Zollmuseum Friedrichs, Customs museum in Aachen, Germany

Zollmuseum Friedrichs is a customs museum in Aachen with 22 rooms and around 3,000 objects displaying equipment, documents, and materials related to border control and trade regulations. The exhibits are organized into seven thematic sections spanning from medieval customs practices to modern border operations.

The museum was founded in 1984 by Christian Friedrichs, a former customs director, and occupies a red brick building from 1933 that originally served as offices for customs officials. The building itself reflects the development of border control practices across centuries.

The exhibits display confiscated items such as taxidermied animals, crocodile bags, and snakeskin products that reveal what goods were illegally traded across borders. These objects tell stories of the daily work and investigations carried out by customs officers.

The complex sits directly on the Dutch border: a two-storey red-brick main building with eleven window bays and a hipped roof, plus a single-storey clearance hall with a wide ramp and large windows facing the border traffic. Inside, functional partitions separate the former service rooms from the clearance areas, and a wooden stair railing leads between floors. The site has been on Aachen's monument list since 1998.

The exhibition includes a section on the "market of the black distillery", showing utensils and products of illegal spirits production, alongside forbidden souvenirs confiscated at the border. The museum was founded in 1984 by Christian Friedrichs, the retired head of the Aachen Nord customs office, and in August 2014 it was placed on the warning list of the German Cultural Council's Red List.