Museum of Work

The museum’s Printing Trade section is located on the first floor; this section looks at letterpress printing, the gradual mechanisation of the industry and its end. The exhibition focuses on the evolution of printing with movable type, a process that is over five hundred years old. 

During the Industrial Age, overseas trade in Hamburg experienced an immense boom, as the factories of the 19th and 20th centuries depended increasingly on raw materials that had to be imported from distant countries and continents. 

This journey ends with industrial rubber processing, which is illustrated here with the history of the rubber company New York Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie (NYH). This part of the exhibition is housed in three rooms located on the three floors at the front of the factory.

In the rear courtyard of a middle-class residential house in the Hohenfelde district of Hamburg, the Carl Wild metal goods factory was producing all kinds of pins, medals, brooches and badges for almost 90 years. A glass cabinet gives some surprising insights into the reconstructed workshop and exemplifies the technical and social conditions, strains and hazards.

This 400-square-meter section examines the history of work in Hamburg since the Industrial Age using the products of work, clothing, tools, machinery, oral and written memoirs and photographs.

Objects in the Museum Courtyard:

T.R.U.D.E. – The world’s biggest tunnel boring machine

Universal Cable Excavator, Model Mb II

Road Roller MW 12 Emil