On August 31st, 2026, the Zuse Computer Museum (ZCOM), in Hoyerswerda, Saxony, closed its regular permanent exhibition doors and the collection it has amassed faces dispersal by the end of the year. Can anything be done to preserve this unique heritage?
In Germany, Konrad Zuse is known as "der Vater des Computers", and as our history article about him points out, he does indeed have a strong claim to having invented the very first working computer, the Z3. To know more see Z3 Completed This Day In 1941 .
Born in Berlin in 1910, Zuse moved with his family to Hoyerswerda in 1923, aged 13 and completed his secondary education there. To recognize his connection with the town, honorary citizenship was bestowed upon him in 1995, the same year as his death, and the town now calls itself "Konrad Zuse City".
The original ZCOM was established in 1995 as a small exhibition. It had to close in 2013, but was reopened in 2017 thanks to the support of Hoyerswerda's municipal housing company, which provided it with 1,000 square metres of exhibition space below residential apartments and a basement storage area together with an initial endowment of 50,000 euros and ongoing subsidies.
The ZCOM collection comprises 18,000 historical computing devices and hardware artifacts, ranging from early mechanical slide rules and calculating machines to Zuse computers, mainframes from the East German manufacture Robotron, and modern smartphones. However, it also has a hidden treasure - a specialized technical library containing 6,000 volumes.
It was expected that the museum would attract 20 to 25,000 paying visitors a year, but last year it was visited by only 10,314, and was set to incur a deficit of 93,000 euros this year.
At the same time, the city of Hoyerswerda is facing a financial crunch of its own and had decided to withdraw both its financial subsidies and the use of its building, giving the ZCOM foundation until the end of the year to vacate the premises.
It has to be hoped that this unique collection can be preserved. One possibility could be to form alliances with the Konrad-Zuse-Museum in Hünfeld (North Hesse), which also honors Zuse's life and work.
More Information
Konrad Zuse Museum in Hoyerswerda closed
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Konrad Zuse and The First Working Computers
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