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No nation enjoys playing like the Germans. The German Games Archive in Nuremberg has been collecting the whole range of games since 1945 – a journey in time through the world of board games.

Auntie Mechthild lays down the word “Schwanzhund” in Scrabble and would like to score 57 points. Emotions run high during a games afternoon. The word does not exist. “It’s no fun if you don’t stick to the rules,” says Paul and leaves the round in a huff. Harmless games afternoons can end emotionally, as this scene in Loriot’s film Ödipussi Illustrates. Whether Halma, Scrabble or Fang den Hut (Coppit) – board games can fan family feuds, but also make for convivial hours. Some people hate them, others love them, but everyone has played them at some time – the Memory Game at kindergarten, Trivial Pursuit at university or Schafkopf (a German card game) at the old folks’ home.

Germany: Games world champion

The games that have been produced in the German-speaking area since 1945 are collected at the German Games Archive. In April 2010, the collection moved from Marburg to Nuremberg. It was no longer possible to keep the collection under private management, so the Nuremberg municipal museums decided to bring the archive to Middle Franconia. Many games companies have their headquarters in Nuremberg, and the annual International Toy Fair takes place there.

The Games Archive was founded by Bernward Thole in 1985. The literary and media scholar started off with a collection of 5,000 games. Today, the archive has 30,000 games from the past five decades. Every year, 500 new games are added. The Germans like playing. In no other country do so many new games come onto the market. Nuremberg is currently celebrating the acquisition of the Games Archive with a small but beautiful exhibition of games at the City Museum Fembohaus, where it is showcasing a few of the collection’s treasures in an exhibition entitled Co-Players Wanted! The large remainder is still slumbering in countless removal boxes. These will not be unpacked until the city has found suitable premises to house the archive.

The exhibition presents the Germans’ playing habits since 1945 in five stages. The journey through time through dusty games boxes highlights one thing: games reveal quite a lot about the society that plays them.

My car – The fifties

In the fifties, more and more people are buying cars. And, when he is not sitting behind the steering wheel, the proud owner of a brand new VW Beetle loves playing Woher kommt mein Wagen? (Where does my car come from) or rolls the dice through the various event fields of the game Frohe Alpenfahrt (Happy Alpine Journey). The winner’s prize is an edelweiss and painted tin figures serve as the pieces. Also the perennial favourite the Memory Game, a game for the brain where matching pairs of pictures have to be found, comes onto the market.

“What am I?” – the sixties

In the sixties, prosperity grows, and with it comes more leisure time. Family games like Malefiz (Barricade) are a great hit. In this game, a grandchild can barricade Granny to stop her moving for a few rounds. People also love doing jigsaw puzzles of landscapes, animals and cityscapes. Thanks to new punch machines, the puzzles are inexpensive. And if you do not have a television, you buy the board game versions of TV quiz programmes: Was bin ich? (What am I) and Hätten Sie’s gewusst? (Would you have known), for example.

Not funny – the seventies

The discussion on educational reform gives children a hard time. They are up against educationally useful new products in the games market. Most children do not think that Lustige Mengenlehre (Fun Set Theory) is really very much fun. Also, Spiel des Jahres, the Game of the Year Award, chosen by a jury of critics, is presented for the first time. In 1979, it goes to Hase und Igel (Hare and Tortoise), a game about lettuces and carrots. Since then, a red game piece crowned with a laurel wreath has adorned the box of the year’s best game.

“Ecopolicy” – the eighties

Never before have there been as many innovations as in the eighties. Trivial Pursuit is invented for adults in 1984, enabling them to check their general knowledge on the basis of tricky questions. The emerging environmental movement gets its own game: Ökolopoly (later called Ecopolicy in English). And games designer Alex Randolph, whose estate is stored in the German Games Archive, achieves acceptance for having the games designer named on the game box.

“Cockroach poker” – the nineties to the present

The more complicated, the better, the adults have been thinking since the nineties. They buy games for which the game instruction booklets are fatter than their new mobile phone manual, for Siedler von Catan (Settlers of Catan), for example. Children continue to enjoy playing the most. While they had fun playing Spitz, pass auf (Spitz, watch out) in the fifties, however, they prefer Kakerlakenpoker (Cockroach Poker) today.

“Watch a man at play for an hour and you can learn more about him than in talking to him for a year,” is something Plato already knew. So play instead of talking and do not get upset if Auntie Mechthild puts down the word “Schwanzhund” during a game of Scrabble.