Menzel Village makes museum merry

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- You still have time to view the Menzel Village and walk the Tannenbaum Wall on the first floor of Brown County Historical Society Museum; it closes next Saturday.

The village collection is made up of over 1,000 pieces, including a 100-year-old clay village, three other village sets and small dolls dressed in crocheted outfits and dolls with ceramic heads and wool-wrapped legs and arms.

This year's exhibit was set up by volunteers headed by Mary Ann Zins, and each year the exhibit is arranged a little bit differently. Since 1983 when the museum was given the collection by Louise Fritsche Menzel, the collection not only has been set up differently, but over the years, other items like tinsel water falls, stone walls and some bushes have been added to enhance the scene.

Menzel and her husband Walter began collecting pieces in 1937 during their travels. They would set up a village under the tree in their home each year and invite neighborhood children in every Christmas to see the display.

"Mrs. Menzel also asked the BCHS to display the horse-drawn sled with the dog following with a goose changing the dog, and we have followed her tradition by placing that little scene some place in the display," museum officials said.

Also displayed are "snowbabies, angels, monks, wood village people and animals, farm people, skiers, skaters, sledders, deer, cows, donkeys, geese, chickens, ducks, goats, sheep, lambs, dogs, pigs, horses, bears -- both polar and brown -- elves, bridges, many different trees, street signs, mirrors for ponds, fences, and even an outhouse."

Scene pieces made of glass, wool, metal, wood, cardboard, porcelain, wax, papier-mache and plaster were obtained by the Menzels in Germany, West Germany, Japan, England and Czechoslovakia.

The exhibit itself has traveled outside New Ulm, having been on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and some of the larger banks in the Twin Cities.

The exhibit which is free has drawn visitors from other states. On Saturday, Ernie and Flo Stoltenburg of New Ulm viewed the display with their daughter Nancy, her husband Tim and son Mark Schumann of Waukesha, Wis.

"It's a wonderful exhibit," they agreed.