The Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center is an open-air folklife museum and research center dedicated to preserving and celebrating Pennsylvania German folk culture, history, and language in a unique educational setting at Kutztown University.

Current Exhibitions

Current Exhibitions

Currently on display in the Delight E. Breidegam Building, Headquarters of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, 15155 Kutztown Road, Kutztown, PA 19530. Hours Monday-Friday 10am-12pm & 1pm-4pm.

Healing Herbs, Vibrant Roots

Transatlantic Botanical Traditions Among the Pennsylvania Dutch

June 28, 2025 – February 28, 2026 in the Main Exhibition Gallery, Delight E. Breidegam Building.

Influenced by transatlantic immigration, herbal medicine flourished in early Pennsylvania, where over 81,000 German-speaking immigrants arrived prior to the American Revolution, bringing with them their vibrant healing traditions and illustrated herbal compendiums.  From this diaspora, America’s first book of botanical medicine was published by printer and apothecary Christoph Saur Jr. between 1762 and 1778, inspiring the use of herbal medicine on a folk-cultural level for many generations to come. 

Carl Friederich Egelmann

Astronomer, Printmaker, and Polymath of Mount Penn

February 28, 2024 – February 28, 2026 in the M.L.E. Foundation Gallery.

Carl Friederich Egelmann (1782-1860) of Reading, Berks County, was the foremost astronomical calculator of nineteenth-century America. For over 40 years, Egelmann’s tables and engravings of the movements of the heavenly bodies were featured in annual farmer’s almanacs throughout Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic, enhancing the influence of astronomy on the region’s art, agriculture, and folk-cultural traditions.