Today, Wertheim is the second largest centre of the German laboratory glassware industry after Mainz.
This development began around 1950 with the construction of a glassworks. Five glass entrepreneurs from Thuringia thus secured their source of raw materials: Rudolf Brand, Dr Fritz Friedrichs, Josef Friedrichs, Dr Hans Löber and Carl Zitzmann. In April 1950, they melted the first glass in the newly founded "Glaswerk Wertheim". With this, the city of Wertheim launched the "Wertheim Glass Industry" project. Among the first to process Wertheim glass on Wertheim soil were the companies Alfi, Amarell, Brand, Graf, Helios, Normschliff and Schneider. Only a short time later, the "Glaswerk Wertheim" supplied around 100 glass processing companies with raw glass and semi-finished products. In the 1970s, about 3,000 people worked here, today there are about 1,700.

In 1972, the second glass melting plant came to Wertheim. The "Glaswerk Schuller", now Johns Manville, had already settled in Wertheim in 1952 with the production of textile glass products. Textile glass products are also known colloquially as "glass wool". Today, Johns Manville has its own smelter with two furnaces of 60 tonnes each.

And in 1973 at the latest, it became clear that "industry creates culture": at that time, the first managing director of the glassworks, the glass physicist Dr. Hans Löber, decided to present the versatility of glass as a material to the public. He founded an association to open the Wertheim Glass Museum in 1976!

The "Wertheim glassworks", now owned by DWK Life Sciences Mainz, was closed in 1994. From the last glass melting plant, glass designers from Wertheim melted glass blocks in cooperation with the glass museum and industry and built the glass pyramid at the Mainpark.