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Swiss milling school pupils visit Mühlenchemie, attend Otzi expo opening
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Wednesday, 07 February, 2018, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Hamburg
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Students from 18 countries at the Swiss School of Milling paid a visit to Mühlenchemie, the German specialist in flour improvement and flour fortification. The occasion for the visit was the enlargement of Wittenburg’s FlourWorld Museum and the opening of Germany’s first Iceman exhibition, entitled Ötzis Einkorn. It offered the millers of tomorrow an opportunity to delve deep into the history of cereal growing.
The FlourWorld Museum regards itself as a forum for cereal science, providing an insight into the significance of flour. It was a conference centre with rooms for seminars and other events highlighting the milling profession in its historical context.
The first to use this opportunity of combining scientific lectures on flour improvement and flour fortification with cultural exchange at the FlourWorld Museum were students of the Swiss School of Milling. The subject of the exhibition is the history of man’s most important staple food.
The heart of the collection is the Sackotheque, with over 3,500 flour sacks from mills in 140 countries. In this way, the collection becomes a hall of fame, a tribute to all the millers who provide the world’s population with flour.
Whereas the subject of the ground floor is the flour sacks themselves and their motifs, the upper floor is concerned with the history of flour in its cultural context. The title, Flour.Power.Life., conveys the huge significance the apparently unremarkable product flour has had for the history of mankind, for it became the essential staple food of populations and the basis of every state structure larger than that of a tribal society. So flour is not only a symbol of life, but it is also a symbol of power.
As the narrator of the history of grain-growing, Ötzi the Iceman greeted the students from the Swiss School of Milling and opened the multimedia exhibition. The mummified body, found in the glacier ice of the Ötztal Alps, is perfectly preserved and enables the visitors to go back 5,300 years, to the early days of agriculture in Europe. An examination of the remains of the Iceman’s fur coat revealed two grains of cultivated einkorn (which is considered to be the oldest cultivated variety of grain).
For the young millers, the visit to Wittenburg opened up a new view of their profession and its importance.
“Our international students were especially impressed by the unique exhibits on the cultural history of cereals. We are leaving the FlourWorld Museum with a host of pleasant, interesting and educational impressions,” said Michael Weber, principal, Swiss School of Milling.
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