Anyone who frequently attends the conferences of the Association of European Open-Air Museums (AEOM) will eventually begin to wonder how this organization of enthusiastic directors and staff members of open-air museums came about and why certain matters are the way they are. Why did museums, which are in fact rooted in a particular country or a particular region, seek contacts on a European level? What did they have in common with each other, so that a need arose for experiences to be shared beyond national borders? With this we could also pose the question as to why that need did not arise any earlier than in 1966. The large number of new open-air museums since mid 1950s, particularly in the German-speaking region, gave rise to a growing need for an exchange of ideas on methods to be used. By no longer allowing the search for that which is characteristically national to be the motive for a cultivation of folklore, the eyes of many European open-air museums were opened to a history of many interactions and influences in the culture of everyday European life, which went beyond national borders. Many members of the Association cherished the idea that they were all one European family and that, with their national and regional open-air museums, they were in fact creating the components of a collective European open-air museum.
