In the shadow of the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, an extraordinary collection of over four hundred fairground ephemera recently surfaced at a vintage poster shop. This historical trove comprises an assortment of advertisements from the funfair season in the city of Leuven, providing a vivid glimpse into the world of popular visual and performance culture around 1900. These fragile documents shed light on many facets of fairground culture during that time, including the promotion of attractions and personalities, the variety of spectacles, and the overall organization of the fairs.…

Since 1883, Der Komet has been a pioneering journal, serving as a compass for fairground entrepreneurs and travelling traders. The periodical played a vital role in the professionalization of the fairground industry and chronicled over 140 years of German fairground culture. As such, it is a valuable resource for researchers interested in the cultural history of fairgrounds, media and film history, and the history of knowledge and technology. Current digitization campaigns, supported by the SciFair project and its partners, aim to make this rich historical material accessible to a wider…

“Auf dem Markt fing alles an!” – “It all started at the market!”. That was the motto of the former Markt- und Schaustellermuseum in Essen, Germany.  The museum, which unfortunately closed in 2021 after 25 years, showed that the precursors of our modern-day doctors, pharmacists, bankers, trading companies, marketeers and recruiters, as well as artists, musicians and show people often earned their daily bread at the local fairs. Given the relevant scope of the museum and its rich body of sources, a research trip to Essen by SciFair researchers was a priority, especially since the variety of…