New York-Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie

The Museum der Arbeit uses parts of the premises formerly owned by the New York-Hamburger Gummi-Waaren Compagnie Aktiengesellschaft (= joint-stock company). Founded in 1871, it took up production two years later and moved to Harburg in 1954, where, in 1930, it had already taken over the oldest hard-rubber factory in Germany, and where production continues to the present day. This specific company history, with production sites at various points in Hamburg and a New York connection that does not relate to ownership, but to the U.S.A.'s lead in unvulcanized rubber technology at the time, presents a challenge and a growing chance for the Museum as increasing parts of the premises become available for its use. For the time being an open-air demonstration will show how, after initial growth till the outbreak of the First World War, the factory was then turned over to different uses, and, after being destroyed in World War II, underwent yet another major change of product. For this purpose a number of exhibition units will be set up, variously entitled:

The Vulcanization Process

Nature, science and technology

Business - City - Products

Working for fascinating products and profits

Men and Machines

Workers and work-places in a factory

The Factory and Society

Industrialists and wage-earners

These exhibitions will be located in three small "cabinets" inside the former New Factory, which, some ninety years after its construction, has been accommodated to the Museum's needs. Starting from this erstwhile large-scale concern, typical of a production sector that was to become a trail-blazer for the synthetics industry, we will come to face larger issues concerning the factory system and the industrialization of the Hamburg region in the 19th and 20th centuries. Using a variety of appliances and products, as well as visual, written and aural documents, differing perspectives will be traced: those of the management, the authorities, of numerous associations and of the historically minded - but, above all, from the point of view of the wage-earners. Factory life, past and present - the latter especially in the case of comb production - will be represented in a way that takes account of such determining factors as politics and the economy, and which encourages the visitor to view the present with "involved awareness", inviting reflexion on our dual roles as both subjects and objects of history.