Permanent exhibition

After the end of the Franco-German War, the Saar region belonged to the German empire. Oil paintings by Max Usadel and Philipp Panjen depict Kaiser Wilhelm I, his son Friedrich III, who expressed liberal ideas and ruled for only 88 days, and Friedrich's son Wilhelm II, who aspired to a 'place in the sun' for the new empire and threw down the gauntlet to England by arming his fleet.

The nanny goat, known colloquially as the "miner's cow", symbolised the part-time agricultural activities of Saarland's miners. The mining revenue authority supported the construction of privately owned homes, which allowed the employees to cultivate vegetables, potatoes and crops in little plots and keep small livestock.

The economy of the Saar region experienced a major upturn in the empire. This was the age of the rise of the global-class companies Adt and Villeroy & Boch and the 'steel barons' Stumm and Röchling. A tool panel with giant spanners and a tool and filing cabinet made of steel plates weighing 500 kg, which belonged to a guild master at the foundry in Burbach, illustrate the new dimensions of this branch of industry.

With its rites and festivals, the Catholic Church accompanied the workers of the industrial region from the day they were born to the day they died, gave them support and helped them to keep their bearings. Special highlights in their lives were pilgrimages like the ones to Lourdes in France.

The First World War brought to an end a period of peace which had lasted for more than four decades. Everyday life on the home front was moulded by the war in the air, armament production, collection campaigns and the hunger crisis, which had been getting worse since 1915. A Red Cross ambulance, built by the ambulance factory Köhler & Cie in Heidelberg, helped to take care of the wounded at the front.

In view of the many people disabled by the war, much hope was invested in medical research into artificial limbs. In 1916, the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch achieved a sensational breakthrough with the eponymous 'Sauerbruch arm'. But such prostheses were not available in sufficient numbers.

The 'Iron Knight' was a wooden war symbol into which nails could be hammered, erected in 1915 at the Ursulinen School in Saarbrücken. The children could buy nails and make a suit of armour by hammering them into the body of the knight. The money went to the Red Cross.

Innumerable self-made souvenirs reflect the soldiers' conscience of having taking part in a truly epochal event. Authors such as Erich Maria Remarque tried to preserve the memory of the terrors of war and warned of the consequences of growing nationalism. Others, like Ernst Jünger, idealised the global conflagration in retrospect as a 'cleansing storm of steel'.

After the war years, full of privation as they were, a new awareness of life spread in the Territory of the Saar Basin too, expressed in the bold fashion of the 'golden' 20s. The gas-driven steam-powered hat press by Pfender (Paris) brought French chic to the Saar. The proprietor purchased the newest shapes each year from Paris. That way, hats which had gone out of fashion were able to be reshaped with the press in accordance with the latest trend.

The continuous poster by the well known graphic artist Joseph Binder for the Jyldis tobacco factory in Saarlouis received an award at the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1925. It was affixed to a hoarding there, 2.5 metres high and 100 metres long.

In the 1920s it was not only impressive works of modern art and architecture that were created in the milieu of the Saarbrücken School of Fine and Applied Arts. Graphic artists such as Joseph Binder, Adolf Bauer-Saar, Bob Strauch and Toni Zepf designed innovative posters using new forms.

Following a referendum in 1935, Saarland returned to Germany, where the National Socialists had been in power since 1933. Saarbrücken Castle became the headquarters of the Gestapo and a fulcrum of persecution. Stage-managed with subtle lighting techniques, back-lit photos captivate visitors to this part of the museum.

In the middle of the department on National Socialism on the Saar, there is a Gestapo detention cell in the vaulted cellar of the castle's north wing, preserved in its original condition. The messages of those held in custody can still be seen scratched on its walls.

After the Second World War, Saarland was an independent state, but it was closely modelled on France. When the years in the period directly after the war had passed, full of privation as they had been, new products such as the new washing powder Valan were brought out to make housewives' lives easier.

In the 1950s, households began to change: furniture and accessories in metal tubing and wire mesh became fashionable and there were colourful flower stands covered with Resopal in almost every household. Electrical equipment such as mixers, table-top fans and heaters were expressions of a new welfare.

During the period of the autonomous Saar Protectorate there were 16 tobacco-processing factories on the Saar. A great variety of tobacco goods were produced, including well known makes such as 'Lasso', 'Halbe Fünf' and 'Rothfüchsel', which were sold in small shops.

In the 1950s, the Vespa became the epitome of mobility and the symbol of a new youth culture. A special feature of this presentation on the topic of mobility were the 'Saarbrücken traffic lights' which dated from about 1955. Traffic lights of this kind were only to be found in Saarland. Their appearance resembled that of their German counterparts, but the way they worked, with small secondary signals further down, had been copied from the French design.

On 23 October, the people of Saarland voted on a European Saar statute which was intended to bring an end to the Franco-German dispute about the Saar. Ahead of the vote, a fierce referendum battle flared up between supporters and opponents of the statute, and it found expression in numerous posters.

Once two thirds of the population had rejected the European Saar statute, Saarland returned to Germany in two steps: politically on 1 January 1957, as the tenth federal state at that time, and then economically with the introduction of the German mark on 6 July 1959, known as 'Day X'.

Fourteen metres beneath Saarbrücken's Schlossplatz, the Historical Museum Saar has a surprise in store. Visitors can descend into the underground fortress complex from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and discover some fascinating historical constructions there: parts of the mediaeval fortress, an embrasure, fortifications and casemates from the 16th century, a court erected in the moat where real tennis was played, and a dungeon.

The bulwarks and casemates lay hidden below the surface for hundreds of years and are now integrated into the museum as a multi-media theme room. Modern media and reconstructions of historical hardware enable visitors to access history actively at its original location.

The accompanying exhibition presents the history of the fortress and the castles that were to follow it, and their inhabitants. Original finds help us to understand what life was like in these seats of power. Video recordings show rooms and corridors in the castle rock which are not actually open to visitors because of difficulty of access. There is also a film which demonstrates the use and effect of the arquebus and the crossbow.