The Mercedes Museum

As you may know (either from knowing us personally or from reading the about section), this trip became reality partially because I was working in the car industry as a finance manager and got laid off. This career path began at Mercedes-Benz Canada, and although I’ve long since left the company, I remain loyal to the brand and still believe they make some of the best cars in the world. Today at the Mercedes-Benz Museum, I was reminded of all the reasons I believe that, and even felt a bit of remorse about leaving the company, but everything happens for a reason and if I hadn’t quit, I don’t think I’d be here visiting the museum now!

Compared to the Porsche museum (or any car museum for that matter!), the Mercedes-Benz Museum is massive, encompassing 16,500 square meters of exhibit space spread out over 8 floors. Although the building is a few years old, it’s still a very modern facility and the circular design makes it easy to follow – you simply take the elevator up to the 8th floor and work your way down in circles. Each floor has a specific theme, ranging from “The Invention of the Automobile” to “Races and Records,” and it more or less goes in chronological order.

The audio-guide is included with your 8 euro entrance fee, but unless you plan to spend at least fours hours at the museum, you probably won’t use it that much. We spent about 3 hours there and I ended up only using the audio guide to watch a few films, hear about certain vehicles I was interested in, and listen to the introduction to each floor, which plays automatically when you head down the ramp to the next floor (there’s a sensor). I think if you listened to everything on the audio guide, watched all the movies, and read all of the exhibits, you could be there from open to close!

Because of my employment with Mercedes-Benz Canada, I already knew quite a bit of history about the company, but the museum was a good memory refresher. Like most people, I tend to forget that Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler started two totally separate companies, and never even met each other in their lifetimes. It was to ensure survival during the war that the two companies (Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellscaft) pooled their interests together and created the Mercedes-Benz brand the whole world recognizes today. Nowadays, I don’t think anyone can imagine Mercedes without the Benz

Unlike the Porsche museum, on the “Times of Change” floor the Mercedes Museum acknowledges the company’s involvement with the Nationalist Socialist government, the ways in which they benefited from the “Fuehrer State” (such as government contracts which boosted sales), and the fact that they used forced laborers from concentration camps when they got into arms production during the war. While their apologies and financial retribution can never fully make up for their participation, I appreciate the fact that within a museum dedicated to all the great things they’ve accomplished, they still acknowledge this significant black mark on the company’s past. I, for one, didn’t know that they used forced laborers and I found a lot of info on this floor to be quite interesting.

When we finished with the museum (and by finished I mean quickly looked at everything of interest), we went to return the audio guide and were happily surprised that we could keep the lanyard that was holding it as a souvenir! I think the lanyard alone is worth the 8 euro admission fee! Before heading back to the hostel, we had a look around the dealership attached to the museum, which is also impressively large, but only 3 floors, not 8. Although it’s quite a nice dealership, there didn’t appear to be that many people shopping there and we only saw a handful of sales people. I wonder how many cars they actually sell each month…