Papiermuseum Düren

(Düren Paper Museum)

The Düren Paper Museum is located in the immediate vicinity of the Leopold Hoesch Museum. Following structural renovation and a redesign of its content, it has been showing the origins and historical developments of paper as a material, its production, use and processing, its regional industrial history and its innovative capacity since 2018. In the "Arts" section, cultural-historical exhibitions on the subject of paper can be seen there.

The use of paper has a long tradition in Düren. Paper has been produced and processed along the Rur River since 1576. On the initiative of the Düren paper industry and private individuals interested in paper, the Förderverein Düren-Jülich Euskirchener Papiergeschichte e.V. was founded in 1984. This association was committed to the establishment of a paper museum. In 1990, with the help of public and private funds, it was opened as the first German museum dedicated to paper. The foundation for a paper museum was laid as early as the early 1930s with the inclusion of paper-historical objects in the universal collection of the LHM, and a paper-history department was set up. Historical papers with watermarks from the 14th to the 19th century and paper products and objects from the last three hundred years, which have been collected since then, today represent central exhibits for the Düren Paper Museum.

In 1985, for example, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Dürener Maschinenfabrik Dörries GmbH, the LHM received the inventory of a paper workshop as a donation intended for the Düren Paper Museum, which was already being planned at that time. Since then, a strategic collecting activity of art objects made of and with paper has also enriched the art collections of the LHM.