Gasworks: Technical Monument

Neustadt is a small town in the former margraviate of Brandenburg, on the River Dosse and on the main railway between Hamburg and Berlin. The town gasworks was opened in 1903 and, after many alterations, continued to supply coal gas until 1980. It has since been conserved as an historical monument, and was adapted as a museum which opened in 2000. All the equipment of a functioning gasworks is still in place, the retorts, the by-product plant and the gasholders.  Exhibitions in the buildings explain the chemistry of coal gas manufacture, showing by means of a diagrammatic tree with many branches how useful products, benzene, ammonia and even aspirin, are obtained from the tar that is a residue of gas manufacture. The impact of gas supplies on town life is well explained, and visitors can learn something of the conditions endured by those who worked twelve-hour shifts at the plant. There is a substantial collection of household gas appliances and an interactive display concerned with gas and the environment. An additional display shows something of the glass industry that flourished in Neustadt between 1689 and 1840.