In 2025, Thuringia also commemorates the 500th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War. This occasion inspired the Thuringian Open-Air Museum Hohenfelden to explore how the image of the farmer has changed over the centuries.

Our perception of the farmer is ambivalent:
On the one hand, there is the friendly countryman with his happy animals, as seen in children’s books; on the other, the often dissatisfied agricultural producer portrayed in the media, associated with industrial livestock farming and endless monoculture fields.

For centuries, the majority of people lived in villages and worked in agriculture. In the Middle Ages, for example, around 90% of the rural population earned their livelihood this way. Over time, this proportion steadily declined — today, in Thuringia, only about 1.3% of the working population is employed in agriculture. Being a farmer has thus shifted from the norm to the exception. As a result, traditional farmsteads — once places of both living and working — gradually lost their original function.

At the same time, rural and peasant life has often been romanticized and idealized since the late 18th century — a tendency that continues today, with flails hanging on house walls or painted milk cans evoking nostalgia for “the good old days.”

The exhibition traces all these developments — from early rural life to the socialist cooperative farmer and the modern-day farmers’ protests.

The exhibition is on display in the Old Parsonage in Hohenfelden until 4 January 2026.