Major special exhibition at the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart from December 13, 2024 to September 14, 2025
Who can swim with us? And who is not? What causes trouble among bathers? Society is reflected in the pool. A wide variety of people with different lifestyles and moral concepts meet in public pools - sometimes more and sometimes less harmoniously. What does it mean to SWIM FREELY? Together? Or rather separately?
It is considered a democratic achievement that everyone has equal access to outdoor and indoor pools. After all, the rich and poor once bathed separately. Women and men anyway. During the Nazi era, the Jewish population and "foreigners" were excluded. Even before that, war invalids had to stay outside. The sight of them was considered unacceptable. Neither were women, who, according to the prevailing opinion, did not wear enough textiles.
Freedom and freedom of movement are now being hotly debated again. Do women, queer or disabled people need a "protected space"? Does topless bathing benefit or harm feminism? Is the acceptance of maximum concealment backward or progressive?
"Frei Schwimmen - Gemeinsam?!" presents magnificent pieces from the "Bad Wildbad" princely baths, instruments of "body optimization" from the public baths in Mannheim and Stuttgart-Heslach, the door of the ladies' bath in the Lorettobad Freiburg, which is strictly forbidden for men, and the burkini with which a Muslim woman was not allowed to enter the indoor pool in Constance.
Whether princely or poor baths, women's or men's baths, public or family baths: the exhibition shows who was welcome there and who was not, what clothing had to be worn - and what each swimming pool reveals about its time, the people and their society to this day.
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