Optical Museum Jena

The Optical Museum Jena is a scientific-technological museum.The Optical Museum Jena shows optical instruments from eight centuries. It gives a technical and cultural-historical survey of the development of optical instruments. The development of the city Jena to the centre of the optical industries since the mid-19th-century is integrated in the exhibition, connected with the lifeworks of Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott.In cooperation with the art club Jena non-optical themes are offered in special exhibitions.Before the opening of the Zeiss Museum of Optics in Oberkochen in 2014, the Optical Museum Jena was the only museum of its kind in Germany.HistoryBesides the production of microscopes, Carl Zeiss took over repairing optical instruments of other manufacturers. He did this to pursue the rivalries development. At the turn from 19th to the 20th century, the staff of the Carl Zeiss company began to collect optical instruments.In June 1922, the Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung established the Optical Museum; the exhibition was located in the neighbouring Volkshaus (community hall). Johannes Schreiter and Hans Schlag designed a building for the 1917 founded "college of ophthalmology". The reinforced concrete construction was carried out during 1923/24 by the company Dyckerhoff & Widmann (DYWIDAG) from Nuremberg. In October 1924, the exhibition was moved into the new building at no. 12 Carl-Zeiss-Platz in which it is still housed today. The collections were reserved for a selected group of people for purposes of research and not open to the public.