Historical Technical Museum, Peenemünde

The Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum

Historisch-Technisches Museum Peenemünde
Power Station exhibition building
Former name	Peenemünde Information Centre for History and Technology
Established	1991 (1991)
Location	Peenemünde, Germany
Type	Technology museum
Visitors	222,000 (2008)
Director	Michael Gericke
Website	Official Website

The Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum (German: Historisch-Technisches Museum Peenemünde or HTM), former "Peenemünde Information Centre for History and Technology" (German: Historisch-Technisches Informationszentrum Peenemünde or HTI) is a museum, founded in 1991, in the observation bunker and site of the former power station in Peenemünde on the island of Usedom in eastern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany. The museum is dedicated to the history of the Peenemünde Army Research Centre and the Luftwaffe test site of "Peenemünde-West", especially the rockets and missiles developed there between 1936 and 1945. Since January 2007 the information centre has become an anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH), a Europe-wide network of industrial monuments, and a part of the ERIH themed routes for Energy and Transport & Communication.

In 2008 around the museum had 222,000 visitors including many school classes. Around € 6.5M were invested in the museum's renovation and expansion; a further investment of € 3.9 M is planned. In 2002 the HTM was given the Coventry Cross of Nails and in 2013 the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award .

The main purpose of the exhibition in the power station is to be a memorial site where visitors can learn from exhibits, documents and films about the fateful pact made by the rocket engineers around Wernher von Braun with former powers in order to develop the aerospace industry.

In the mid-1960s, building on his technical experience from Peenemünde, Wernher von Braun was able to design the Saturn V rocket for NASA that was used to fly to the moon. The role of the former rocket engineer in Peenemünde, however, was to develop weapons of war. Spectacular films show visitors how V-1 flying bombs worked.