Invalidenstraße 43 (U6 Natural History Museum, Bus 245, Invalidenpark MetroTram M5 MetroTram M10, Busse 120, 147, 240, Robert-Koch-Platz Bus 123, 240). Tel.: +49 (0) 30 - 2093 8591, Fax: +49 (0) 30 88 91 40 88 41, email: info@mfn.berlin
The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (also Naturkundemuseum Berlin) is
the largest natural history museum in Germany. The holdings include more
than 30 million objects. Originally part of the Humboldt University of
Berlin, since January 1, 2009 it has been a foundation under public law
with the full name Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for
Evolutionary and Biodiversity Research (often called the Natural History
Museum for short; before 1945: Zoological Museum of the Friedrich
-Wilhelms University of Berlin). It is a member of the Leibniz
Association and is located on Invalidenstrasse, in the Oranienburger
Vorstadt in the Mitte district (Mitte district) of Berlin. The Natural
History Museum can be reached via a subway station of the same name.
In English-speaking countries, the abbreviation Humboldt Museum is
also in use, which is misleading, however, since there is also a
Humboldt Museum in Berlin in Tegel Castle, which is dedicated to the
brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.
From mid-December
2015 to early 2020, the first original skeleton of a tyrannosaurus to be
exhibited in Europe was temporarily on display with Tristan Otto being
loaned to the Natural History Museum. From August 2022 to November 2023,
Tristan Otto can be seen again in a new exhibition at the Museum für
Naturkunde.
When the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, today
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, opened in 1810, the scientific and
medical collections were combined and made accessible to the public for
the first time. This is how the Geological-Paleontological Museum, the
Mineralogical-Petrographical Museum and the Zoological Museum came into
being. The steadily growing collections due to donations, purchases and
finds from expeditions already occupied two thirds of the rooms in the
main building Unter den Linden around 1880. As a result, a separate
collection building was planned on the site of the former iron foundry
in Invalidenstraße, in which all three museums were to be combined. The
Museum of Natural History was to be the central building in a group of
buildings that also housed the Geological State Institute (construction
period: 1875-1878) and the Agricultural College (construction period:
1876-1880). The originally three-winged building, designed by August
Tiede, was opened on December 2, 1889 after six years of construction.
Contrary to initial plans, the Natural History Museum made only part
of its holdings accessible to the public as a display collection, while
the main collection was reserved for interdisciplinary research work.
This practice, which is common today, was considered revolutionary at
the time. From 1914 to 1917 the first building extension was erected.
During World War II, the east wing of the museum building was badly
damaged in a daylight raid by the United States Army Air Forces on
February 3, 1945. While large parts of the building collapsed, several
people died in the air raid shelter. Large whale skeletons were buried
from the collection, and the insect and mammal exhibition halls were
destroyed. Nevertheless, the majority of the objects, around 75 percent
of the collection, were brought to safety.
On September 16, 1945,
the Natural History Museum, now located in the Soviet sector of Berlin,
was the first post-war Berlin museum to reopen. The first years after
the war were characterized by repairing the war damage to the building
and securing the collections. From the 1950s, the museum presented new
permanent exhibitions. During the GDR era, the collections were expanded
to include finds from research trips to Cuba, Mongolia and the Soviet
Union, such as fossilized plants from the Mongolian steppe or a coral
reef from Cuba. Visits by representatives of Western countries, on the
other hand, remained the exception.
In reunified Germany, the
museum was initially reorganized into the three institutes for
mineralogy, palaeontology and systematic zoology. The building has been
renovated and undergone extensive modernization. In 2006 another
reorganization followed in the three departments for research, for
collections and for exhibitions and public education.
In 2005,
the dinosaur skeletons on display were temporarily dismantled to make
room for the upcoming renovation of the roof and the entire large
exhibition hall, which was financed with funds from the European
Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the State of Berlin and the German
Class Lottery Foundation Berlin. In total, four halls and a stairwell
were renovated and completely redesigned with multimedia components at a
cost of around 16 million euros. On July 13, 2007 it reopened with new
exhibitions on the evolution of life and the earth. Within a year of
this reopening, over 731,000 visitors have visited the museum.
From mid-November 2006, after ten years of planning, the reconstruction
of the east wing, which had been destroyed in a bomb attack during the
Second World War and has since been in ruins, began at a cost of 29.6
million euros as a modern concrete building with a historical facade
relief. After four years of construction, the part of the building was
opened to the public in September 2010, just in time for the 200th
birthday of the Natural History Museum. In January 2012, the
reconstruction carried out by the architects Diener & Diener was awarded
the DAM prize for architecture in Germany.
Due to its supra-regional importance, the Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin was converted into a foundation under public law by law on
January 1, 2009 and was accepted as a member of the Leibniz Association.
In November 2018, the state of Berlin and the federal government
decided to expand and renovate the house for over 600 million euros.
Among other things, the exhibition area is to be increased from 5,000 to
25,000 square meters and the digital development of the collection is to
be promoted. The latter can be observed live in one of the exhibition
halls (suspended from March 2020 due to the closure of the exhibitions
due to the coronavirus pandemic).
The museum is best known for the Brachiosaurus brancai, which has
been on display since 1937 and is believed to be the best-preserved
skeleton of its kind to date and the world's largest constructed
skeleton of a dinosaur. It is based on bone finds that were made by a
German expedition in 1909 in the Tendaguru layers of what was then the
colony of German East Africa (today's Tanzania) and was composed of
several partial skeletons and modeled additions. The species epithet
brancai honors the then museum director Wilhelm von Branca, who made the
financing of the expedition possible.
In 2005, the skeleton had
to be dismantled due to extensive renovation work in the museum
building. After a new conservation in the spring of 2007, it was rebuilt
according to current scientific knowledge. Since then, the skeleton has
been a meter taller than before, as the front legs have now been
stretched out and mounted under the body. In addition, the tail was no
longer reconstructed lying on the ground, as it is now known that
Brachiosaurus, like all other dinosaurs, did not drag its tail on the
ground, but carried it floating above the ground. A detailed study by
paleontologist Michael P. Taylor was published in 2009, comparing the
assembled skeleton to the holotype of Brachiosaurus and concluding that
the Tendaguru material should be placed in a separate genus,
Giraffatitan.
The Giraffatitan forms the central element of the
Dinosaur World exhibition in the covered atrium of the museum. This
exhibition is dedicated to the Tendaguru site (Upper Jurassic). In
addition to the Giraffatitan, there are six other dinosaurs:
Dicraeosaurus, Diplodocus, Kentrosaurus, Allosaurus, Dysalotosaurus and
Elaphrosaurus. Exhibition islands are dedicated to the airspace or the
aquatic area of Tendaguru. Also on view in the atrium is the very
well-preserved original of an Archeopteryx (Berlin specimen), the
Paraves, widely known as the oldest bird, from the Solnhofener
Plattenkalks in southern Germany. In 2012, the Giraffatitan was voted
Fossil of the Year 2012 by the Paleontological Society.
In the
Evolution in Action room is the exhibition on today's variety of life
forms (biodiversity) using the example of animals. A twelve meter long
and four meter high biodiversity wall with 3000 different animals gives
an impression of this diversity. The exhibition shows the animal world
as a result of evolution, which began around 3.5 billion years ago. It's
about the mechanisms that work here and what results they lead to. In a
media installation, the museum juxtaposes biological diversity with
spiritual diversity: the diversity of people's view of the phenomenon of
life is presented on the basis of seven basic questions.
The
museum also exhibits: minerals, fossils, ungulates and native animals.
The museum's collections, which are outside the exhibition area,
include the animal sound archive and mineralogy objects, including finds
on meteorites, zoology and paleontology and, since 2004, the
embryological collection of Ambrosius Hubrecht and James Peter Hill
(1873-1954) with approx. 80,000 histological preparations.
Around
80,000 jars with liquid specimens of fish and reptiles in 70 percent
alcohol are on display in the east wing of the museum building.
In total, the collection includes over 30 million objects, including
130,000 bird specimens with around 90 percent of all bird species
worldwide and 130,000 fish preserved in alcohol. In addition to its
public educational mission with the permanent and special exhibitions
and educational programs, the museum sees its tasks in the scientific
documentation and interpretation of living and inanimate nature. With
the project digitize! the museum makes the current digitization
processes visible and allows visitors to follow the digitization of
500,000 objects from the insect collection as part of a pilot project.
Current research topics are the reconstruction of the evolution of
various animal groups, biodiversity research in today's habitats,
zoodiversity in the change of environment and use in southern Africa,
biogeography, paleoecology, the early development of solar systems, the
impact of asteroids on earth and their impact on the Earth's crust and
the biosphere, educational research, provenance research and science
research.
As a research institution, the Museum für Naturkunde
also trains young scientists together with the Humboldt University in
Berlin, the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Potsdam.
From January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2010, the general director was
Reinhold Leinfelder. After a period in which Ferdinand Damaschun was the
acting general director of the museum, Johannes Vogel has been the new
general director of the museum since February 1, 2012. Stephan Junker
has been the museum's managing director since September 1, 2011. Gregor
Hagedorn is academic director and coordinator for national and
international research infrastructure.
The Museum für Naturkunde
has been a member of the Leibniz Association since January 1, 2009
because of its national importance and the national interest in its
research work. It sees itself as an integrated research museum and,
through its activities in terms of citizen science and the digital
development of its collection, strives to become an "open integrated
research museum" that, with the triad of tasks of collecting,
researching and communicating, assumes a function as an interface
between science and society.
Darwin - Journey to Knowledge (February 12, 2009 - August 12,
2009)
Deep Sea (September 15, 2009–January 31, 2010)
Class,
Order, Art - 200 Years Museum of Natural History (September 14, 2010
- February 28, 2011)
Federflug – 150 years of primeval bird finds
(June 17, 2011–December 31, 2011)
Biopolis – Wild Berlin
(November 8, 2011 – July 31, 2012)
Elephant Kingdom – A Fossil
World in Europe (March 30, 2012–August 31, 2012)
Federflug – 150
years of primeval bird finds (September 25, 2012–December 31, 2012)
Developments - 60 years of discovery of DNA structure (April 23,
2013 - January 6, 2014)
Fly (16 August 2014–15 January 2015)
Panda (January 13, 2015–August 2, 2015)
Dead wasps fly longer
(March 3, 2015–May 3, 2015)
Spinosaurus (February 9, 2016–June
12, 2016)
Comets - The Rosetta Mission (9 August 2016 - 21
January 2017)
Sielman! (June 1, 2017–April 29, 2018)
Macaw
(May 23, 2017–November 14, 2018)
Coexistence (May 17,
2019–September 8, 2019)
Artifacts (October 9, 2018 - October 20,
2019)
Moon Walk: 50 Years of the Moon Landing (July 20,
2019–October 26, 2019)
Tristan – Berlin Bares Teeth (December 17,
2015 – January 26, 2020)
Dinosaur! Age of the giant lizards (23
August 2022 - 30 November 2023)
Movies
Museum research facility,
documentary film, GDR, 13 minutes, director: Trutz Meinl, production:
DEFA, first broadcast: November 8, 1968.
treasury of life. The
Natural History Museum in Berlin. Documentary film, 28:30 min.,
director: Felix Krüger, production: rbb, Germany 2010.
T.Rex - A
dinosaur conquers Berlin. Documentary film, Germany, 44:18 min., written
and directed by: Christian Seewald and Björn Tritschler, production:
rbb, Germany 2015.
The two German states have already shown exhibits
on their stamps to the general public.
Literature
In the 1996 novel Animal Triste by the writer Monika Maron, the female
protagonist works in the natural history museum.
Pop Culture
The museum’s exhibition rooms and wet collections were filming locations
for the music video for the single Eine Gute Nachrichten by musician
Danger Dan, which was released in 2021.
Miscellaneous
Since
2017, the Museum für Naturkunde has offered an app called Naturblick for
the iOS and Android operating systems. With the help of the app, bird
species can be identified by sound recordings. Plants can be identified
from photos using image recognition. In addition, there are
identification aids with species descriptions. The observations can be
recorded within a field book. In addition, the user can publish recorded
observations as part of research projects under the CC BY-SA 4.0
license.
The development of the app is funded by the Federal
Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
Albert Guttstadt: The scientific and medical state institutions of
Berlin. Verlag von August Hirschwald, Berlin 1886, pp. 220-244 (digital
copy in the Internet Archive).
The Museum of Natural History of the
Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin at the opening ceremony.
Ernst & Korn, Berlin 1889 (digital copy in the Berlin Central and State
Library).
Friedrich Kleinwächter: The Museum of Natural History of
the University of Berlin. In: Journal of Construction. Volume 41. Berlin
1891, columns 1-10, plates 1-6 (digital copy in the holdings of the
Berlin Central and State Library).
Christoph Hahn, Siegmar Hohl
(ed.): The great museum guide. Collections on art, culture, nature and
technology in Germany. Bassermann, Niedernhausen 2000, ISBN
3-8094-5013-8, p. 71.
Ferdinand Damaschun (ed.): Class, order, type -
200 years of the Museum of Natural History. Basilisk Press, Rangsdorf
2010, ISBN 978-3-941365-10-0.
Ulrich Moritz and others.: Advance into
the interior. Excursions through the Berlin Museum of Natural History.
Alphaeus Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-9813184-0-1.
Hanns Zischler,
Hanna Zeckau: The butterfly case. Arnold Schultze's Tropical
Expeditions. Galiani, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86971-024-2.
Katrin
Hiller von Gaertringen, Hans Georg Hiller von Gaertringen: A history of
the Berlin museums in 227 houses. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2014,
ISBN 978-3-422-07273-2, pp. 115-122.
Anne Mackinney: Objects and
object directories in natural history collecting practice. The example
of the Berlin Zoological Museum from 1810 to around 1850. Humboldt
University of Berlin, Berlin 2017 (PDF).
Ina Heumann, Holger Stoecker
and others: Dinosaur fragments - On the history of the Tendaguru
expedition and their objects, 1906-2018. Wallstein, Goettingen 2018,
ISBN 978-3-8353-3253-9.
Jutta Helbig: The Berlin Museum of Natural
History. Building and exhibiting in the mirror of the museum reform - a
history of conflict. Tectum, Baden-Baden 2019, ISBN 978-3-8288-4259-5.