Deutsches Knopfmuseum, Button museum in Bärnau, Germany

The German Button Museum is a museum in Bärnau devoted entirely to the history and variety of buttons. It displays collections from four centuries, made from 26 different materials such as wood, glass, metal, and mother-of-pearl, along with the old machines and methods used in their production.

The museum was founded in 1975 from the private collection of Rudolf Jäpel and moved to the former municipal brewery building. This relocation in 1998 gave the collection a permanent home and helped preserve button manufacturing as an important part of local economic history.

The museum shows how buttons became part of everyday life and changed with fashion across generations. The collection reflects that Bärnau was once the center of German button manufacturing, where craftsmanship and industrial production met.

The museum is housed in a former brewery building that is easy to find and access. It helps to allow time for exploring carefully, since the collection is extensive and filled with small, detailed objects that reward close looking.

Johann Müller, a trained button maker, started Bärnau's button industry in July 1895, working mother-of-pearl shells imported from equatorial regions by hand. Around 1909, some 160 home workers and 140 factory workers were employed, many of them women. The museum documents this trade, which peaked at 32 button factories in 1957 and still had two in 2023.