The Founding Years
The idea finds many supporters.
In 1903, Oskar von Miller founded the Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Naturwissenschaft und Technik with support from many quarters. The city of Munich donates the Isar Island as a building site. Prince Ludwig of Bavaria assumes the protectorate. Entrepreneurs and famous scientists from Germany and abroad advise on the construction of the departments. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences donates its valuable collections. Exhibits arrive in Munich from all over the world.
They are exhibited provisionally from 1906 in the old Bavarian National Museum (now the Museum Five Continents) and from 1909 in the former Schwere-Reiter barracks on the site of today's German Patent and Trade Mark Office. With dioramas, demonstrations and experiment stations, the museum's worldwide reputation as a place for entertaining knowledge transfer was already established here.
From the very beginning, the museum also offered a library and an archive, which were to build on the collections and deepen the museum experience. The foundation for today's research museum is laid.