I can’t claim to have written down my camping bucket list, but I’ve ticked something off my mental list this week – and I’m pleased to say the Erwin Hymer Museum lived up to expectations.
I was officially attending the Hymer 2018 product launch (more details in future issues of Camping & Caravanning) so I only had an hour, which wasn’t really enough to do the museum justice, but it’s an amazing place.
For a start it’s in a beautiful area of southern Germany, next to the factory where Hymer caravans and motorhomes are put together today. And then there are the exhibits. No fewer than 80 caravans and motorhomes, dating back to the earliest days of our hobby. It’s heaven for the caravan geek.
A Borgward Isabella Coupé – after which the Isabella awning may have been named – nestles alongside the cloud-shaped Sportberger Land-Yacht 6 and the tiny Swallow’s Nest from Knaus. There’s even a British-built Eccles Motor Caravan built in 1930. My camera is full of the images.
Unfortunately I don’t speak German because at school I was persuaded Latin would be more useful (it wasn’t) but I was given an iPod with translations for all the panels and captions. As a result, I was able to discover more about, for example, camping in East Germany before re-unification. It seems campers were identified as having ‘dangerously individualistic tendencies’, which I quite like the sound of.
Nevertheless, the GDR Government realised it was futile to try to stop the nation camping, so it regulated it heavily. Only a select few could get permits to camp at the seaside using a system that bears some comparison to today’s camping in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park...
It also left me with a few questions. Not least – if it was possible to make a comfortable, basic caravan in the 1960s that weighed a maximum of 400kg, why do we struggle to find any UK-built caravans weighing less than 1,100kg today?
As an aside the Club has its own archive and containing some great artefacts including a selection of early 20th-century tents (with one made and used by our founder, Thomas Hiram Holding) and complete collections of magazines going back nearly 100 years. It’s a great source of social history. Realistically, we won’t be competing with the Erwin Hymer Museum any time soon. However, we always want to hear from members who have their own camping artefacts from yesteryear together with ideas as to how best to show it off. So please get in touch if you have any thoughts on this.