$500K in renovations to Altenburg Museum to be unveiled this week

Altenburg, Missouri, is a small town rich in regional history. A dedicated group now aims to showcase that history in a newly updated museum, reopening to the public in limited numbers Thursday.

Groups of up to 10 people will be allowed, and hand-washing, masks and social distancing will be required.

The Altenburg Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum’s exhibits feature artifacts from the German migration to the region in the 1800s. The original church building, dedicated in 1845, is a room devoted to the region’s early Lutheran influence, and after the “new” church was built in 1867, the room was a school up until 1969, then storage for several years afterward, said Warren Schmidt, president of the Perry County Lutheran Historical Society.

In 2005, when the museum building was added, the exhibits were expanded to include, among many items, some of the original wooden chests German immigrants brought to the area in the 1800s, a wedding dress, German Bibles, even a buggy used to deliver mail.

But the space had some limitations, said museum director Carla Jordan, who also directs the Cape Girardeau County History Center in Jackson.

The workings of an expansion are seen Tuesday at the Lutheran Heritage Center and Museum in Altenburg, Missouri.Jacob Wiegand

Lynn Degenhardt, vice president of the historical society and chair of the renovation and expansion project, said limited storage space meant little room for organizing or cataloging the site’s collections.

Jordan said the collections were all properly accessioned, and kept in secure, climate-controlled conditions, “but were not displayed as we would have wished.”

So far, the heritage center has new, better flooring in the lobby and main gallery. The lobby walls were repainted and a mural added. Fluorescent lighting has been replaced with LED lights, and glow lighting was added above the cases.

Not only is the LED lighting more economical, Jordan said, but it causes less damage to artifacts and books on display.

The windows have also been blocked off. Sunlight can cause fading and other damage to the artifacts, Jordan said.

And, behind a wall of glass display cases, there’s a research library — the Starzinger Family Research Library, where patrons can access ancestry.com and the international version for free, and access records and documents pertaining to family histories in the Perry County region and beyond.

The need for this work became evident a couple of years ago, when a historic home in town burned after sparks from an open burn landed on the wood shake roof. That and the fire at Cathédrale Notre-Dame in Paris combined to drive home the point the Concordia Log Cabin College, as it’s known, needed to be better protected.

A pavilion of sorts now stands over the college, made of a composite material that looks like wood shake but is both fire- and hail-proof, Degenhardt said.

The college was a primary training ground in the early days of the Lutheran Church in Missouri, Schmidt said.

The final piece of the renovation and expansion is a third gallery to be added to the museum. Originally, the plan was to break ground on it in fall 2021, but, Jordan said, the timing of COVID-19 closures and an opening in the contractor’s schedule allowed for an earlier start — at the beginning of March this year.

The annex will be 4,900 square feet on each floor, Degenhardt said. The basement will be secure, climate-controlled storage, and the upstairs will include a gallery, meeting room and a catering kitchen. This way, people can reserve the space for family reunions, Degenhardt said.

The new space will also include a preparation room for exhibits, where museum staff can build exhibits in the cases and wheel them out onto the floor.

The concrete base is poured, and beams and framing will go in next, Degenhardt said. The hope is to have the space more or less complete by the end of 2020.

This fall, the center will host its biennial, or every other year, conference, from Oct. 29 through 31, with a theme centering on the Civil War and its effects on the region — and the region’s effects on the outcome.

Schmidt said the German immigrants to Missouri were influential in keeping Missouri a free state.

The conference’s keynote speaker will be Bill Eddleman, associate director of the State Historical Society of Missouri also involved with the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society, and artist in residence will be Nadine Saylor, professor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale who teaches glassblowing. Saylor will be bringing the university’s mobile glassblowing station, Aunt Gladys II, which also featured prominently in a February demonstration in uptown Jackson.

More information on the conference is at www.lutheranmuseum.com.

Jordan said the center, like a lot of not-for-profit organizations, took a huge hit to donations in light of COVID-19, but thanks to generous endowments from donors including the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, the $500,000 project is possible.

Of course, she said, while the museum is free to attend and the research library free of charge to use, “donations are welcome.”

The Perry County Lutheran Historical Society may have been founded in 1910 to preserve the college, Schmidt said, but the mission statement has since expanded.

“We still tell the story,” he said.

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