As the museum's 2024 special exhibition entitled "Necessity is the mother of invention...!" met with great interest, it was decided to document its contents in a catalog. The Förderkreis Schloss Salder made the exhibition possible in the first place by acquiring a large private collection.
The hardship and scarcity of the immediate post-war period from the end of the war in 1945 until around 1948 gave rise to a very unique but short-lived material culture in Germany - or rather in the Allied occupation zones at the time. Anything that was available was used to produce urgently needed civilian goods such as clothing, household items and much more. Sometimes small to large companies produced such objects in series. More often, however, it was those affected by the shortage who helped themselves. Former military goods were often used as materials, as weapons, uniforms, ammunition and other war equipment were available "in abundance" in many places. This phase ended with the beginning of the so-called economic miracle.
Refugees and displaced persons were known to be among those particularly hard hit by the hardship of this period. They had often lost (almost) everything. They were therefore also among the main users of these so-called "emergency items". The young city of Watenstedt-Salzgitter, now Salzgitter, which was only founded by the National Socialists in 1942, took in tens of thousands of uprooted people from 1945 onwards. They now lived in the extensive barrack camps, which during the war held countless forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners alongside volunteers.
In 2024, the Salder Castle Municipal Museum dedicated a large special exhibition to this period and the emergency items. The exhibition catalog, which is now available, presents more than 200 of the objects on display in numerous color photographs. The spectrum ranges from a chamber pot made from a steel helmet to a salt shaker made from an egg hand grenade and toys made from parts of gas masks. A large number of the objects come from private collections and have never been shown in public before. What they all have in common is that they impressively illustrate human creativity in a difficult time.
The fully color illustrated catalog in DIN A5 format (softcover) has 124 pages and is available for 10 euros plus postage from the Städtisches Museum Schloss Salder in Salzgitter-Salder, either by email to museumstadt.salzgitterde or by telephone on 05341 / 839-4622.
