The Elwedritsche Museum

Have you never seen this legendary and wine-loving but shy creature? If not, head right over to the Elwetritsch Museum. It is sure to answer all your questions.

You probably haven’t heard of the elwetritsch hunt either. This arouses the nocturnal cry that you will get to hear at a late hour of the evening after two glasses of the local wine cooler. You will see that the cry emanates from the hybrid of chicken, duck and elf that looks like a bird and hides in the underbrush of parks, forests and vineyards. You will now have seen and heard the elwetritsch.

The cultural history of the Elwetritsch

Barring such an encounter, you can now have the same experience at the city’s smallest museum located on Antonia Lane (German: Antoniengasse). There you will find not only professionally prepared displays of this jolly but unusually shy and hard-to-track chicken-like bird but you will also become acquainted with the cultural history of the elwetritsch (Latin: Bestia palatina), its habitat and the research known as“Tritschology”.

The museum will naturally also familiarize you with its historical and fairy-tale “scientific” relationship to the wolperdinger from Bavaria and the rasselbock from Thuringia. Specimens of these species can also be admired at the Elwetritsch Museum in Speyer.

The Elwedritsch tavern

Susanne Butt and Peter Günster have outfitted the little museum on the second floor with careful attention to detail. They look upon the project as a humorous introduction to the Palatine way of life. In the adjacent tavern on the first floor, Palatine home cooking is on the menu and the Riesling wine cooler is served in a “Dubbe-glass”, a wine glass with small depressions on its outside to make gripping it more secure. Why a tavern in a museum? Well, naturally all of the new experiences related to the elwetritsch that were picked up during the museum visit are just begging to be discussed in good company.Sie haben noch nie einen „Elwedritsch“ gesehen, dieses scheue und weinselige Fabelwesen? Sie haben auch noch nichts von der Elwedritsche-Jagd gehört, einem nächtlichen Halali, bei dem zu später Stunde nach zwei Riesling-Schorlen jenen vogelähnlichen Kreuzungen aus Hühnern, Enten und Elfen nachgestellt wird, die sich gerne im Unterholz von Parkanlagen, Waldböden und Rebstöcken verstecken?