Address:
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Institute
Department of Animal Evolution and Biodiversity
Lower Carrinth 2
37073 Göttingen
https://www.biodivmuseum.de/
The biodiversity museum is currently being planned and constructed and will open on the 2nd floor of the Forum Wissen.
The zoological collection is currently in storage and can only be accessed by appointment.
Contact persons:
Prof. Dr. Maria Teresa Aguado
Tel.: 0551 39-25536
E-Mail: aguadomolina@uni-goettingen.de
The collections of the Biodiversity Museum go back to the “Royal Academic Museum Göttingen”, which was founded in 1773 to store the collections of Christian Wilhelm Büttner (1716–1801) after they were purchased. In the following years, the completely disordered collection was organized and cataloged by the then sub-supervisor Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). It was Blumenbach who expanded the collections in the following decades through purchases and donations. kungs multiplied extensively. From these beginnings, only a few objects remain in the Biodiversity Museum today.
The Biodiversity Museum's holdings have now grown to well over 100,000 objects, with significant increases occurring particularly in the second half of the 19th century and shortly after the turn of the century. Mention should be made here, for example, of the doctor Rudolf Schütte (1835–1886), who emigrated to Australia and from there donated numerous animals from the Australian fauna to the Biodiversity Museum, or Professor Dr. Otto Bürger (1865–1945), who brought extensive collection material with him from his trip to South America. The bird collection of Heinrich Kirchhoff (1789-1871) from Nienburg (Weser), one of the most important in all of Europe, was purchased in 1877. Numerous marine organisms from the marine station in Naples, where numerous Göttingen researchers worked scientifically, were also added. Not to be forgotten is the first German deep-sea expedition, “Valdivia,” which was carried out in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in 1898/99 and from which parts of the biological yield are housed in Göttingen.
Even in more recent times, the collection has continued to grow. For example, some regional insect collections and a bird collection were donated to the Biodiversity Museum. There were also several thousand insects and arachnids from Madagascar as well as part of the biological yield from an Arctic expedition by the research ship “Polarstern”. One of the greatest special features are the extensive type collections of crustaceans and flatworms, which result from years of research work at the Zoological Institute.
Gert Tröster
