The exhibited pieces are so-called "emergency objects". In general, these are mostly urgently needed everyday objects such as furniture, kitchen utensils, lamps, clothing and toys, which were either produced by the users themselves or by craftsmen or industry during periods of shortage.

In Germany, during the severe post-war supply crisis from 1945 to 1948, there was extensive production of such items. Military material and war scrap in particular were processed. Both were available in abundance as a result of the Second World War.

The exhibition, which was conceived in its original form by the industrial museum "Geschichtswerkstatt Herrenwyk" and can be seen in the Salder Castle Municipal Museum, focuses on this central survival aspect of the post-war period using hundreds of original objects, from children's dresses made from a swastika flag to manure scoops and chamber pots made from steel helmets to Christmas bells made from shell parts.

The exhibits on display come from the private collections of Olaf Weddern and Peter Geissler as well as from the collection of the Salder Castle Municipal Museum (formerly the Dr. Wulf Haack Collection).

A separate look is also taken at the situation in Salzgitter at the time. This young city - then still called Watenstedt-Salzgitter - owed its existence to armaments production before and during the war, for which its industry supplied raw materials and armaments with the massive use of forced labor.

Salzgitter also had to cope with the consequences of the war in the form of countless refugees. These people in particular, who, like the numerous displaced persons, often had nothing left, lived for years in barrack camps under terrible conditions and were much more dependent on emergency items than the local village population.

Many of the objects on display seem unusual, strange and sometimes quite bizarre. Sometimes the military origin of an item can be recognized at first glance, in other cases not even on closer inspection. In any case, each individual emergency object documents a phase of history in which inventiveness and creativity helped to overcome the everyday misery resulting from the war started by Germany.