Everything in the Hamburg Museum of Work, housed in a old rubber goods factory, is dominated by one central question. How did industrialisation affect people’s everyday life? In a port like Hamburg they often earned their money with raw materials from overseas.

One of these was India rubber and one of the major firms at the time was the New York and Hamburg Rubber Goods Company. It was set up in 1871 in the suburb of Barmbek and quickly grew to a huge business which came to an abrupt end as a result of air-raids during the Second World War. After this the company relocated to Harburg, leaving one of the oldest extant factory sites in Hamburg as a crumbling ruin, sporadically used by small firms and a local arts centre.

In 1982 discussions began on whether its should be turned into a museum of work and ten years later the site began to be cleaned up and rebuilt. The old boiler house (1896) was appointed to house the museum workshops, the exhibits are placed in the New Factory which was erected in 1908, which has been given a new third floor to house temporary exhibitions.

The museum opened in 1997 and visitors can now see people still working at historic machines where they can even try out their own skills. The aim is to use the machines to give visitors a concrete idea of the realities of work.