They all document important aspects of industrial history: mechanical production and manual labour, time discipline and work safety, entrepreneurial self-perceptions and social criticism, female, male and child labour, armaments production and forced labour, migration, the crisis in the coal and steel industries, living conditions and lifestyles. Besides valuable and aesthetically high-quality items, there are also more inconspicuous objects: authentic testimonies to people's work and everyday life. The collection focuses on the period between 1850 and 2000.