Alraunes Privatmuseum

Like any hotel, the Gasthaus Schwanen is a bustling place. Staff and revelers fill the kitchen, restaurant, and guest rooms. But unlike at other hotels, the revelers here aren’t real.

Sewn figures fill the historic building. The life-sized beings are the work of textile artist Stefanie Alraune Siebert , who has transformed the hotel into a museum. Her work creates a disturbing, almost voyeuristic view of hotel life.

The artist has created a cast of stitched figures who, every year, are cast within a different performance, as the display’s theme changes annually. These strange, sewn humans are put in various positions and costumes showing different staged events until Alraune “salvages” them and rearranges them for the next year’s theme.

The theme for 2018? Sausages. Wander through the hotel rooms, and you’ll see the stuffed people stuffing themselves on links of fake meat. It’s an unsettling, macabre experience. In one room, the figures are arranged as if holding a seance over a platter holding a single piece of meat. In another, a man adorned with a necklace of sausages appears to put a fellow human through a meat grinder.