The DLM – the German Leather Museum Offenbach – unites three museums under one roof: the Shoe Museum with international footwear from four milennia and an art gallery, the Museum of Applied Art with handicrafts and design from the Middle Ages to the present and the Museum of Ethnology, with the departments Africa, America and Asia.
In changing exhibitions featuring various themes of leather processing and history the Museum endeavours above all to show how leather is used in other cultures. Founded in 1917, the Museum’s location is no coincidence because the rise of the City of Offenbach since the close of the 18th century was closely associated with the leather industry.
The Museum’s collection includes, for example, the oldest known leather vessel, which was entombed in an Egyptian grave 6000 years ago, the briefcase used personally by the French Emperor Napoleon I and the pair of trainers worn by Joschka Fischer when swearing his oath of office.