Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

The (English: "Museum of Natural History Berlin") is a natural history museum located in Berlin, Germany. It exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history and in such domain it is one of three major museums in Germany alongside Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt and Museum Koenig in Bonn.

The museum houses more than 30 million zoological, paleontological, and mineralogical specimens, including more than ten thousand type specimens. It is famous for two exhibits: the largest mounted dinosaur in the world (a Giraffatitan skeleton), and a well-preserved specimen of the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx. The museum's mineral collections date back to the Prussian Academy of Sciences of 1700. Important historic zoological specimens include those recovered by the German deep-sea Valdiva expedition (1898–99), the German Southpolar Expedition (1901–03), and the German Sunda Expedition (1929–31). Expeditions to fossil beds in Tendaguru in former Deutsch Ostafrika (today Tanzania) unearthed rich paleontological treasures. The collections are so extensive that less than 1 in 5000 specimens is exhibited, and they attract researchers from around the world. Additional exhibits include a mineral collection representing 75% of the minerals in the world, a large meteor collection, the largest piece of amber in the world; exhibits of the now-extinct quagga, huia, and tasmanian tiger, and "Bobby" the gorilla, a Berlin Zoo celebrity from the 1920s and 1930s.

In November 2018 the German government and the city of Berlin decided to expand and improve the building for more than €600 million.

Name

The museum's name has changed several times. It is also called Naturkundemuseum or even Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin so that it can be distinguished from other museums in Germany also named as Museum für Naturkunde. The museum was founded in 1810 as a part of the Berlin University, which changed its name to Humboldt University of Berlin in 1949. For much of its history, the museum was known as the "Humboldt Museum", but in 2009 it left the university to join the Leibniz Association. The current official name is Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung and the "Humboldt" name is no longer related to this museum. Furthermore: there is another Humboldt-Museum in Berlin in Tegel Palace dealing with brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.

The Berlin U-Bahn station Naturkundemuseum is named after the museum.

Exhibitions

left|thumb|The Dinosaur Hall seen from the entrance, with the skeleton of [[Giraffatitan (formerly Brachiosaurus) brancai in the center]]

left|thumb| The 'Berlin Specimen' of [[Archaeopteryx]]

Since the museum renovation in 2007, a large hall explains biodiversity and the processes of evolution, while several rooms feature regularly changing special exhibitions.

Dinosaur Hall

The specimen of Giraffatitan brancai in the central exhibit hall is the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world.

It is composed of fossilized bones recovered by the German paleontologist Werner Janensch from the fossil-rich Tendaguru beds of Tanzania between 1909 and 1913. The remains are primarily from one gigantic animal, except for a few tail bones (caudal vertebrae), which belong to another animal of the same size and species.

The historical mount (until about 2005) was 12.72 m (41 ft 5 in) tall, and 22.25 m (73 ft) long. In 2007 it was remounted according to new scientific evidence, reaching a height of 13.27 m. When living, the long-tailed, long-necked herbivore probably weighed 50 t (55 tons). While the Diplodocus carnegiei mounted next to it (a copy of an original from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, United States) actually exceeds it in length (27 m, or 90 ft), the Berlin specimen is taller, and far more massive.

thumb|The Dinosaur hall, reverse view. [[Kentrosaurus in the foreground, Diplodocus, Giraffatitan and Dicraeosaurus from left to right in the back.]]

Archaeopteryx

The "Berlin Specimen" of Archaeopteryx lithographica (HMN 1880), is displayed in the central exhibit hall. The dinosaur-like body with an attached tooth-filled head, wings, claws, long lizard-like tail, and the clear impression of feathers in the surrounding stone is strong evidence of the link between reptiles and birds. The Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil; and the time of its discovery was apt: coming on the heels of Darwin's 1859 magnum opus, The Origin of Species, made it quite possibly the most famous fossil in the world.

Recovered from the German Solnhofen limestone beds in 1871, it is one of 12 Archaeopteryx to be discovered and the most complete. The first specimen, a single 150-million-year-old feather found in 1860, is also in the possession of the museum.

Minerals Halls

The MFN's collection comprises roughly 250,000 specimens of minerals, of which roughly 4,500 are on exhibit in the Hall of Minerals.

Evolution in action

A large hall explains the principles of evolution. It was opened in 2007 after a major renovation of parts of the building.

Tristan – Berlin bares teeth

thumb|"Tristan", a Tyrannosaurus rex

The Museum für Naturkunde normally exhibits one of the best-preserved Tyrannosaurus skeletons ("Tristan") worldwide. Of approximately 300 bones, 170 have been preserved, which puts it in the third position among others.

Wet Collection

The glass-walled Wet Collection Wing with 12.6 km of shelf space displays one million specimens preserved in an ethanol solution and held in 276,000 jars.

History

thumb|Collection of minerals

upright|thumb|A [[dodo model]]

thumb|upright|Bao Bao the Giant Panda that lived at the [[Berlin Zoo]]

thumb|upright|[[Knut (polar bear)|Knut: the Polar Bear that lived at the Berlin Zoo]]

The collection history

19th century to 1945

When the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin, now the Humboldt University of Berlin, opened in 1810, the existing scientific and medical collections were combined and made accessible to the public for the first time. Therefore the Geological-Paleontological Museum, the Mineralogical-Petrographic Museum and the Zoological Museum were founded and were open to anyone interested to visit. Around 1880, the constantly growing collections based on donations, purchases and expedition finds took up around two thirds of the space in the main building, Unter den Linden, and "formed an oppressive burden". The royal state government therefore decided in 1874 to build new buildings for the agricultural college and the collection of the Museum of Natural History on the site of the already closed Royal Iron Foundry on Invalidenstrasse. The architectural competition that was announced contained the requirements to enable all collection elements to be arranged as uniformly as possible. The winner of the competition was the architect August Tiede, who initially suggested storing the exhibits separately, but then had to give up.

As a result, a multi-wing building was built at Invalidenstrasse 43 between 1875 and 1880 under the senior construction management of Friedrich Kleinwächter and the construction management of the government architect Hein. The opening was celebrated on 2 December 1889.

Contrary to initial plans, the Natural History Museum only made 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. The first building extension was built between 1914 and 1917.

In the 1910s and 1920s, the facility on Invalidenstrasse was called the Museum of Natural History and Zoological Institute. It was divided into the Geological-Paleontological Institute and Museum, the Mineralogical-Petrographic Institute and Museum, the Zoological Institute and Museum and had several employees such as university lecturers, taxidermists, castellans, stokers, machine masters, servants, caretakers, library servants.

During World War II, the east wing of the museum building was heavily damaged in a daytime raid by the United States Army Air Forces on 3 February 1945. While large parts of the building collapsed, several people died in the air raid shelter. Large whale skeletons from the collection were buried and the exhibition rooms for insects and mammals were destroyed. About 75 percent of the collection was brought to safety.

The building history

Overview

As a result of the continuously growing natural science collections, a complex new exhibition building was planned on the site of the former Royal Iron Foundry on Invalidenstrasse, in which the three museums mentioned above would be combined. The new building ensemble was given the name Museum für Naturkunde during the planning phase, consisting of the corresponding central collection and the parts of the Prussian Geological State Institute with the Mining Academy (Geological State Institute and Mining Academy) and the Agricultural University of Berlin.

The university management, together with the Berlin magistrate, announced an architectural competition, which August Tiede won with his multi-wing project proposal.

All construction costs including the interior furnishings amounted to around 3.2 million marks. Among other things, the exhibition area was increased from 5,000 to 25,000 square meters and the digital development of the collection was promoted. The latter can be observed live in one of the exhibition halls (due to the corona pandemic, the exhibitions were closed from March 2020 to the end of 2022).

References

External links

History of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
History of the mineralogical collections at the Natural History Museum in Berlin
History of the mineral collection