22,000 objects, 40 years of dedication: The German Plastics Museum preserves the history of plastics
The Kunststoff-Museums-Verein e. V. will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2026. Its collection documents the technical, economic and cultural significance of a material that has shaped the modern world like almost no other.
Plastics symbolise innovation, creative power and social change. For more than 150 years, polymeric materials have shaped products, production processes, design and everyday life. Documenting this development, exploring it scientifically and making it accessible to the public has been the mission of the Kunststoff-Museums-Verein e. V. (KMV), the organisation behind the German Plastics Museum, for four decades.
The association was founded in 1986 by representatives from the worlds of science, the plastics industry and user groups. Their aim was to highlight the scientific, technical, economic and cultural significance of plastics – then still a relatively new class of materials – and to preserve important artefacts from their history for future generations.
The association’s link with K, the world’s leading trade fair for plastics and rubber, has developed over time. As early as 1986, the year it was founded, the Kunststoff-Museums-Verein attracted attention at the plastics trade fair in Düsseldorf with its historical artefacts and has been a regular exhibitor at K in Düsseldorf ever since.
Today, the collection of the German Plastics Museum comprises around 22,000 objects. It ranges from early exhibits made of celluloid and Bakelite, through household goods, electrical appliances, telephones, cameras, toys, furniture and design classics, to material samples, sample collections, documents and evidence of plastics processing. Over the course of four decades, this has resulted in one of the most significant collections on the history of plastics in Germany.
It is precisely these everyday objects that give the collection its special value. They tell of the technical possibilities of their time, of industrial developments, of consumer culture and of changing ways of life. The history of plastics is thus far more than just the history of a material: it is also the history of industry, design, the economy and society.
The original plan for a dedicated museum building could only be realised temporarily: from 1998 to 2002, the German Plastics Museum was housed in the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf. Subsequently, the KMV developed new ways of making its collection accessible. Since then, travelling exhibitions, themed presentations, loans and digital resources have brought the history of plastics to various locations and different audiences.
Since 2017, the collection has been on permanent loan at the Peter Behrens Building of the LVR Industrial Museum in Oberhausen. There, professional storage conditions and museum infrastructure are available. The Kunststoff-Museums-Verein remains the owner of the collection and continues to drive its specialist development forward.
The Virtual Museum is becoming increasingly important: more than 7,000 objects can already be researched online. This makes the collection accessible to experts, researchers, businesses and anyone interested in the history of plastics, regardless of location or opening hours.
The 40th anniversary of the Plastics Museum Association is therefore not merely an occasion for reflection. It is also an invitation to companies, associations, the academic community, collectors and private individuals to continue working together to safeguard the technical and cultural heritage of the plastics industry. For with every new generation of materials, every process innovation and every product, the history that should be preserved also grows.
Further information and the Virtual Museum:
www.deutsches-kunststoff-museum.de
About K in Düsseldorf:
K was first organised by Messe Düsseldorf in 1952 and takes place every three years. The last K, held in 2025, attracted 3,246 exhibitors from 65 countries across over 176,000 m² of net exhibition space and around 169,000 trade visitors, 73 per cent of whom were from abroad. www.k-online.de.
