Half the objects in the modern design canon, kept above a suburban strip mall outside Frankfurt by a non-profit association, for three euros. The hair dryers hang from the ceiling on wires, nose-first, like a natural history museum decided to do appliances.

Westerbachstraße 23C in Kronberg im Taunus is an unremarkable commercial building around the corner from Braun’s own headquarters. Up one flight is the BraunSammlung: shavers running the length of a black wall in a single unbroken line, radios in wood cabinets giving way to the white-and-grey slabs that taught everyone else what a control panel should look like, and that squadron of hair dryers overhead. Every piece carries its model number, its designer and its history, in German and English.

The arrangement is chronological, and that is the point. Individually these are famous objects, endlessly reproduced in slide decks about Dieter Rams. In a row, decade after decade, they stop being icons and become a working method: you can watch the buttons get fewer, the grilles get quieter, the colour drain out except where it is doing a job. A single Braun object is a photograph. Forty years of them in sequence is an argument.

The economics are the second surprise. The museum is run by the Förderkreis BraunSammlung, a volunteer association working with the company rather than a corporate brand experience — which is why admission is €3 for adults, €1.50 for children between 7 and 17, and free for anyone under six or arriving with a school group. Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00 to 17:00, closed Mondays, wheelchair accessible.

Set expectations honestly: this is small and specialised, and Kronberg is the end of the S4 line, roughly half an hour out of Frankfurt, which you have to actually want to do. But it costs less than the coffee you’d buy on the way, most of it is hung and laid out in the open rather than sealed in vitrines, and it is the one place where the objects everyone quotes stand in the order they happened.