Forum der Völker, Ethnographic museum in Werl, Germany.

The Forum der Völker is a former Franciscan mission museum in Werl, permanently closed since the order gave up its monastery in 2019. Its roughly 14,000 objects were shown in rooms along a circular route in the main house, a three-storey extension added in 1987/88, an event hall and a foyer for temporary exhibitions. The collection passed to the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe.

The collection began in 1909 at a Franciscan monastery in Dorsten and relocated to Werl in 1962, expanding ever since. Missionaries and private collectors continuously brought new objects, reflecting the connection between religious work and cultural curiosity.

The collection displays items from daily life in distant cultures: clothing, jewelry, tools, and religious objects reveal how people celebrated and conducted everyday rituals. Through these objects, visitors see how different societies organized their worlds and understood their place in it.

The museum is permanently closed, so there is no visiting access to arrange. Its roughly 14,000 objects, including the Egyptian mummy bought in Cairo in 1913 for 300 gold marks, are being taken over by the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe. The former Franciscan monastery buildings in Werl can still be viewed from outside.

The Egyptian mummy was bought in Cairo in 1913 by a missionary for 300 gold marks and brought to Werl from the St. Ludwig college in Vlodrop for the 1962 opening. The 171 cuneiform tablets come from the Third Dynasty of Ur and were found along the lower Euphrates.