The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Germany is no dusty bore-fest

Few questions are more likely to send me to sleep than: “Do you want to spend an afternoon at a museum?” Static displays of anything, with the possible exception of art, induce terminal levels of boredom – and, yes, that includes car museums. Cars are meant to move, to be driven and be enjoyed in motion, not viewed behind glass or rope barriers where signs tell curious visitors not to touch anything. Most motoring museums I’ve visited don’t even provide information on the cars being displayed – surely a prerequisite for any establishment featuring some of history’s most fascinating vehicles.

So when I saw “visit to Mercedes-Benz Museum” on the itinerary for my visit to Stuttgart in Germany last week, my heart sank ever so slightly. Yet, as I emerge from the bowels of this enormous concrete edifice, I’m convinced that this is the finest of its kind in the world. I’d happily re-enter and spend another four hours inside, so fascinating is it, even for those who couldn’t care less about the history of the car.

Mercedes-Benz has more history than anyone else when it comes to the automobile. On January 29, 1886, Karl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine” – that patent (number 37,435) is generally regarded as the birth certificate of the car. By July of the same year, newspapers were reporting the first public outing of the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motor Car, model no 1. The first of the museum’s main displays features a perfect re-creation of that vehicle.

But before visitors see that, the place already makes a huge impression. The structure itself is based on a unique cloverleaf concept using three overlapping circles with the centre removed to form a triangular atrium. Opened in May 2006, both the architecture and the exhibition concept are closely interwoven, as the exhibition designer, H G Merz, was commissioned well before any construction began. Concrete is omnipresent, providing a stark and unforgiving backdrop that serves to highlight the displays rather than steal any limelight from them.

It’s a place that hits you right between the eyes and keeps pummeling the senses. The lifts to the first exhibition hall from the ground floor are worth the entry price alone, silently gliding up and down the faces of the walls that form the central atrium and designed to look like the wildest invention of some 1920s mad professor.

Visitors are guided via interactive headsets from the very first Benz and Daimler cars all the way through to the models that we see on our streets and race tracks today. But rather than just tell the story of how a single brand has progressed over the decades, the walls leading patrons from exhibit to exhibit are covered with framed photos, video screens, display cabinets and information panels that put each generation of vehicle into its historical context. Whatever was happening in Germany at the time, or elsewhere in the world, whether it was an invention, a fashion, a discovery or defining event, is described and illustrated in glorious detail.

And don’t think for a second that Mercedes-Benz has skipped some of the more, shall we say, embarrassing parts of its history. The company’s hideous past as part of the Nazi regime, including its use of forced labour supplied by the Third Reich, is laid bare for all to see. It’s sobering to look at actual ledgers detailing labourers and their camps, and upsetting to witness first-hand the lengths that companies went to just to sate the horrific demands of the most infamous despot of all. But it’s heartening to see that Mercedes-Benz did its utmost to right those wrongs.

It’s also fascinating to see how the company’s cars have evolved over the decades, forging ahead in passenger safety and environmental efficiency. This isn’t really a museum at all; it’s a moving tribute to design and engineering – I could spend days here and still not take it all in. If Germany features on your holiday or business destination list, try to include this on your itinerary – I can’t recommend it highly enough.

khackett@thenational.ae

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