With a collection that has grown to over 7.5 kilometers of shelf space, the Historical Archive at the Deutsches Technikmuseum is one of the largest specialized archives in the German-speaking museum landscape. The archive collects and preserves valuable and unique archival sources such as documents, files, correspondence, and business records relating to the history of technology, economics, and society. In addition, there is the image archive, which contains over one million photographs and negatives. The foundation was laid in 1984 with the archives of the support associations and predecessor museums. Of particular note are the holdings of the Transportation and Construction Museum from the former Hamburger Bahnhof, as well as those of the Institute and Museum of Marine Science. Since then, the collection has been expanded to include over 125 corporate and association archives from industry, trade, and commerce, as well as more than 400 estates and collections belonging to prominent figures in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, technology, and transportation.

Among the historical corporate archives — such as those of the long-established companies A. Borsig GmbH, Meierei C. Bolle, L. Schwartzkopff, RAW Warschauer Straße, Teltowkanal AG, and Zündapp GmbH — the AEG-Telefunken corporate archive holds a prominent place. Spanning 1.2 kilometers of shelf space, it documents the eventful history of one of Germany’s largest electronics conglomerates through numerous documents, including photographs and films. Among the most important collections in the Historical Archives are also the personal papers and collections of materials belonging to radio and television pioneer Gerhard Goebel, locomotive designer Adolf Giesl-Gieslingen, and the unique collections of aviation historians Peter M. Grosz, Arthur Schreiber, and Willy Stiasny.
 

The holdings are supplemented by extensive special collections, such as travel brochures, tickets, and postcards. Of particular significance is the collection of plans, which includes 5,000 technical drawings related to mechanical engineering and 30,000 maps of land and sea.