Wankel's research offices are located in Lindau, on the shores of Lake Constance in southern West Germany.
Wankel died on Sunday, said Thomas Burkhardt, a close friend of the German inventor.
"We decided that what we had didn't mean much to us and might be important to someone else," Mrs. Wankel said Tuesday. "At the museum they were very excited.
He dispatched Ford's Wankel rotary engine work at a time when others were ecstatic over it, saying the company had poured hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain.