Düsseldorf, May 13, 2025 – The Deutsches Museum is celebrating its 100th birthday – and 100 years of technological history. The exhibition building on the Museum Island in Munich is considered Germany’s most important science museum today. It opened on May 7, 1925, and has since stood for the joy of innovation and the spirit of research. It demonstrates in impressive fashion how the path of many successful ideas has been paved time and again by property rights.
The Deutsches Museum was founded back in 1903. The first exhibitions were held in 1906 in the old National Museum and in the Schweren-Reiter barracks on the site of today’s German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA). The foundation stone for the building on Museum Island was laid in the same year. However, due to the war and inflation, it was years before construction was completed: the opening day on May 7, 1925, was also Oskar von Miller’s 70th birthday. He was not only the founder and first director of the museum but also a champion of the use of hydroelectric power to supply Bavaria with electricity. Like him, many other inventors and their ideas have close ties to the museum. The most famous exhibits to admire here include Carl Friedrich Benz’s automobile, patented in 1886, Reinhold Burger’s X-ray tube from 1901, and Konrad Zuse’s Z1, the first programmable computer, from 1938.
“The Deutsches Museum is a treasure trove of innovation and has been raising awareness of the importance of protecting intellectual property for our society for 100 years,” says Gottfried Schüll, patent attorney and partner at Cohausz & Florack (C&F). In addition to its headquarters in Düsseldorf, the firm has a branch office in Munich – a city with a long tradition in the field of intellectual property law: alongside the Deutsches Museum and the DPMA, the Bavarian capital has been home to the European Patent Office for decades.
The C&F online platform Daidalos also presents exciting achievements from the world of ideas: here, users can find out which ideas continue to enrich our society and from which inventors and companies they originate.
Picture credits: famveldman_AdobeStock.com, Daniela Stärk_Fotolia.com, Thomas Bethge_Fotolia.com
