Chocolate Museum Cologne

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Logo of the Imhoff Chocolate Museum since 2006
General view of the museum complex from the Rhine (2017)

The Cologne Chocolate Museum is a cultural-historical special museum for chocolate in Cologne 's Altstadt-Süd district . The exhibition building, located on a peninsula in the Rheinauhafen , houses a collection on the history of chocolate and a permanent exhibition on modern chocolate production.

history

The founder of the museum was the Cologne chocolate manufacturer Hans Imhoff . Stollwerck AG , which has been majority owned by him since January 1972, was one of the leading, historically important chocolate manufacturers worldwide. It had an extensive pool of exhibits that the company owner noticed when moving to the new Cologne-Westhoven location in December 1975 . He came up with the idea of ​​building a chocolate museum, where these exhibits were better off. When the Stollwerck company moved to Cologne-Westhoven, he also ensured that a comprehensive inventory of business records and photos documenting the history of the company and the Stollwerck entrepreneurial family, as well as numerous exhibits, were preserved.

With his idea of ​​the museum, he initially met with skepticism. But he got involved in an experiment in which he organized an exhibition in Cologne's Gürzenich and presented a chocolate fountain for the 150th anniversary of the Stollwerck company from July 8 to August 20, 1989 . More than five times as many visitors came to the exhibition within six weeks as he had stipulated. The museum was built independently of the production facilities as the first building in the new Rheinauhafen urban district by the architect Fritz Eller .

Hans Imhoff According planned to create this Chocolate Museum from October 1991. The sales agreement of 23 January 1992 acquired Imhoff by the owner of the site, the ports and goods traffic Cologne , the Hall 10 , the Prussian customs office (1898), the Malakoff Tower and the swing bridge . It also consists of a new building, which was completed by October 1993, the shape of which symbolizes postmodern ship motifs. The opening of the Chocolate Museum took place on October 31, 1993. The construction costs of the only museum of its kind today amounted to 53 million DM.

In 2002, Hans Imhoff sold Stollwerck to Barry Callebaut AG . In 2006, the management of Barry Callebaut ended their collaboration with the Chocolate Museum and Lindt & Sprüngli became the museum's new partner. The name of the museum was then changed from Imhoff-Stollwerck-Schokoladenmuseum to Imhoff-Schokoladenmuseum . Currently (2019) it is called the Cologne Chocolate Museum .

exhibition

Chocolate fountain

The exhibition shows the entire history of chocolate, from its beginnings with the Olmec , Maya and Aztecs to today's chocolate-containing products and their production methods. A miniature production system is installed on the 4,000 m² exhibition area, which demonstrates to the visitor how industrial chocolate production works.

A walk-through tropical house  - a glass cube with an edge length of 10 meters - shows cocoa trees of the species Theobroma cacao and Theobroma grandiflorum . Some production facilities have been miniaturized and can be seen during the manufacturing process of small chocolate bars that are distributed to visitors at the entrance. A special attraction is the three-meter-high chocolate fountain , where an employee of the museum dips waffles in the liquid chocolate and distributes them to the visitors. In the entrance area of ​​the museum there is a shop with all kinds of chocolate and pralines with a focus on Lindt & Sprüngli products.

Precious collection items are porcelain and silver bowls from the 18th and 19th centuries and pieces from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica for drinking chocolate. Furthermore, historical machines and hollow molds for casting chocolate figures are on display. A collection of historic chocolate vending machines is also on display.

Location and importance

Swing bridge and chocolate museum

The museum is located in downtown Cologne on the Rheinau peninsula in the Rheinauhafen. With 4,000 guided tours and 650,000 visitors annually, it is the most visited museum in Cologne and one of the ten most visited museums in Germany. The operation of the museum does not require any subsidies, which is also supported by its own marketing department. It is used as an event location by the Schokoladenmuseum Gastronomie GmbH .

operator

The museum is operated by the Schokoladenmuseum Köln GmbH . The Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt & Sprüngli has been a new partner in the production exhibition area since March 2006 . This partnership was previously supported by the Cologne chocolate manufacturer Stollwerck, which was also reflected in the museum's old name (Imhoff-Stollwerck Museum).

Web links

Commons : Imhoff-Schokoladenmuseum  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Otto Eglau: Does Imhoff have backers? In: Die Zeit Archive: Die Zeit, No. 06/1972. February 11, 1972. Retrieved March 22, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Andreas Moll: The house for those who make happiness - 20 years of the Chocolate Museum ( Memento from April 26, 2017 in the Internet Archive ). In: MeineSüdstadt.de. November 4, 2013, accessed March 22, 2019.
  3. ↑ Susanne Schramm: The Chocolate Museum opened in Cologne 25 years ago. In: General-Anzeiger-Bonn.de. April 13, 2018, accessed March 22, 2019 .
  4. ^ Chocolate Museum in Cologne. In: Holiday Destinations.com. Retrieved March 22, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Stollwerck becomes Lindt. In: Rundschau-Online.de. March 12, 2006, accessed March 26, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Schokoladenumseum Cologne , schokonews, December 4, 2012
  7. ↑ 25 years of the Chocolate Museum in Cologne , koeln-magazin.info, 2018
  8. ↑ Hans H. Hinterhuber, Harald Pechlaner, Kurt Matzler (eds.): IndustrieErlebnisWelten - From location to destination. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-503-06015-4 , p. 94.

Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 55.9 ″  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 51.4 ″  E