Just who was Friedrich Stoltze? The Frankfurt dialect poet, journalist and satirist was born in 1816. As a convinced democrat and republican he placed the Bismarck period under his critical analysis in his satirical weekly "Frankfurter Laterne". In the permanent exhibition of the Stoltze Museum, set up by the Frankfurter Sparkasse in 1978 to commemorate this popular writer, Stoltze's biography is vividly combined with Frankfurt and German history of the 19th century.
Items from his estate plus texts and cartoons from his works form a highly personal source for such key national events as the Hambacher Festival of 1832, the Frankfurt guardhouse attack of 1833, the 1848/49 revolution, the Prussian occupation of Frankfurt in 1866 and the Reich foundation in 1871. With the dismissal of Bismarck in 1891, Friedrich Stoltze was witness one year before his death of the end of an era on which he critically commented until his very last breath.
Several convictions for lese-Bismarck or lese-Majesty testify that Stoltze's condemnation was a finger on an open wound. The permanent exhibition is supplemented by changing special exhibitions and by readings.
After its relocation the museum is situated in the new Old Town at the „Weißer Bock“, Markt 7.