Museum der Arbeit

In Hamburg-Barmbek, the Museum der Arbeit occupies the factory buildings of the New-York Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie, a rubber-goods works dating from 1871. Its theme is the past 150 years: what industrialisation did to work and daily life. As an anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, it traces the social, cultural and economic consequences.

Planners first put the idea on paper in the 1970s and secured a site by 1980. In 1982 the museum took over the buildings and started with a provisional display. The programme and the collection developed over time, and construction began in 1992. The boiler house opened in 1994, and the permanent hall in the Haupthaus was inaugurated on 5 January 1997. Since 2008 the Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg has run it.

Inside, the permanent exhibition 'Alltag im Industriezeitalter' draws on the collection of the original owners, with documents tracing the company's history. A second display covers the Metallwarenfabrik Carl Wild, a factory known for working with enamel. A third presents the office of a Hanseatic trading company, spanning the years from the 19th century to the 1950s. The museum is wheelchair accessible, and interactive projects and workshops invite you to examine the evolution of work and its social impact. Temporary exhibitions have ranged from 'Tunnel: Hamburg und seine Unterwelt' to 'Werbewelten Made in Hamburg', which marked 100 years of Reemtsma. Outdoors stands the cutting head of TRUDE, the tunnel boring machine that cut the tunnels beneath the Elbe.