Since 1989, Schloss Britz has been showing a permanent exhibition on the living culture of the Wilhelminian period in five rooms of the left wing of the building. The original furniture and decorations vividly convey to visitors the living and lifestyle of the late 19th century.

The epoch of the Gründerzeit began in Germany after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871 and the founding of the German Empire in 1871. The enormous reparations that France had to pay in the amount of about 5 billion francs benefited the German capital market to a large extent. The period was marked by the creation of numerous companies and joint-stock companies. The winners of the economic upswing were especially the middle classes.

As a result of the enormous economic success, a national high spirits developed and with it a strengthened German national consciousness, which had a lasting effect on the bourgeois residential culture. Historicism in architecture and the decorative arts reflected the new national self-confidence in the splendour of past epochs, preferably those of the Renaissance and Gothic. A specifically German, "old German" style of art was thought to be revived, especially in the Neo-Renaissance. The aspiring and wealthy bourgeoisie wanted to show their newly acquired prosperity, among other things, in a representative architecture of the house with a richly decorated facade and a luxurious interior of the apartment with high-quality furniture.