What the Swiss army knife is to us, the handaxe was to Homo heidelbergensis: a practical, universal tool. 450,000 years ago early humans already had an eye for tools that were as efficient as possible, but also carefully made, in this case tools made of stone. It was probably used to butcher prey animals.

The handaxe is a tool made of a very hard kind of stone.The hard stone is called quartzite. The handaxe was found in Hochdahl, near Duesseldorf.

It is many thousands of years old.

What might the Rhineland have looked like when Neandertals lived? Did the Rhine River already exist? Which animals did they encounter and what did the trees look like? Scientists can use various methods to research the landscape the Neandertals inhabited and, thereby, create an image of the natural world of that time.

The way the climate changes in the future will be of critical importance for our survival on planet Earth. Palaeoclimatology provides important knowledge regarding how the climate has influenced humans and our inventions. This view into the distant past helps us better assess the present and plan more successfully for the future

Along with the legendary mammoth, other species of animal which are extinct today lived in Europe at the same time as the Neandertals. These animal bones tell us not only which animals lived at which times, but also what the animals ate, what the climate was like at the time, and how the climate changed.

One fundamental characteristic of humans is an everyday activity for us, and one it would be unimaginable to do without: walking upright. Scientists were able to shed light on this milestone in human evolution in the 1970s with the discovery of a woman who has become world-famous: Lucy.  Not to mention a knee joint which is no less important. 

Humans are descended from apes. They evolved very slowly, over millions of years. There have been many different species of humans. They all looked different. And they lived on different continents. On this wall you can see this and feel it too, by touching the exhibits.

The bison is a bovine animal which can be found in Europe. They are large, powerful animals, which live together in small herds. The Neandertals hunted them so they could eat their meat and use their furs. There are still European bison living in the wild today. They almost became extinct some decades ago.

Without the discovery and mastery of fire our everyday lives today would be unimaginable. Today we can light a fire in a matter of seconds using a lighter or matches. For early humans, mastery of fire was a groundbreaking achievement.

It is not just bones that tell us about the lives of early humans. Objects like tools, for example, also help to complete our image. The different tools show us not only where people lived, but how and what they hunted as well. Tools also provide information about their physical and mental skills and abilities.

Birch pitch was the glue of the Stone Age. It is made from birch bark. The bark is buried and then wood is placed on top and burnt. This means the bark burns slowly and is later turned into pitch. Birch pitch smells of smoke.

In 1856, by chance, quarry workers in the Neander Valley found 16 bones from this 45,000 year old man from the Palaeolithic. Further bones could be excavated 140 years later, when Ralf W. Schmitz and Juergen Thissen went searching for further archaeological clues.

Steep, rocky cliffs, bubbling waterfalls, streams flowing through colourful forests. It's no wonder that the young Wilhelm Schirmer and other artists from the Duesseldorf School met up here. They didn't just paint, however, they also had parties in the caves of the Neander Valley. Pottery shards excavated one and a half centuries later bear witness to this. These would play an important role in the search for the site where the Neandertal was found.

Hermann Schaaffhausen did not have it easy when he described the Neandertal's discovery. The field of evolutionary biology was still in its infancy at the end of the 19th century. Schaaffhausen, who advocated the theory that early humans had existed, had not only supporters but also a detractor (Rudolf Virchow) who objected to the theory for many years and, therefore, also refuted the importance of the Neandertal as evidence of human evolution.

After examining and scanning the bones, the work of artist Elisabeth Daynès begins. The face is modelled using 3D printing technology. The écorché – a representation in which the muscles and bones are modelled without skin - forms the basis upon which to depict detailed structures.

Our Neandertal was found in the Neander Valley near Duesseldorf. He lived many thousands of years ago and belonged to a species of humans that is now extinct. From the bones we can tell this: he looked different to us. He was much stronger and he had a thicker brow. Our Neandertal broke his arm back then. He was able to live for a long time afterwards because his family took care of him.

The site in the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte cave in the Neander Valley disappeared due to decades of limestone quarrying. Until, that is, Juergen Thissen and Ralf W. Schmitz began searching for archaeological clues in the 1990s. They were certain that there must be more bones in the sediment from the original site.

With a sample taken from our Neandertal, the famous palaeogeneticist, Svante Pääbo, and his colleague, Matthias Krings, achieved what no-one else had: in 1996 they were able to extract a short DNA-sequence and compare it with the DNA of modern humans – an important milestone for research into human evolution. The latest research has recently (summer, 2020) shown that, in total, 40% of the Neandertal genome is present among modern humans.

Photo: J. Vogel, LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn

Photo: A. Thünker.

Photo: J. Vogel, LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn.

Grave mosaic of abbot Gilbert, 12th century, found in the floor of the crypt in the monastery Maria Laach.

Foto: J. Vogel, LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn.

In the Middle Ages, Cologne was already an important city with many large churches. One of these was the Church of the Immaculate Conception. In 1248, the city began construction of the cathedral. It was planned to be more than twice as large as any of the other churches. The models show how much larger the Church of the Immaculate Conception was than the average house. 
And Cologne Cathedral was that much larger again.

The churches were much larger than the average house. They were also splendidly decorated. This impressed people. At home, they didn't have pictures, colourful windows or statues. People wanted to glorify God with these magnificent churches. More than anything, the church displayed its wealth and power with such buildings.

People have always created beautiful objects for church buildings. As the importance of the church declined, many art objects were placed in museums. In this room, objects made of stone are on display. In the Middle Ages, these objects decorated churches and monasteries.

Blinded by the light of a visitation of angels, the shepherd raises his arm. This moment has been artistically captured by the unknown creator of the Gunstorf choir screen. The reliefs show the beginning and end of Jesus' life, and originally included all twelve of the apostles, although only three now remain. Small traces of colour are evidence that it was once painted. Choir screens like this were used to divide the interior of churches between the area accessible to the laity and the altar area. Figurative depictions as church decoration were the exception rather than the rule around 1150.

Liturgical equipment, which was used during Holy Mass, should honour God with its splendour and also impress the faithful. Candle holders, censers or host chalices were frequently made of valuable materials. One special piece of liturgical equipment is the ivory comb. It was used during the ordination of bishops and was intended to symbolically aid priests in ordering their thoughts prior to mass. At first glance, the gilded handle seems enigmatic. It is not a sceptre, but the handle for a liturgical fan (Lat. flabellum), used to keep insects at bay during Mass and processions.

Some trees produce sticky sap when they are cut: resin. If you dry the resin you have incense. When incense is burned, it smells very good and produces a lot of smoke. The smell of the incense depends on which tree the resin comes from. The Catholic Church still uses incense in its services.

In a church service, glowing embers are placed in a metal container. The incense is placed on the embers. It burns, producing smoke which smells good. The container is swung back and forward on a long chain to spread the smoke and the smell. Christians believe that their prayers are carried along with the smoke to God in heaven.

Beautiful containers were made for burning incense in churches. These are called censers. A number of censers from the Middle Ages can be seen in the display case. The people in the church sang while the incense burned. In this way, the church service became an experience for all of the senses.

Grief-stricken, Mary looks upon the emaciated and abused corpse of her son after it has been taken down from the cross. His skin is pale, his body disfigured by wounds. Through portraying the moment in which Mary embraces her dead son, the unknown artist appealed to the emotions of the faithful. Deep stirring of emotion was an important part of the practice of prayer in the High Middle Ages. The Italian name for depiction like this is Pietà, which means pity, and in German it is called a Vesperbild.

In some of the paintings saints can be seen, important women from the history of the church. They have halos behind their heads on which their names are written. The other pictures show scenes from life in the Bible. Additionally, the couple who donated the altar can be seen.

The paintings belonged to a winged altarpiece. The model shows what such an altar looks like. The altar was erected in a church in Bornhofen during the Middle Ages. Bornhofen is a town on the Rhine River. The church belonged to a monastery. The pictures were painted in 1415, which makes them over 600 years old.

The pictures from this altar are especially beautiful and very valuable. We even know who painted them. His name was Berthold von Nördlingen. He wrote his name on the altar. Some other paintings from this altar are on display in a museum in Darmstadt.

Several generations of the Noordwijk family plead – supported by their intercessors, Mary and John the Baptist – for succour before the Last Judgment, which is depicted vividly in the background. Angels escort the blessed to paradise, while devils drag sinners to Hell. The triptych was likely a donation for the Noordwijk family burial place in the Dominican monastery in Haarlem. As a representative family portrait, it called on the bereaved to pray for the salvation of their ancestors.

The Devil, in the form of the reformer Martin Luther, calls on Jesus to turn a stone into bread – the first of three temptations of Christ. The depiction from the workshop of Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder, with its polemically pointed pictorial rhetoric, is typical for the period of great confessional unrest. Commissioned by the Cologne theologian Eberhard Billick, a prominent opponent of the Reformation, the painting was created for the Carmelite monastery in Cologne as part of an extensive cycle, of which this is the sole extant image.

Type pieces are individual letters used in printing. In the past the letters were made from wood or lead. The type pieces were put together piece by piece to create words and sentences. They were then coated with ink. In this way, long texts could be printed on paper. You can see such printed texts in this room.

For a long time, books could only be written by hand, which took up a lot of time. More than 500 years ago, Johannes Gutenberg invented printing using moveable type pieces. The individual type pieces could be put together in different ways. This meant long texts could be printed quickly and in large numbers. As a result, ideas and news could be spread more effectively than before.

500 years ago, a lot of people were no longer happy with the Catholic Church. There were disputes which led to the Reformation. The Protestant Church was created. The ideas of the Reformation spread quickly thanks to printed texts. The printing of books is one of humanity's most important inventions.

Like donors in a medieval devotional image, Heinrich von Wiltberg, his wife, Magdalena von Daun, and their twelve children kneel before a panorama of Jerusalem. Their pious gazes are directed towards the central crucifixion group. The von Wiltberg family funerary monument comes from the Church of St. Michael in Alken on the Moselle. Such architecturally structured, wall-mounted funerary monuments, with coats-of-arms, reliefs and inscriptions, served to commemorate the deceased without being spatially bound to the burial location.

This painting by Joos de Momper is called "Landscape with Grotto and Painter". It was painted in 1600.In the picture there is not just a beautiful landscape to see, but also a painter in the bottom left. The painter sits on a stool and has a drawing pad.

At this time, painters began to paint nature and landscapes for the first time. Before this almost all paintings were of saints or figures from the Bible. Now painters went out into the natural world and sketched a landscape on their drawing pad. Afterwards, they painted a large, colourful picture in their atelier, because they couldn't yet take their paints outside with them.

The painter, Joos de Momper, included himself in this painting. This shows that painters now found their profession to be an important one. They no longer thought of themselves as craftspeople, but as artists. They were proud of this. To learn how to paint they travelled, sometimes as far as Italy. On the way there, the painters saw the Alps and other beautiful landscapes.

The Cologne painter Bartholomäus Bruyn, one of the most sought after portraitists of his time, created these portraits of the businessman Peter Imhoff and his wife, Alheid Brauweiler, a mayor's daughter. The carnation in the woman's hand is a symbol of her conjugal love. Details like Imhoff's signet ring and his fur collar, as well as Alheid's jewellery and her pearl-adorned cap, serve to reinforce the couple's status. Bruyn painted the family's coat-of-arms on the back of the portraits, the frames of which fit together down to the millimetre.

Rhenish stoneware is the name for a variety of containers made of clay. They were made over 400 years ago. Rhenish stoneware can be recognised by the shapes of the containers and the images on them. Cups and jugs for serving drinks were especially popular. Rhenish stoneware was popular all over the world. It was sold in many countries as a result.

Many potteries in Cologne, Frechen, Raeren and Siegburg produced Rhenish stoneware. A variety of images can be seen on the containers. To make these, soft clay was pressed into a mould. This transferred the shape of the mould to the container. There are simple images, like flowers and coats-of-arms, but also scenes from the Bible or other stories. Finally, the containers were fired in a kiln.

Rhenish stoneware was practical because there was no porcelain at that time. The stoneware is also beautiful. It shows that the people who lived more than 400 years ago did not just want practical things, but also beautiful things. Many objects were decorated with pictures. Pictures were common in that period. Even people who weren't rich had nicely decorated things.

What an illustrious company! We look into a room where a group of people is gathered around a table. In a boisterous mood, people are celebrating, laughing and singing together. At first, everything would appear to be a cheerful and relaxed evening, if it weren't for the sudden knocking on the door of another - and uninvited - guest. Death, in the form of a human skeleton, lurks in the room, holding an hourglass in his right hand. With this gesture, he conveys a clear message: as a popular vanitas symbol, he makes us aware of the short-lived nature of earthly pleasures - and thus also of our own transience.

In this painting by Pieter Mulier you can see a rough sea. In the foreground there is a boat and a small ship. In the background are two other ships. The sky is cloudy and it is clearly very windy. It was painted around 1640.

Sea travel was very important for the Netherlands. Special ships were built for fishing. The Dutch also had large trading ships. In these, they travelled to faraway places and traded for many exotic goods, like tea, coffee and spices for example.

In the 17th century, many pictures were painted in the Netherlands. Themes from the lives of the Dutch people were shown in the paintings. A particularly important theme was sea travel. Many people wanted to hang pictures in their homes and, as a result, regularly bought new paintings.

Augustusburg Palace stands in Brühl. Clemens August, the Elector and Archbishop, had the palace built, with construction beginning in 1725. A large park with fountains, forests and gardens belongs to the palace. In the three-dimensional plan you can see the palace and part of the park.

There were a lot of splendid pictures and pieces of furniture in the palace. Some of these can be seen in this room. The nobility held magnificent celebrations in the palace. They danced to music in large halls. Elector Clemens August did not live in the palace all the time, but only for around four to six weeks per year. For the rest of the time only the staff lived there.

The palace in Brühl was built during the Baroque. The Baroque epoch lasted roughly from 1600 to 1750. The palaces from this period are especially splendid. There is a lot of decoration on the buildings, often in sweeping, curved shapes. Augustusburg Palace is a particularly famous Baroque palace in Europe.

In the electoral mantle with a sumptuous ermine shoulder cape – this is how George Desmarées portrayed Clemens August, Archbishop of Cologne. Beside him lay the electoral crown and mitre as symbols of his secular and spiritual power. Posterity remembers Clemens August principally as a Rococo ruler who was a lover of pomp and who lived a glamorous life in his residences in Bonn and Brühl. In Desmarées' official portrait, which formed part of an emblematic wall-covering, Clemens August shows himself to be a politically influential ruler.

What a contrast to the Baroque. As one of the first German cabinetmakers, David Roentgen provided the aristocracy with furniture in the neoclassical style. Instead of ornamental flourishes, straight lines and smooth surfaces characterise the convertible table. The secret of the furniture lies hidden, however. Roentgen was famed for the concealed functions of his designs – from secret compartments to versatile conversion possibilities, including fold-outs, mirrors and pull-outs. These make the table into a mechanical work of art.

Beneath the eyes of Christ, as Judge of the World, two women in Renaissance outfits stand opposite each other: Pietas (piety) and Vanitas (earthly vanity). In this painting, Wilhelm von Schadow created a symbolic representation of virtue and vice, one affiliated with the New Testament parable of the wise and foolish virgins: an appeal for living a pious life. Although the two women embody opposing qualities, they are portrayed with equal dignity and elegance.

A young woman before the still-unfinished Cologne Cathedral, clothed in Renaissance style, a prayer book held to her chest, her eyes lowered. As a pious »churchgoer« Gertraud Künzel, the daughter of a Düsseldorf entrepreneur, attained everlasting fame. Although she died in childbirth shortly after the painting was completed, the motif took on a life of its own: Louis Ammy Blanc completed two further versions of the picture and there were a great many reproductions. However, rather than the woman from Cologne, the public instead saw an idealised female figure.

Life in a Rhenish inn is presented as if on a stage: from the wine porter manhandling a barrel up from the cellar, to the cheerful revellers in the shade of a tree. Adolf Schroedter, the painter, signed this work on a barrel in the centre of the picture using his signet: a corkscrew. Depicted is a guesthouse favoured by the Düsseldorf artists of the time and still standing today in Oberwesel. In 1834, Schroedter painted the sign from which the inn takes its name − »The Golden Corkscrew«.

William Trost Richards painted this picture in 1856. It shows Stolzenfels Castle. The Rhine River can be seen in the background. The location south of Koblenz where the Lahn flows into the Rhine is also visible. That is where the ruins of Lahneck Castle are in the picture. Stolzenfels Castle was also a ruin for a long time. In the years up to 1842 it was rebuilt as a summer residence for the King of Prussia.

Along the Rhine between Bonn and Bingen there are around 60 castles, palaces and ruins today. The castles date to the Middle Ages. During that period they were the residences of rulers. In the 19th century people became interested in the Middle Ages again. As a result, many people travelled to the Rhine. The found it very beautiful and liked the castles and ruins most of all.

In the 19th century, artists very much liked travelling to the Rhine. They painted the river, the castles and the people who lived along the river. The Rhine and its castles became known throughout Europe as a result. In many German cities at the time there were already large factories. The artists preferred, however, to paint the beautiful landscape of the Rhine.

The Hochkreuz wayside cross on the road to Bad Godesberg and the ruins of Godesburg Castle remain familiar sights to this day. The rural idyll depicted in watercolours by the English painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, however, no longer exists. Turner was among the founders of Rhine romanticism. On his travels along the Rhine in 1817 he created numerous depictions of the cultural landscape from Bonn to Bingen using pioneering artistic lighting atmospheres.  The original Hochkreuz cross has stood in the entry area of the Landesmuseum since 1981.

Here you can see a 35mm camera and a plate camera. The 35mm camera was first produced in the mid-1920s. Before that, large plate cameras were normal. Together with a tripod and the glass plates they used, they weighed around 5 kilogrammes.

Photographers used plate cameras in studios, as well as outdoors. 35mm cameras were used more and more often because all the plate camera equipment was very heavy. Photos could be taken more quickly and easily with the smaller 35mm cameras. The 35mm cameras were also cheaper.

Photography was a very important part of art in the 20th century. Technical advances were decisive for the development of photography. The two cameras on display show how quickly the technology developed at the beginning of the 20th century.

With a piercing gaze, the general sits at his lavishly laid table. Cold drinks, as well as meat and sausages, are plentiful. The general's smug self-satisfaction is contrasted with the hunger of the emaciated soldiers in the background. With this striking contrast, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen protests the greed and self-centredness of the old social elites. His painting highlights the extreme social tensions that existed at the end of the First World War.

The Finnish Cow is an animal figurine made of bronze. The artist Ewald Mataré made it in 1929 in Estonia. Estonia is located on the Baltic Sea, south of Finland. Mataré lived in the Rhineland. However, he often travelled to the Baltic to study the natural world there.

The animal is made up of only a few shapes. Although the shapes are very simple, it is easily recognisable as a cow. Mataré was interested in which basic shapes things were made of. Therefore, he used an egg shape for the body of the cow.

Mataré created many pictures and sculptures of animals. In doing so he concentrated on their shapes. He liked cattle in particular. In the Finnish Cow you can see that Mataré thought about this animal and its particular shape for a long time.

Near monolithic, the coalman fills the entire image space. His wide stance highlights the heavy burden of the crate of briquettes on his shoulders. His clothing is dirty, his facial expression strained. A second worker can be seen in the background. With these hard-working people, Leo Breuer focusses on a group that were rarely portrayed in 19th-century art. His painting does not portray a stock character, but rather a real individual from Berlin who modelled for him.

Smiling, the man looks at a skull. However, his face is only a mask. Will Küpper placed this melancholic scene in the midst of mundane surroundings, with a wooden table, window and power poles in the background. A nightmare may have forced its way into reality, or a memory perhaps. Maybe the letter lying on the windowsill can explain everything? Küpper’s image is emotionally disconcerting, as it brings to mind moments in which smiles and dread, the commonplace and nightmares, meet.

Dynamic swathes of colour, sprays and smears laden with energy: the painter Karl Otto Götz captured movement on canvas. The gestural quality of his painting is typical of the Informalism movement, of which he was among the most important representatives. In contrast to geometrical abstract art, informalist painting adhered to the ›principle of formlessness‹, which focusses entirely on spontaneity and intuition. The title, »Födsel«, Norwegian for ›birth‹, is a play on the physicality of the work’s creation.

The spherical shape made of acrylic glass contains a complex mechanical system. Chargesheimer − whose real name was Karl Heinz Hargesheimer − designed it as a kinetic light sculpture: in a darkened room, several light sources were to be directed at the object and reflected by the rotating prisms within. This produced constantly changing and delightfully unpredictable effects − a method of painting with light with which the photographer Chargesheimer was particularly fascinated.

In the past, paintings were almost always painted with expensive oil paints on wood or canvas. Today, many different materials are used. For example, a picture can be made from nails or from papier-mâché. Today, artists often use everyday materials to make their pictures.

Modern artists experiment a lot with different materials and techniques. Therefore, their pictures look completely different to the oil paintings from past centuries. In the past, the painted perspective conveyed spatial depth. Now, the pictures themselves are three-dimensional. What you see is more than just colour. The pictures have dynamic surfaces.

Artists change the nature of painting with their pictures made of simple materials. They demonstrate that a picture doesn't always have to be created with paint. Many pictures are no longer flat, but three-dimensional. As a result, they appear particularly vivid. Depending on the direction from which you look at them, they appear different.

Walls rise up out of the rubble here and there. People go about their days. »Emerging from the ruins« would make a fitting title for Hermann Claasen’s photography, with which, up until the 1950s, he documented the destruction wreaked by the Second World War upon his home town of Cologne. Claasen published many of his photographs of Cologne in the volume entitled »Singing in the Fiery Furnace«, which came out for the first time in 1947. Up until the early 1970s, Claasen worked for clients in industry and advertising and was a sought after portrait photographer.

A woman assumes the role of Elvis Presley, aiming her revolver at the audience. Ulrike Rosenbach collaged herself into a famous work by Andy Warhol and has since stood in the cliched male pose next to the King of Rock and Roll. Does the artist with her drawn gun in Rosenbach’s feminist work seem different to the pop culture idol? The principle of appropriating the work of others in order to make one's own statements is a process that continues to be employed today and is known as »appropriation art«.