Sugar Museum (Berlin)
Encyclopedia
The Sugar Museum in Berlin
, devoted to the history and technology of sugar
, is the oldest such museum in the world, having opened in 1904. It is now part of the German Museum of Technology and is housed in the Institut für Lebensmitteltechnologie (Institute of Food Technology) in Wedding
in Mitte
.
Exhibits are labelled in German only, although an English-language pamphlet describing them is also available. Lonely Planet
calls the Sugar Museum "quirky... a surprisingly entertaining exhibit where you’ll learn all about the origin of sugar and its chemistry."
discovered beet sugar there in 1747, and his student Franz Carl Achard was the first to produce it, beginning in 1783, in Kaulsdorf, which became part of Greater Berlin in 1920. In 1799 he presented the product to King Frederick William III of Prussia
, who sponsored him in establishing in 1801 the first beet sugar production facility in the world in Cunern, in Silesia
(now Konary, Wołów County, Poland
).
In 1867 a sugar research laboratory was established in Berlin under Carl Scheibler
. On 8 May 1904, the Institute for Sugar Industry which had developed out of this opened, and the Sugar Museum simultaneously opened on the upper floor of the building, as the first such institution in the world. Edmund Oskar von Lippmann is largely credited for the opening of the museum. In 1945, the museum became the property of Berlin, and in 1978 of the Technical University of Berlin
. In 1988, it became a state museum of the former GDR and, after a year of renovations, reopened on 22 September 1989. Since 1 November 1995, it has been a branch museum of the German Museum of Technology. The museum remains in its original building in the sugar industry neighbourhood of Wedding.
The Sugar Museum has 450 square meters of floor space devoted to the history and technology of sugar. About 20,000 people visit it every year.
(Saccharum spp.), from its use more than 10,000 years ago by the natives of Melanesia
as a source of nutrition to the first report of it in the West by generals of Alexander the Great, successive improvements in sugar refining and its planting on the island of Hispaniola
. The exhibits include sugar harvesting and refining machinery and information on agricultural pests which affect sugar.
was well suited to growing sugar, beginning in the 16th century, sugar was a major product of Western colonialism. Refining the sugar in the colonies where it was grown was legally discouraged or forbidden, so it was shipped back to Europe. The exhibits include models of the ships used and portray the development of major centres of sugar trading and refining in cities like Antwerp, Amsterdam
, Bordeaux
, Hamburg
and London
and the hard conditions for workers in both the sugar plantations and the sugar refineries. In the European refineries, the sugar industry pioneered the use of guest workers, in England predominantly Germans, who had a reputation for hard work, good humour, and the ability to withstand the heat.
shows the steps in the production of sugar from sugar beets in Nauen
around 1920.
In addition, a large 1903 painting by Clara Elisabeth Fischer, commissioned by E.O. von Lippmann for the museum, depicts a fictional scene of Franz Carl Achard, the 'inventor' of beet sugar, presenting his discovery to King Frederick William III in the form of a sugarloaf
; Achard actually sent his beet sugar to the king. All known varieties of sugar beet today descend from the plants developed by Achard over 20 years of selective breeding in Kaulsdorf.
and bagasse
; the production of biodegradeable
plastics, ethanol
and yeast are examples of the broader context of the sugar industry.
Exhibits explore issues of the relationship between sugar consumption and health and present alternative sweeteners, but also depict the fundamental role of sugar as a means of delivering energy in both plants and animals. Sugar can never be totally replaced by other sweeteners.
sugary liquids to produce alcohol (ethanol
). This section of the museum, housed in the winter garden, covers the discovery of alcohol (probably from consumption of fermented fruit) and the history of the use of sugar to make wine, beer and distilled
alcoholic beverages such as whisky and brandy, as far back as the Sumer
ians, who brewed beer 6,000 years ago.
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, devoted to the history and technology of sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
, is the oldest such museum in the world, having opened in 1904. It is now part of the German Museum of Technology and is housed in the Institut für Lebensmitteltechnologie (Institute of Food Technology) in Wedding
Wedding (Berlin)
Wedding is a locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany and was a separate borough in the north-western inner city until it was fused with Tiergarten and Mitte in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform...
in Mitte
Mitte
Mitte is the first and most central borough of Berlin. It was created in Berlin's 2001 administrative reform by the merger of the former districts of Mitte proper, Tiergarten and Wedding; the resulting borough retained the name Mitte. It is one of the two boroughs which comprises former West and...
.
Exhibits are labelled in German only, although an English-language pamphlet describing them is also available. Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet is the largest travel guide book and digital media publisher in the world. The company is owned by BBC Worldwide, which bought a 75% share from the founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler in 2007 and the final 25% in February 2011...
calls the Sugar Museum "quirky... a surprisingly entertaining exhibit where you’ll learn all about the origin of sugar and its chemistry."
History
Berlin played an important role in the history of sugar production. Andreas Sigismund MarggrafAndreas Sigismund Marggraf
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf was a German chemist and pioneer of analytical chemistry from Berlin, which was then the capital of Brandenburg, a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire. He isolated zinc in 1746 by heating calamine and carbon...
discovered beet sugar there in 1747, and his student Franz Carl Achard was the first to produce it, beginning in 1783, in Kaulsdorf, which became part of Greater Berlin in 1920. In 1799 he presented the product to King Frederick William III of Prussia
Frederick William III of Prussia
Frederick William III was king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840. He was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel .-Early life:...
, who sponsored him in establishing in 1801 the first beet sugar production facility in the world in Cunern, in Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
(now Konary, Wołów County, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
).
In 1867 a sugar research laboratory was established in Berlin under Carl Scheibler
Carl Scheibler
Carl Wilhelm Bernhard Scheibler was a German chemist. Scheibler's research focused on sugar, including the technical chemistry of sugar production and the composition of molasses....
. On 8 May 1904, the Institute for Sugar Industry which had developed out of this opened, and the Sugar Museum simultaneously opened on the upper floor of the building, as the first such institution in the world. Edmund Oskar von Lippmann is largely credited for the opening of the museum. In 1945, the museum became the property of Berlin, and in 1978 of the Technical University of Berlin
Technical University of Berlin
The Technische Universität Berlin is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. Translating the name into English is discouraged by the university, however paraphrasing as Berlin Institute of Technology is recommended by the university if necessary .The TU Berlin was founded...
. In 1988, it became a state museum of the former GDR and, after a year of renovations, reopened on 22 September 1989. Since 1 November 1995, it has been a branch museum of the German Museum of Technology. The museum remains in its original building in the sugar industry neighbourhood of Wedding.
The Sugar Museum has 450 square meters of floor space devoted to the history and technology of sugar. About 20,000 people visit it every year.
Permanent exhibition
The long-time director of the Sugar Museum, Hubert Olbrich, said in 1989 that its purpose was "To show and thus bring before the public the history and the development of sugar into a staple food of humanity, how it is obtained and how it is used". The museum's permanent exhibits cover the science and nutrition of sugar and its history from technological, cultural and political standpoints. They are organised into seven thematic groups:Sugarcane
This section describes the biology and cultivation history of sugarcaneSugarcane
Sugarcane refers to any of six to 37 species of tall perennial grasses of the genus Saccharum . Native to the warm temperate to tropical regions of South Asia, they have stout, jointed, fibrous stalks that are rich in sugar, and measure two to six metres tall...
(Saccharum spp.), from its use more than 10,000 years ago by the natives of Melanesia
Melanesia
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region comprises most of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia...
as a source of nutrition to the first report of it in the West by generals of Alexander the Great, successive improvements in sugar refining and its planting on the island of Hispaniola
Hispaniola
Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...
. The exhibits include sugar harvesting and refining machinery and information on agricultural pests which affect sugar.
Sugar in colonialism
Since the climate in the CaribbeanCaribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
was well suited to growing sugar, beginning in the 16th century, sugar was a major product of Western colonialism. Refining the sugar in the colonies where it was grown was legally discouraged or forbidden, so it was shipped back to Europe. The exhibits include models of the ships used and portray the development of major centres of sugar trading and refining in cities like Antwerp, Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and the hard conditions for workers in both the sugar plantations and the sugar refineries. In the European refineries, the sugar industry pioneered the use of guest workers, in England predominantly Germans, who had a reputation for hard work, good humour, and the ability to withstand the heat.
The slave trade
The great demand for sugar in Europe and the resulting ever increasing need for plantation workers led to the near extinction of the natives and made sugar production dependent on African slaves. Current estimates are that between 1500 and 1850, some 20 million people were forcibly transported to the Americas. Exhibits in the Sklavenwirtschaft / Plantagenwirtschaft (Slave trade / Plantation trade) section of the museum depict the inhumane conditions on slave ships and give glimpses into the lives of the workers in the New World. The European demand for sugar was so great, however, and the resulting wealth of the "West India interest" so influential, that despite the boycott efforts of the 'Anti-Sacharrites', not until sugar could be made from sugar beets did antislavery advocates prevail, as for example they did in England in 1807 with the passage of the Slave Trade Act.The sugar beet in Prussia
The discovery of beet sugar changed sugar from a luxury good to a mass commodity in Berlin in a little over a century. Exhibits in this section of the museum include a model of the first sugar beet processing plant in the world, built in Silesia in 1801, which demonstrates both the progress which was required before sugar could be industrially produced, and the working conditions in such plants. A 14-part dioramaDiorama
The word diorama can either refer to a nineteenth century mobile theatre device, or, in modern usage, a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum...
shows the steps in the production of sugar from sugar beets in Nauen
Nauen
Nauen is a town in the Havelland district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated 38 km west of Berlin and 26 km northwest of Potsdam.-History:...
around 1920.
In addition, a large 1903 painting by Clara Elisabeth Fischer, commissioned by E.O. von Lippmann for the museum, depicts a fictional scene of Franz Carl Achard, the 'inventor' of beet sugar, presenting his discovery to King Frederick William III in the form of a sugarloaf
Sugarloaf
A sugarloaf was the traditional form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end product of a process that saw the dark molasses-rich raw sugar, which had been imported from...
; Achard actually sent his beet sugar to the king. All known varieties of sugar beet today descend from the plants developed by Achard over 20 years of selective breeding in Kaulsdorf.
Sugar production
With increasing industrialisation, sugar from beets became a staple food in Germany. This section of the museum covers the geographic distribution of sugar production in Germany, the advances in its cultivation and processing over the past 100 years, and the economic and ecological significance of byproducts such as molassesMolasses
Molasses is a viscous by-product of the processing of sugar cane, grapes or sugar beets into sugar. The word molasses comes from the Portuguese word melaço, which ultimately comes from mel, the Latin word for "honey". The quality of molasses depends on the maturity of the sugar cane or sugar beet,...
and bagasse
Bagasse
Bagasse is the fibrous matter that remains after sugarcane or sorghum stalks are crushed to extract their juice. It is currently used as a biofuel and as a renewable resource in the manufacture of pulp and paper products and building materials....
; the production of biodegradeable
Biodegradation
Biodegradation or biotic degradation or biotic decomposition is the chemical dissolution of materials by bacteria or other biological means...
plastics, ethanol
Ethanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
and yeast are examples of the broader context of the sugar industry.
A world without sugar
This section of the museum tells the consumer side of the story of sugar since the 18th century, its use as a status symbol, a medicinal cure and finally an everyday element used far more in foods than is generally realised. One display area shows luxury items of porcelain or precious metals made to hold sugar when it was a very expensive item.Exhibits explore issues of the relationship between sugar consumption and health and present alternative sweeteners, but also depict the fundamental role of sugar as a means of delivering energy in both plants and animals. Sugar can never be totally replaced by other sweeteners.
No alcohol without sugar
For at least 7,000 years, people have been fermentingEthanol fermentation
Ethanol fermentation, also referred to as alcoholic fermentation, is a biological process in which sugars such as glucose, fructose, and sucrose are converted into cellular energy and thereby produce ethanol and carbon dioxide as metabolic waste products...
sugary liquids to produce alcohol (ethanol
Ethanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
). This section of the museum, housed in the winter garden, covers the discovery of alcohol (probably from consumption of fermented fruit) and the history of the use of sugar to make wine, beer and distilled
Distilled beverage
A distilled beverage, liquor, or spirit is an alcoholic beverage containing ethanol that is produced by distilling ethanol produced by means of fermenting grain, fruit, or vegetables...
alcoholic beverages such as whisky and brandy, as far back as the Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
ians, who brewed beer 6,000 years ago.
Special exhibitions
The museum also mounts occasional special exhibitions. These have included:- Zuckermotive auf Briefmarken" (sugar motifs on postage stamps), 6 May – 7 July 1991.
- "Zuckergefäße und Zuckergeräte aus Silber" (silver sugar containers and utensils), 10 June 1993 – mid-June 2001.
- "Das Zuckerbankett zur Jülicher Hochzeit in Düsseldorf 1585" (the sugar banquet at the Jülich wedding in Düsseldorf in 1585): accurate reconstruction of the historic banquet, 11 October 1998 – 11 March 1999.
- "Brause – Limo & Co": sugared drinks sold at the turn of the twentieth century, 3 May 1999 – 10 February 2000.
- "Mit Landesväterlicher Freude vernommen – Rübenzucker in Preußen" (perceived with joy by the father of our country—beet sugar in Prussia): cane sugar and beet sugar in Prussia, 22 September 2001 – 17 February 2002.
- "Süßes Berlin – Zuckerbauwerke" (sweet Berlin—sugar constructions): sugar models of buildings and monuments in Berlin, to open the newly renovated top floor exhibit space, 4 July 2002 – 22 July 2003.
- "Andere Saiten aufziehen" (re-stringing the fiddle): illumination through experiments of Achard's work in celebration of his 250th anniversary, 30 August 2003 – 20 June 2004.
- "Zwischen Rübe und Kristall" (between beet and crystals): on the chemical and physical analysis of sugar, 25 August 2005 – 2 September 2007.
Sources
- Hubert Olbrich. Zucker-Museum: anläßlich der Wiedereröffnung am 22. September 1989. Schriften aus dem Zucker-Museum. Berlin: Zucker-Museum, 1989. OCLC 602985912
- Hermann Dressler and Hubert Olbrich, eds. Zucker-Museum im Berliner Zucker-Institut: Katalog. Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Zuckerwirtschaft und der Zuckerindustrie 5. Berlin: Institut für Zuckerindustrie, 1975. OCLC 636638403