Ledermuseum Offenbach

The German Leather Museum (Deutsches Ledermuseum) in Offenbach am Main is a public institution founded in 1917 by Hugo Eberhardt. The collection originally served as a historical model for training young craftsmen in the city's then-thriving leather goods industry. Today it holds more than 30,000 objects from a variety of cultures and eras, ranging from everyday items to luxury goods. The current director is Inez Florschütz, who has led the museum since 2014. The museum is funded largely by the city of Offenbach and is a protected cultural monument. Visitors can reach the collections without barriers thanks to ramps and elevators.

Since 1938, the museum has been housed in a former warehouse of the Offenbach trade fair, built in the Neoclassical style in 1829. Made of unplastered rubble masonry with a striking central projection, the building bears witness to the city's economic heyday in the 19th century. The museum brings together three main areas: the Applied Arts Collection, the Ethnological Collection, and the German Shoe Museum. The Applied Arts department features masterpieces of European leatherwork from the Middle Ages to the present, including historic bags, suits of armor, book bindings, and design objects from the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Ethnological Collection offers a cross-continental look at the use of leather around the world. Its main focus is on the departments for North America, Africa, and Asia, and its collection of Oriental shadow puppets made of parchment is considered one of the most important in the world. The German Shoe Museum rounds out the offerings with more than 15,000 exhibits of international footwear spanning four millennia. Among other things, you can see boots worn by Roman legionaries, elegant silk shoes of the 18th-century nobility, and contemporary designs. The museum also has a cinema hall for changing events and displays the reconstructed portal of the J. Mayer & Sohn leather works on its forecourt as a monument to the city's industrial history.