Buttenheim (County of Bamberg, Upper Franconia)
Birthplace of Levi Strauss in Buttenheim, @ Levi Strauss Museum
Museum at Birthplace of Levi Strauss
Löb “Levi” Strauss, son of a peddling “country Jew” and inventor of blue jeans, was born on 26 February 1829 in the Franconian town of Buttenheim. His biography is the epitome of the American dream. After the death of his father, he immigrated to America in 1848. In San Francisco he began producing durable, blue work trousers. Quickly, Levi’s jeans made the journey from the goldminers’s camps of California to the catwalks of the world.
His birth house was originally built as a one-story half-timbered house in 1687, shortly after the Thirty Years’ War. Since September 2000, the building has housed the “Birthplace Levi Strauss Museum: Jeans and Religion,” in a 136-square-meter space. Here visitors can learn about rural Jewish, the history of emigration, the emigrants themselves, the beginnings of the textile industry and the phenomenon of an enduring enthusiasm for an article of clothing. With the erection of an annex in 2011, new exhibition space, a museum shop and a cafeteria were added to the museum.
Museum at Birthplace
of Levi Strauss
Marktstraße 31–33
D-96155 Buttenheim
Tel. +49 (0)9545 442602
Fax +49 (0)9545 1878
levi-strauss-museum@buttenheim.de
www.levi-strauss-museum.de
Opening hours:
Tues + Thurs: 2pm – 6pm
(November – February 2pm – 5pm)
Sat, Sun and holidays 11am – 5pm
Tour booking:
Dr. Tanja Roppelt
Tel. +49 (0)9545 4409936
levi-strauss-museum@buttenheim.de