The period between around 1880 and 1932 was illuminated, with the German-speaking centers of Art Nouveau - Vienna, Berlin, Weimar and Darmstadt - providing many impulses for urban development, architecture, healing and bathing, as well as for business life and everyday culture.
Art Nouveau and lifestyle reform - these catchwords stand for the longing for more nature in culture, for a healthier life and more pleasure for the body.

New recreational and sports facilities are opened in Wiesbaden, a light and air bath close to the city and a vegetarian restaurant. Art Nouveau details are "smuggled" into the new main railway station and the new Kurhaus - despite the historicist taste of Kaiser Wilhelm II - and drinking water fountains are built in this style. The city crowns its heyday with a proud self-presentation, the "Exhibition for Craft and Trade, Art and Horticulture" in 1909. The "World Exhibition in Miniature" attracts over a million visitors.

Historical testimonies and exhibits from the collections of the Wiesbaden City Museum Foundation and numerous institutional and private lenders "guided" visitors through the exhibition and revealed the extent to which the spirit of optimism at that time still shapes our lives today.

Hands-on stations such as a pattern generator or a stereoscope apparatus invited visitors to get creative themselves, let their imagination run wild or immerse themselves in Wiesbaden at the turn of the 20th century. A long time ago? Not so much. Many things still characterize the city today. The era was brought to life before the eyes and ears of visitors when contemporaries from back then talked about "their" everyday lives.