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CULTURE

Nine things you might be surprised came from Germany

You've heard of Pretzels and Laugenstangen, but German inventors have brought a lot more into the world than novelty bread shapes. Here are nine life-changing inventions you might not realise came from Germany.

Published: 22 July 2021 16:38 CEST
Updated: 5 January 2024 16:39 CET
Nine things you might be surprised came from Germany
Who knew a German inventor was responsible for the invention that keeps your groceries fresh? Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-tmn | Christin Klose

Germany is well-known for its rich cultural landscape, literature, poetry and art, as well as for some of its great minds and public celebrity figures. 

However, a lot of inventions which stemmed originally from Germany which not many people are aware of, ranging from centuries and centuries ago to the present day. Some of them might even surprise you.

  • The fridge

Something we’re all particularly grateful for at this time of the year, you should thank Carl von Linde for this invention. An engineering professor from Berndorf, Bavaria, Linde patented the process of liquefying gas that has become essential in refrigeration technology in 1876. 

He quickly developed his findings to invent the first functional and efficient compressed-ammonia refrigerator. His discovery also aided development in cryogenics, physics, chemistry and engineering. 

Prior to Linde, iceboxes were used instead of refrigerators. These were insulated boxes lined with tin or zinc which held blocks of ice to keep the food cool, but had to be emptied and replaced daily. 

So the next time you’re grabbing a midnight bite from your hardy, reliable refrigerator, give a thought to Linde’s efforts to make our snacking as low-maintenance as possible. 

  • The accordion

The accordion was supposedly invented and designed by Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann in 1822, although some contest this idea as there is one earlier prototype with no attributed inventor which appears to be older. 

The accordion was inspired by the Asian Sheng, which was introduced to Europe in 1777. The later German model of the accordion was quickly adopted in Russia. Russian craftsmen started producing accordions rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s. 


Jürgen Karthe from the band “Carl Friedrich Tango Connection” plays his accordian in Chemnitz on July 2nd. Who would have thought we had Germany to thank for the heart-warming blare of an accordion? Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Hendrik Schmidt

Buschmann, who was from Thuringia, was an instrument maker who is also sometimes credited with inventing the harmonica, although this second claim is more dubious. 

If this tale does have any substance, though, Buschmann can be seen as responsible for the dulcet tones of much of the street music you might hear when walking through Munich or Nuremberg – though whether you think this is a compliment or not is up to you. 

  • Ear plugs

Okay, so Germans can’t technically claim to have thought up ear plugs since they feature in the ancient Greek epic, Odyssey, but the first mass-produced earplug design was produced by the German Max Negwer, who founded the company Ohropax to produce wax models.

Negwer had his fingers in a lot of different pies: he was a pharmacist, chemist and a factory owner. He received the patent for his ear plugs in 1907 and they started to be mass produced and sold in 1908.

The name ‘Ohropax’ combined the German for ‘ear’ and the Latin for ‘peace’ and exploited a growing market of Germans who professed to despise noise, associating it with the vice of the modern world.


Need a bit more quiet in your life? Germany has just the thing. Photo: picture alliance / Sebastian Gollnow/dpa | Sebastian Gollnow

In Hanover in 1907, Theodore Lessing had even founded the country’s first Antilärmverein (anti-noise society), which became a popular movement. Members of the club met to complain about the negative impact of modern noise on intellectual and cultural life.

So whether you’re using ear plugs to ensure the continued progression of cultural life or to block out your loud neighbours’ Friday night parties, we can probably all agree on the importance of Negwer’s invention.

READ ALSO: Nine things you might be surprised are actually Austrian

  • The contact lens

Although the contact lens was initially theorised by the Italian  Leonardo da Vinci and its first developments as an idea were led by the French René Descartes and the British Thomas Young, in the spirit of European collaboration, the first real contact lens was invented by the German ophthalmologist Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick. 

Tested first on rabbits, Fick finalised the lens in 1888, although it was far from the final design as the devices could only be worn for around two hours at a time. 

Nowadays contact lenses are worn by over 150 million people worldwide, either for vision correction or cosmetic purposes. 

  • The hole punch

The hole punch is a constant companion throughout your working life, from the most coveted item on the teacher’s desk to an admin staple at any desk job. However, not many are aware that it is a German invention, although in some ways this is not surprising given that many other Europeans associate Germans with organisation, punctuality and neatness. 

Two early patents linking the first hole punching device to the Matthias Theel have been discovered, whilst Friedrich Soennecken’s patent for the first ‘Papierlocher’ (paper punch) dates back to November 1886. Both were German.

Whether you’re grateful for his innovations or not, Soennecken was a major trailblazer in modern school and office life – he also invented the ring binder and a type of pen nib. In other words, he put an awful lot of effort into helping us organise our lives.

However, the hole punch is actually a slightly contested invention. When Google decided to mark its 131st anniversary online, they received criticism after basing it on the day that Soennecken received his patent for the device, with some claiming that the American Benjamin Smith technically invented it first. 

In 1885, Smith had received a US patent for a device that punched holes in train tickets, but the three-hole punch you see in offices is much closer to Soennecken’s design. 

  • The coffee filter

Speaking of office necessities, where would any of us be without this? The coffee filter was invented by Dresden housewife Melitta Bentz, who was frustrated by the quality of coffee produced by percolators, which left grounds in the drink and overbrewed it. 

With the desperation many coffee-lovers (or addicts) will recognise when they can’t get hold of their coveted morning caffeine, Bentz experimented using the blotting paper from her children’s school books and noticed that her coffee was far less bitter and almost free of pesky grounds. 

She patented the discovery and it became so successful that she even set up her own business, nowadays called ‘Melitta’ and still under the control of her family. 

The method is still used today, and remains a favourite among coffee connoisseurs.

  • Haribo

Haribo, the iconic brand of coloured gummy bears (called Gummibärchen in German), was invented by Hans Riegel in Bonn in 1922. He originally started making the sweets in a small kitchen with only some sugar, a marble slab, a stove and a rolling pin. 

Nowadays Haribo is available in over 100 countries and produces over 100 million gummy bears per day. 

And although you might know the English slogan for the bears as ‘kids and grown-ups love it so – the happy world of Haribo’, the original German catchphrase was ‘Haribo macht Kinder froh – und Erwachsene ebenso’, which translates to ‘Haribo makes children happy – and adults too’.


A 1950s Haribo advert declares that “Haribo macht Kinder froh” – and Hans Riegel’s invention is still making children happy today. Oh, and adults too. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/Haribo GmbH | Haribo GmbH

The brand name Haribo is an abbreviation of HAns RIegel von BOnn. 

  • Bacteriology

Bacteriology is the study of bacteria’s relationship to medicine and involves the identification, classification and characterisation of bacterial species. 

The German physician Robert Koch initially discovered the connection between microorganisms and disease. He discovered the bacteria that causes anthrax, septicaemia, tuberculosis and cholera, and his discoveries were key in helping others to identify other pathogens. Koch also developed many innovative new techniques in microbiology and has been a huge figure in the history of medicine. 

Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for disease control was named after him. 

READ ALSO: Germany’s top 10 tech inventions

  • The Pfizer vaccine

Just in case you weren’t aware, the Covid vaccine being used in many countries around the world is half German. It was co-developed by the pharmaceutical company BioNTech, based in Mainz, and Pfizer – based in New York City.

The science of the vaccine is the work of BioNTech, particularly the company co-founders and married couple Dr Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin. 

The value of BioNTech has soared into the billions since the development of the Covid vaccine, and both Sahin and Tureci now number among the 100 richest people in Germany. 

READ ALSO: Meet the husband-wife team behind the breakthrough Covid-19 vaccine

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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