The Sunday supplement: dreamworks
Creating a shrine to childhood as only a son of Ferry Porsche could
Hans-Peter Porsche is in his element. Here, a slight, be-suited figure amid the 274,000 square feet of miniature memories that make up his TraumWerk or Dream Factory, his boyhood has been rebooted. And on a truly gigantic scale.
Hans-Peter is the third son of Ferry, a retired engineer and a member of the Supervisory Board of Porsche Holdings. At 77, his childhood may be some way behind him, but after years of careful consideration, investment and graft, it could not be more alive or more vivid.
TraumWerk is the ultimate toy museum for the analogue generations, a boil-washed wonderland of trains, planes and automobiles that captures the spirit of a bygone age of engineering, and of play.
“The four of us brothers had a wonderful childhood.” recalls Hans-Peter. “We loved to play with the family. We didn’t even have a TV back then. We had nothing of the sort. We would do our homework and when we were done with it we’d be off playing right away.”
Over the years the brothers amassed an impressive array of beautiful toys, handmade masterpieces ranging from stagecoaches and bi-planes to ocean-going liners and detailed marching armies. And, of course, there were the Porsche models. No shortage of them. As the boys grew, their toys were put away to do what all our childhood treasures do so well: gather dust.
It was only when Hans-Peter’s own son reached the age when he could enjoy such pleasures that the past was revisited. “Back in 1977, I wanted to build an H0-scale railroad from Märklin for my four-year-old son, also in reminiscence of my own model railroad. The journey to the toy store in Bad Reichenhall proved a fateful one.”
Fateful because Hans-Peter Porsche signed up for a Märklin subscription. Every engine, every new train that the company issued found its way to his door. He attended auctions and trade shows and got to know tin toy and model train collectors around the world. It was a work in progress with no end in sight. At his home near Salzburg, the boxes were piling up, ultimately reaching a total of 450. “The entire basement and every inch of the attic were full. But somehow it wasn’t really satisfying, having all of these wonderful items and just keeping them boxed up. So my son and I decided to open up our collection to the public.”
Hans-Peter Porsche commissioned the Berlin architect Volker Staab to create a building with a circuit that would follow the outline of a figure of eight – the classic shape of a small railroad installation or race-track. The first part of the space takes visitors through the permanent exhibition of tin toys: one hundred and fifty display cases of innumerable railroad stations, cars, airplanes, ships, shops, trains, and much, much more. The famous Distler 356 Speedsters gleam side-by-side under glass, offset nearby by full-sized versions of the car in chop-top and coupe form.
The second part invites people into what is perhaps the heart of Hans-Peter’s masterpiece, the world of model trains. A 16 foot high diorama covers an area of nearly 6,000 square feet with over 1.6 miles of track. There are 180 trains in operation, 40 at any one time.
It is a phenomenally detailed alpine landscape, based upon the surrounding Bavarian countryside but incorporating parts inspired by both Switzerland and Austria and including Lake Constance. The connection to Porsche is everywhere, from the branded goods carriages to the innumerable Porsche cars that dot the trackside roads. The trains trundle past numerous Porsche factories, including an instantly recognisable Zuffenhausen. Also hidden within this vast, spellbinding playground are exact copies of both his and Ferdinand Senior’s own houses. At one moment, amid myriad movements, a tiny white Porsche Cayenne appears, heading down a short road. It stops at a crossing, signals, and turns into a lakeside property. It stops again before some garage doors, which duly open. The Porsche drives inside, the door closes.
Hans-Peter’s museum pays fastidious attention to a whole gamut of toys reaching back 150 years. There are century-old handmade dolls, with bespoke cribs and carriages, eerie now in our sugar-coated era of digital Disney. There are rows and rows of immaculate, hand-painted cars and trucks, of submarines and ships with carefully woven rigging, wooden carts with turned spoked wheels.
The exhibits depict every era and include pieces from the best toy manufacturers from around the world, the oldest of which is a locomotive from 1865. It is over forty years in the making, an obsessive collection on a scale almost impossible to imagine until you see it all before you.
“Come on over here,” Hans-Peter says “and take a look at this swimming pool from 1910, which I kept in my study at home. If you fill the pool with water and press that pump, the little shower actually works. That’s one of the highlights here at the TraumWerk. Such precision, even back then – this is what makes these toys so unique, in my opinion.”
Towards the end of the exhibition there is a large wall from which hang various pedal and electric cars for children, including a rather careworn-looking silver Porsche 550 Spyder. And how did those scratches get there? “Right, that used to be at my house,” Hans-Peter explains with a grin. “My grandchildren learned to drive in it. Now it’s a bit battered. But that doesn’t matter – that’s what everyone does in the beginning.”
The Porsche DNA is evident in almost every corner of the dream factory, but nowhere more so than in Hans-Peter’s dizzying personal collection of full-scale cars. Here sits a Porsche 904, there the Porsche 356 that made three appearances at the Liège–Rome–Liège rally. Alongside is problematic Porsche 959 (“It has to be driven every month; it doesn’t do well if it stands around too long”) and an Austro-Daimler (“a gift from my son”). Next to them is the one-liter XL1 from Volkswagen, a 914, 944, 928 and a pale blue Porsche 912 (“That car is very special. It was a Christmas gift for my mother in 1966. For the past twenty years, an Italian lady has owned it. But now I’ve been able to buy it back, and it’s in mint 1966 condition.”)
Traumwerk is a triumph of the single-minded, the passionate and the playful. But the thing that was as important to Hans-Peter as collecting and preserving these wonderful creations was the ability to share them with others.
“I created something with my own hands, built from the heart. And now other people can see it too. It really gives me so much. I can hardly describe it.” The gentle, fun-loving collector is clearly moved by these remarkable surroundings and the honest, simple spirit that has enabled it. “The love of play is just a part of me. And when I go through my world of toys today, my eyes light up and I feel happy.”
For your own distilled dose of Porsche-themed happiness, the details are below: TraumWerk
Zum Traumwerk 1 , 83454 Anger-Aufham, Germany | www.hanspeterporsche.com | Museum hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 09:00-17:30
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Comments (2)
That looks like the ultimate man shed
Isn't it just? ^EH