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When World War II came to an end, the first concern of Daimler-Benz was to rebuild the demolished factories. What was left of the historic collection in the western zones of occupation was tracked down by meticulous effort and brought back to Stuttgart. And so by 1949 the collection had reached a respectable size again; several gaps could already be closed by purchases in that year. New topics were added too. The holdings of the Racing department, vehicles, materials and documents, were transferred to the historic collection. But what was lacking was an imposing room where the objects could be shown to the public. They were temporarily placed in a “storage room for historic/exhibition engines, vehicles and other components”. But that would change soon: the first talks about the re-opening of the museum in new facilities were held in 1950; a room in Building 134a in Untertürkheim was envisaged as location. In August 1950 the project began taking shape; the Museum was to have a large display room, plus an area serving as archive for further parts of the collection.
This Daimler-Benz Museum opened to the public in 1951. Some 7,000 people visited the new showroom before the year was out. The historic exhibition of originals from more than six decades fascinated people, all the more because the new Mercedes-Benz models had increasingly little in common with the pre-war technology. Automobiles had changed so much that mechanics had to be specially trained to deal with “engines and vehicles from the early days”. The matter acquired special urgency in 1952 since “the Museum takes delight in more and more visitors and the vehicles also are used at special events”, a letter from the Museum to the Board of Management of Daimler-Benz AG remarked.
The Untertürkheim plant was growing, and the Museum too expanded its collection. In the 1950s the historic exhibition had to be relocated three times. In 1952 it was then located to Building 132b, on the ground level. Now the Museum had to be relocated once more, to the third floor (second upper floor) of Building 134b. At that point the collection encompassed 221 vehicles, chassis, engines and other exhibits. Most of them were put on display in the 1,520-square-meter room, which had skylights. Objections to this third-floor location proved unfounded at first, as the building had elevators to transport visitors and exhibits. However, the floor had to be reinforced in a few places so that it could take heavy loads, for example truck diesel engines, the Daimler locomotive and the Benz fire truck. Workshops and offices were set up in side rooms.
In 1952 the Museum team rediscovered a number of its historic vehicles in eastern Germany. During the war, nine vehicles dating from 1890 to 1911 had been moved to Weimar and twelve dating from 1885 to 1922 to Dresden. The nine Weimar vehicles turned up at the Technical Museum in Dresden in 1952 together with six of the Dresden vehicles. The cars were lost to the Stuttgart collection.
In March 1953 the Museum occupied its new room in Building 134b. With growing enthusiasm the guardians of history in Stuttgart searched for the missing links of brand history. In July 1953 a letter went out to all Daimler-Benz company-owned sales and service branches: headquarters was searching for “striking designs from our range” to complete the collection. Sought after: a 12/55 hp Mercedes-Benz chassis of the W 03 series with the early three-liter engine, a Mercedes-Benz Mannheim 370 (W 10 series), a Mercedes-Benz 170 (W 15 series) with six-cylinder engine, and a chas-sis of a Mercedes-Benz 290 (W 18 series).
The number of visitors to the provisional Daimler-Benz Museum rose steadily. To take advantage of this public attention, thought was given in 1954 to exhibiting current models in the historic collection. Six vehicles and several aircraft engines could be removed from the show collection for this purpose. The reason for planning a combination of the historic and the present was the lack of a showroom for new cars which could be included in the tours of the plant. Owing to the sharp rise in the number of visitors (a bus line took up service in 1954 to bring visitors from Stuttgart’s main train station to Untertürkheim) the idea was put off until the new Museum would be built. The large number of visitors already posed a challenge to the structural integrity of the Museum on the third floor. This was why the blue racing car transporter could not be included in the exhibition in 1955. Loaded, it would have been too heavy for the floor.
But in the following years the situation was to change. In 1955 the planning began for a large new Daimler-Benz Museum as a separate building on the grounds of the Untertürkheim plant. Construction started in 1958, in the middle of the Untertürkheim complex.
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