The German Technical Museum holds one of the largest collections of its kind in Europe, but dates only from 1982. It was initially a museum of railways, and is based at the former Anhalter Bahnhof, once a huge complex that included one of Berlin’s principal railway freight depots, a locomotive shed with two roundhouses, and the warehouses of a refrigeration company. There are now 14 departments concerned with such subject areas as paper technology, textiles, printing and brewing.

The museum is one of five that are managed by the Stiftung Deutsches Technik Museum Berlin, the others including the Spectrum science centre, the Zeiss Planetarium and the Sugar Museum in Berlin-Wedding.

The museum displays more than 70 vintage motor vehicles. Its new building, that accommodates sections on aviation, aerospace, boating and architecture, is one of Berlin’s most easily recognisable buildings, with an aircraft suspended over its entrance, a Douglas DC3 (C47) transport plane of the kind that as ‘raisin bombers’ (rosinenbomber) sustained the city during the Berlin Airlift (Luftbrücke).

The railway collection has been displayed with particular attention to the ethics of conservation. It includes one of the most characteristic of German steam locomotives, a Prussian P8 class 4-6-0 built in 1910, which is displayed in the condition in which it was received from a scrap yard in Poland. The collection also includes an open passenger carriage of 1843, a replica of a 2-2-2 locomotive built in Berlin by August Borsig (1804-54) in 1844, and a V200 class diesel of 1955, one of the locomotives that symbolised the recovery of German railways after the Second World War.