Name: Sonderausstellung: Raupen, Kokons & Fallschirme
Start: 2026-10-03T15:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-10-03T17:00:00+02:00

How East Frisian Schoolchildren Spun Silk for the War.
Silk and East Frisia—at first glance, that sounds like an unlikely pairing. However, the special exhibition at the East Frisian School Museum in Folmhusen shows that the region has a surprisingly silk-rich past.

As early as the time of Frederick the Great, Prussia sought to boost domestic silk production—and schools played a central role in this effort. Children fed and cared for silkworms until the finished cocoons could be delivered as raw silk. What sounds like a harmless school project took a dark turn during the Nazi era: silk production was co-opted for ideological purposes and used to produce raw silk for Wehrmacht parachutes—as was the case at the elementary school in Bunde.

The exhibition “Silk Cocoons in East Frisian Classrooms” brings this forgotten chapter of regional history to life through original murals from the museum’s collection, which once served as visual aids for teaching silkworm rearing in the classroom.

📍 Folmhusen School Museum, Leerer Straße 7–9, Westoverledingen
🗓 Through October 4, 2026
🕒 Fridays through Sundays, 3–5 p.m.

Eligibility