Stuttgart, Germany! Headquarters of Mercedes-Benz, city of the Porsche Museum, chilled Rieslings, vineyards terraced on steep hills, world-class shopping, jazz festivals and proud supporter of the winning team in the World Cup.
So what shall your European correspondent offer you in this installment? Pigs.
(Full disclosure and shameless act of self-promotion: I like pigs, serveral of my favorite heroes in literature are pigs and many of the characters in my own books for children are pigs. I’ll share a link for one of them later below.)
Housed in a former slaughterhouse just outside the old center of Stuttgart, the Schweine Museum offers an entertaining and educational look at one of humankind’s most popular animals. Approaching the entrance from the nearby tram stop, visitors are greeted by a giant pink pig-headed bus parked in the driveway.
Three floors of objects, almost 50,000 of them, much of it kitsch, are divided into 25 themed rooms.
One of the first rooms is dedicated to the anatomy of a pig with a full size skeleton, comparison of the fetuses of pig and human (not much difference in the beginning) and a model pig heart (students use pig hearts to study as they are so close to the size and the function of a human heart).
Subsequent rooms exhibit different breeds, religious histories, myths, pig celebrities (yes, Miss Piggy is well represented) and other oddities. One room is dedicated to the performing pig with posters and handbills. The intelligence of the pig is well known, rivaling that of monkeys, dogs and most reality show cast members.
But among the pig-inspired toys, books, statues, banks, ashtrays, watches, dish towels, gambling cards, sculptures and even the occasional “adult” renderings of our porcine companions, the museum offers some serious research.
Casting aside the usual slanderous pig jokes and innuendo, pigs have long been associated with luck and wealth. There are the piggy banks, of course, some of the earliest in old China. The Roman historian Tacitus (56-120 AD) mentions German warriors wearing boar-shaped amulets. As a symbol of fortune, the pig became connected with gambling. Illustrations of pigs on playing cards can be found as early as the 15th century. Even today, the ace is called a “sow”.
Pigs color a large part of our speech, both in positive and negative connotations, especially in the German language. Ich habe Schwein, literally translated as “I have pig,” means “I’m lucky.” If you’re sitting alone on a Saturday night for someone—anyone—to telephone, you’d complain, “Kein Schwein hat mich angerufen!” Translated word for word, “no pig called me”, the idiom means “Nobody bothered to call me.”
In English, of course, we have, “To cast pearls before swine”, “A pig in a poke”, and “Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a century.
A few more facts to liven up your next pork-inspired cocktail party:
• The oldest evidence of domesticated pigs is 9000 years old from South Eastern Turkey.
• The wild pig is represented on every continent except Antarctica. The oldest fossils in Europe date from about 6 million years ago, the late Miocene era.
• Some scientists number the breeds of pigs worldwide at 150, others higher. Since 1950 some breeds have disappeared due to the demand for low-fat meat.
• China is the largest producer of pork, 490 million animals, almost one-half of the number of pigs worldwide.
• In 1876 Germans ate 11kg of pork; today the average is 40kg.
After your visit, there is a pleasant beer garden and restaurant set in a large, airy terrace. The food is very good, displaying local produce and a macabre choice (given the theme of setting) of pork dishes. A nice ending to your travels through pig heaven.
In this writer’s opinion, Stuttgart has a few attractions. It is best visited on your way to someplace else, like the Black Forest or other points south. But the Schweine Museum is fun, kid-friendly and in this writer’s opinionm well worth a side trip.
If you like automobiles, I suppose Porsche Museum or the Mercedes-Benz Museum and Gottlieb Daimler’s workshop has some sort of appeal.
For myself, I’ve no interest in cars, racing or mechanical contraptions on four wheels. I’ll avoid them like the plague.
I guess I’m just pig-headed.
The Schweine Museum can be found at www.schweinemuseum.de
My pig (and monster) inspired book of poems for kids can be found at: www.pigmares.com
Doug Cushman is a former Redding artist and author who lives and works in Paris. He was born in Springfield, Ohio, and moved to Connecticut with his family at the age of 15. In high school he created comic books lampooning his teachers, selling them to his classmates for a nickel apiece. Since 1978, he has illustrated and/or written more than 100 books for children and collected a number of honors, including a Reuben Award for Book Illustration from the National Cartoonists Society, New York Times Children’s Books Best Sellers, and the New York Public Library’s Best 100 Books of 2000. He enjoys hiking, kayaking and cooking (and eating!). Learn more at his website, www.doug-cushman.com
