Children’s drawings at Teufen museum document wartime history

An exhibition of 1,111 children’s drawings at the Zeughaus Teufen museum shows how the works can serve as historical documents, SRF reports. The collection ranges from everyday scenes to images of war, including soldiers, barbed wire, tanks and bombs.

The exhibition, titled “Zeichen der Zeit” (“Signs of the Times”), includes eight drawings among 56 added to UNESCO’s documentary heritage in 2025. Co-curator Lilia Glanzmann said the war scenes give the drawings a new significance, showing events of the time in a different form.

Art historian Meret Ernst said the drawings offer a perspective from a group that is rarely represented in historical accounts. Children are often portrayed as passive victims, she said, but their drawings show how they perceived the world in their own time.

That perspective is not entirely unfiltered, Ernst added. Schools and society have long influenced what children draw, as well as the conventions they learn about what is considered beautiful or correct.

Other works in the exhibition depict television programmes, animals in a pasture, a city seen from above, a playroom and busy street scenes.