Help to restore a historical fortress museum, enjoy living in a lively community

Your host community Germersheim is looking forward to your help with renovation tasks in the fortress museum. The fortress is present everywhere in Germersheim. The numerous historic buildings are listed and are used in a variety of ways: as a museum, university, music school and youth center. The Ludwigstor, as one of the preserved city gates, will be “your fortress building”, which is used as a museum but is closed due to necessary renovation and restoration work. With your help, it will be reopened in 2026. To this end, we are organizing two work camps with the city of Germersheim this year. In this summer camp, your help is needed to renovate the exhibition rooms. The rooms are to be restored to their original “historical” state as far as possible and everything that deviates from the construction period is to be removed. Specifically: historical windows must be thoroughly refurbished, plywood panels that keep out daylight must be carefully removed, the window timbers must be sanded and revitalized with oily paints. Some of the historic wooden floors have PVC coverings, which should be carefully removed without damaging the substrate, e.g. with a spatula or special tools. Door frames that do not correspond to the construction period, i.e. were added later, must be carefully removed, as must wall areas that close off former passageways. The aim is to recreate the historical room shape with vaulted ceilings and natural lighting. In order to restore the rooms to their original size, some of the masonry walls even have to be removed. The various demolition materials have to be transported through the building for disposal and sorted, and possibly also stored for reuse.

As you can see, you can really let off steam here, but it's also strenuous work that requires a bit of strength! Turn up the music and off you go. If you want to really let off steam in an old fortress, this is the place for you. Another aspect is that you should document your work digitally, e.g. with a video diary of your work or a photo documentation that not only shows you at work, but also the spatial changes before and after your work assignment.