there is no special exhibition at present, this is where you can find out about how the island’s landscape developed. How the Ice Age before last shaped the local landscape 130,000 years ago. Where the large erratic boulders come from, which you can see on the beach and the mudflats. And why, after powerful storms, you’ll sometimes find glittering amber on the mudflats.

F: After you’ve finished looking around here, please retrace your steps to the adjoining room (the one where you came in) and we’ll continue with the Mesolithic.