The Industriemuseum Geschichtswerkstatt Herrenwyk documents the work in the blast furnace and the life of the workers in the industrial area of ​​Lübeck, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s. The museum presents the industrial and working-class culture of Lübeck as a whole.

The museum documents an important period for the city: for centuries, in fact, the city of Lübeck had lived mainly on trade. Industrialization began towards the end of the 19th century and developed into the engine of Lübeck's economic life in the 20th century. Blast furnaces, shipyards, mechanical engineering and food processing were the most important branches of the economy, which employed tens of thousands of workers, especially in the 1950s, at the time of the "economic miracle". Since the 1980s, more and more companies have disappeared, thousands of jobs have been lost, causing serious economic and social problems in the city.

The museum's collection includes machines and tools from various branches of Lübeck's industry and crafts, especially the blast furnace, its workshops and shipbuilding. It also includes many objects from the domestic and everyday life of the 20th century (furniture, household and kitchen appliances, toys). There is also a larger collection of office machines. In addition, the museum has detected individual collections of a wide variety of objects from private collectors. The museum archive has a large collection of photos from various industrial companies in Lübeck, mainly the blast furnace plant and its operational parts, the Flender shipyard and the mechanical engineering company (LMG) in Lübeck. also files and documents of these companies. Finally, there are also documents from private bequests (poetry albums, diaries, letters).