200-item personal Schumacher collection opens

2018 F1 season

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The Michael Schumacher collection has opened today at the Motorworld theme park in Cologne, Germany, showcasing over 200 pieces from Schumacher’s private collection – as a celebration of his career and to share with fans.

The collection is hosted in a gallery, free to entry, containing 16 cars, 50 trophies, 25 helmets and many more items personally selected by the Schumacher family and Schumacher family manager and collection curator Sabine Kehm.

Speaking to Racefans’ Dieter Rencken today, Sabine said that “It’s a decision of Michael’s family to share with the fans, also as a thank you. As you know, family is really about loyalty and the fellowship but also because they know that Michael loves this stuff and they know that he loves that people love to share it with him. When he was celebrating victories he loved that people wanted to do so with him.

“He always liked it when he saw that people were happy as well, that’s very honestly the thing behind it.”

Termed a collection, rather than a museum, the principle is that this reinforces the personal nature of what is on display. Sabine Kehm said that “With a museum you try to collect all kinds of things from areas or person in order to showcase a life or career.

“We’ve put on display a part – a very important part, in my view, of Michael’s personal collection. And all the memorabilia here are from Michael’s own personal collection.”

The only items in the collection not personally belonging to Schumacher are a Mercedes sports car and Formula 1 car, considered important to represent the breadth of Michael’s career.

Amongst the personal items is a helmet made for Schumacher when it looked as though he would replace injured Felipe Massa at Ferrari in 2009. Neck issues prevented Schumacher taking up the role, so this represents the first publicly accessible display of the helmet.

The Michael Schumacher Collection is on display at Motorworld, Cologne.

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36 comments on “200-item personal Schumacher collection opens”

  1. Vettel fan 17 (@)
    15th June 2018, 17:49

    Cool, I hope I get to see it in the future. Nice gesture from his family

    1. Jonathan Parkin
      16th June 2018, 12:55

      I’d want to see his helmet from Monaco 1996. Although Michael retired from the race, his helmet did finish second courtesy of DC

  2. Is it free? I think a better gesture to fans would be to let us know how he is. I hope they are not cashing in on this at his expense, and it’s bizarre they are doing this at all, you usually do something like this for a dead person, or decades after they retire.

    1. I was no MS fan whatsoever, but I find your comments crass and classless.

    2. Yes, it has been confirmed that the entire exhibition will be free and open to the public every day of the week, so there does not seem to be any “cashing in at his expense”. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/new-schumacher-exhibition-unveiled-in-germany-1046243/

      As for the comment about why now, well, it is six years since he retired from the sport – most of the cars in that collection, meanwhile, would be around 15-20 years old, with the oldest (the 1991 Jordan) being 27 years old now. An entire generation has passed since he made his debut and an increasing proportion of the fan base Schumacher will now be in a position where they would never have watched him during his peak years, making him almost more of a mythical figure – when you realise how long ago Schumacher’s peak years were, it doesn’t strike me as being that odd.

      1. For me, with it being there, free or not, I would gladly pay to go and see the piece of history Michael carved out for racing.

        Just the information that the website has up brought new information about him to me. The MB C291 for example. I didn’t know that he drove a closed wheel race car before now. The little things like this make these kind of collections invaluable.

    3. Sundar Srinivas Harish
      16th June 2018, 3:11

      The collection is hosted in a gallery, free to entry

      The second paragraph of the article you’re commenting on. Please read more than the headline.

    4. it says in the article that it is free…

    5. a better gesture to fans would be to let us know how he is.

      @kpcart, who are you to say such a ‘gesture’ would be better than protecting their privacy? Shame on you!

  3. Very nice gesture, particularly since they’ve made it free for entry to all.

  4. Looks like they replaced all the Malboro branding on the cars. Seems a bit unnecessary. They are items from history, so I think they should be kept the way it was.

    1. The swastika is history, Marlboro are still out there killing people.

      1. Bobby Balboa
        15th June 2018, 22:05

        Malboro aren’t killing anyone. People are choosing to be killed by Malboro & that’s a choice that shouldn’t be taken away. You’re got the snoking ban, isn’t that enough! Next you’ll want air banned because of the toxins in it

        1. Bobby Balboa, tell that to the forced labour that was being used by the companies supplying Marlboro with its tobacco in the past.

          1. Your clothes, shoes, phone etc.

        2. ‘speed doesn’t kill’, it’s the ‘sudden deceleration’ that does the harm.

          technically correct, but just as stupid as saying “cigarettes don’t kill you”.

        3. Wow Bobby Balboa, that’s ignorant, are you 12?

        4. Bobby Balboa, what you say is pertinently not true. All Tobacco companies have had scientifical evidence that smoking is addictive since mid last century and they fine tuned their product (and sales strategy) to make the most of that knowledge (which they denied having until forced to admit in court).

          Up until now they still try to obfuscate (lookup “venting holes in filters” – it helps them pass legal tests, but get the stuff into smoker’s lungs anyway). Smoking is VERY addictive for many people. As an addict it is not “a choice”

    2. The cars ran without Marlboro branding in many countries so they have not killed history.

      1. Paul Strawbridge
        16th June 2018, 19:53

        Are these the same chassis as run at the grandprix with no tobacco advertising. If not, then yes they are changing history.

        1. I think it is likely the cars on display at one point had Marlboro on them for those venues where that was allowed, and didn’t for those venues that have banned such advertising. Even when they were at venues where it is banned, teams still came up with clever ways to ensure we still knew the branding going on.

          Further to that, only very limited advertising is allowed in Germany at present, so they would not likely be allowed, nor I suspect would the Schumacher family want, to advertise for Marlboro in this setting.

          If this was a museum, perhaps one could reasonably expect that the Marlboro advertising should be in there, particularly if they were depicting a car at a certain race in which the branding was allowed. But the fact that the cars ran with or without branding depending on the venue would mean even a museum that must be extremely historically accurate, would be doing so by depicting either version of the car.

          Bottom line, the concept that in this setting history is being changed is utterly ridiculous.

  5. this makes me really sad because it means (in my hopefully wrong opinion) that michael’s isn’t getting better or worse.
    i didn’t really like him as a person or a driver but i can relate to the place he and his family is right now and it’s really the worst outcome for everybody involved :-(
    trying to respect their privacy so i won’t speculate or comment any more to this publicly.

    1. Zad, I don’t mean to single you out, but why in the world would anyone commenting here about a man who is very seriously disabled, with possibly no chance for recovery, insist on including their negative opinions of that man? It makes absolutely no sense to me. It is the perfect definition of “kicking a man when he’s down.”

  6. Does Schumacher himself know that his things are being sold?

    1. Vettel fan 17 (@)
      15th June 2018, 19:57

      @lebz I think it’s for display, not for sale

    2. My reading of the text is the items on display aren’t being auctioned off, they are being displayed so people can some appreciation of what Michael achieved.

    3. Did you actually read the story @lebz?

    4. yeah i got that wrong too.
      really nice gesture.

  7. Wow. He actually owns all of those F1 cars? I’d love to see this collection.

  8. Is that article photo so incredibly blurry on purpose?

  9. That is fantastic, I hope it’s a long term display as I would love to visit in the future!

  10. What a great way to share his sporting life with the world. Was in Kerpen last weekend at his kart track, will be going back to check this out.

  11. A very nice gesture indeed! Get well soon!

  12. Wish I could go there.

  13. I hated schumacher when he was in his prime, he was the perfect villain but now I feel really sorry for him and his family and would not with this on any of them.

    I hope that they are ok for money

  14. Matt,

    MS’s fortune was estimated to be around 900M€ at the moment of his snow accident.

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