- Die Sammlungen
Room 1
Theatrum naturae et artis
The geometric and thematic centre of the exhibition lies in the atrium. The torsos displayed in the middle of this area symbolise the two poles of nature and art. On the one hand, we see a classical Greek sculpture, which draws on precise anatomical knowledge, whilst on the other hand an anatomical teaching model is on display, giving an aesthetic touch to the muscles it reveals. These two poles are the focal points of an ellipse around which busts of major Berlin scholars are arranged.
Along the axis dividing the space, a 16th-century pictorial atlas of natural science reminds us that the idea of the encyclopaedia superseded the art cabinets. Opposite this atlas, Stephan von Huene's kinetic sculpture, Table Dancers, interacts with visitors, and with the worlds of information and music. The free corners of the atrium hold installations commenting on issues in medicine, physics and the media by artists Micha Brendel, Gabriele Leidloff, Alexander Polzin and Ruth Tesmar.Room 2
The cultural history cabinet
The approach to the history of culture taken in the first half of the 19th century is illustrated by this ensemble of insignia, works of art, medieval documents, autographs, incunabula and historical teaching material. This ambitious programme lead to projects such as the collection of archaeological teaching material. As well as being a useful resource in studying the material remains, the collection used casts and copies to evoke the aura of the originals. The history department's collection contains around 150 medieval documents, some closed with seals, which were used for teaching in the 19th century. The early and pre-history collections were added to it in the early 20th century, along with a section on "German Archaeology". The university library is home to the manuscripts and libraries of important scholars. Some of the gems from the library of the Brothers Grimm are on display here.Room 3
The arts of painting and poetry - The Humboldt University's art collections
These art and art historical exhibits illustrate the history of science and culture in Berlin. The university's collections have grown steadily since it was founded in 1810, thanks to donations and legacies but also to extensive purchases. The university can boast a sound fine and applied arts collection. This includes university insignia, portraits of professors, portrait busts, statues, graphics, archive pieces, which are very important for cultural history, valuable books and other testimonies to the past. Most of the over 20 specialised collections were initially teaching collections and are still crucial to teaching and research. That means they are generally not accessible to the public. Pride of place should clearly be given to the museum collection and the University Library, which contains originals by Käthe Kollwitz and Adolph von Menzel. A number of exceptionally important specialised collections are housed here, such as the "Tunnel über der Spree" archive. "Tunnel over the Spree" was a literary club that met on Sundays.Room 4
The kingdom of Kush - The Institute of Archaeology of the Sudan and Egyptologyy
Fritz Hintze led the Humboldt University's excavations in Musawwarat es Sufra in northern Sudan from 1960 to 1968. The finds were divided between Sudan and the excavation team. Numerous objects from Musawwarat thus arrived in the university in 1975. These included architectural fragments that could not be fitted back into their original context. The collection may now be visited in the faculty's premises on Prenzlauer Promenade.
The collection represents the most varied aspects of the art of the ancient kingdom of Kush, which existed over 1,000 years ago (8 BC to 4 AD) in the middle reaches of the Nile Valley and had its heyday in the Meroitic period between 3 BC and 2 AD. Pictorial graffiti, reliefs, decorative fragments from temples, iron objects, ceramics and goods imported from Egypt testify to Kushite culture and to the kingdom's relations with its neighbour to the north.Room 5
Gilliéron's Minoan-Mycenaean world - treasures from the Winckelmann Institute's collection
The second floor of the »new« west wing of the university was built to house the institute's extensive collections, which include the Minoan-Mycenaean collection, kept in a purpose-built designed room. This was the only place in Berlin where exhibits from this culture could be seen. The room itself was dominated by the murals. These were displayed as they would have been in their original setting, and were set into the wall above a dado section marked off by a wooden beam. The casts of a throne and benches were added to the griffin fresco from the throne room of the Palace of Knossos on the southern wall to heighten the effect, creating an ambience comparable to the mood later evoked in the Pergamon Museum's Assyrian throne room display. A conscious effort was made to create a Minoan-Mycenaean atmosphere, without obscuring the fact that this was a museum display. Almost all the copies were created by either Emile Gilliéron himself or by his company, Emile Gilliéron & fils.
This room was the only one of its kind in Germany, but had to be given up in 1956. The room was returned in 1998 and the decoration reconstructed in 2000.Room 6
125 years of Berlin's excavations in Olympia - The »work for peace« of German unification
The influential archaeologist and historian, Ernst Curtius (1814-1896) endorsed 19th -century views on education that took Greek Antiquity as a guiding light. He saw numerous parallels between Athens' claim to leadership in the world of the Greek city-states and that of Berlin and Prussia in the German context. Before the Reich was set up, Olympia served as a role model in attempts to unite Germany, as the games in her honour had briefly united the Hellenic nation. Curtius' famous Berlin lecture, Olympia, in 1852 won him Friedrich Wilhelm IV's support for his excavation plans. However, these projects were not implemented until 1875 to 1881, after the Franco-German War had drawn to a close and the Reich had been established.
The »disclosure« of Olympia was intended to show the international community the kind of »work for peace« a united Germany could offer. As Curtius put it, this would be »work for peace of lasting importance for all educated nations «, but would also allow scientific excavation of sacred sites from Antiquity to begin with a sound basis in international law.Room 7
The sea in a museum - Institute and Museum of Oceanography
Although the Institute and Museum of Oceanography, founded in 1900 and opened in 1906, was associated with the Friedrich-Wilhelms University, the institute was on the whole independent. It was active in three main areas. These included expeditions on the research ship, "Meteor" and the institute's educational work to make shipping and oceanography accessible to the general public. Furthermore, the institute was also intended to serve as a propaganda instrument to support German naval policy. It was felt that a broad consensus on the navy's costly new construction projects of the navy could only be attained if "the German people be educated to become a people with an appreciation of the sea". The museum attracted over 100,000 visitors a year thanks to its user-friendly design. In the Second World War much of the collection was scattered, destroyed or simply went astray. In 1994 the Humboldt University named the Deutsche Technikmuseum as trustee of the remaining exhibits.Room 8
»Voices of the world's peoples« - the Berlin Sound Archive
A new field of scientific collecting emerged in the early 20th century, when it became possible to preserve and reproduce sound events and this later gave birth to the Sound Archive. In an application to the Ministry of Education in 1914, Wilhelm Doegen, who started this acoustic collection, sketched out the scope of the project, explaining that it would collect the speech, music and song of various peoples, German dialects and the voices of »great individuals«. This application formed the basis for the »Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission«. The Sound Department of the Prussian State Library, founded in 1920, received both the commission's gramophone recordings and Doegen's collection of the voices of famous people, begun in 1917.
After the Sound Department was transferred to the Friedrich-Wilhelms University, vigorous collecting work, now also covering German dialects, continued during the 1930s and up until 1944. This collection now belongs to the Humboldt University's Department of Music.Room 9
A world in miniature - The Brandenburg-Prussian Art Cabinet
The private collections known as Kunstkammer, or art cabinets, were the precursors of modern museums. Rather than concentrating on particular areas, these cabinets held objects from all spheres of the natural world, together with examples of artistic endeavour and scientific devices - in other words, naturalia, artificialia and scientifica.
Almost all of the pieces in Berlin's Art Cabinet were lost during the Thirty Years War, but in 1700, when Andreas Schlüter's reconstruction of the City Palace was completed, the collection had once again grown so large that it filled nine rooms in the palace. In 1700 this Kunstkammer collection of art and curios inspired Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to create a "Theatre of Nature and the Arts" in Berlin for the Academy of Science. Almost 100 years later, in 1798, the Berlin Art Cabinet Collection fell under the aegis of the Academy for a time, but in1810/11 the Academy had to transfer the naturalia to the recently founded University of Berlin. Remnants of this collection can be seen there, and in a number of collections in Berlin and elsewhere, such as in the Arts and Crafts Museum or in the Franck Foundation in Halle.Room 10
Natural History Cabinet
The natural history cabinet reveals various ensembles of exhibits from the realm of "nature". Some of the oldest exhibits from natural history collections in the Berlin area are on display: "monuments" of nature, which came into being in the first instance without any human involvement. Collecting natural objects entails first discovering such objects and then removing them from their original context to preserve them. These objects are then organised to reflect a new order, conserved as part of a collection and displayed to the public. All such imposition of order begins with a sense of marvel, for nature by no manner of means reveals itself to us spontaneously. When phenomena seem inexplicable at first glance, we are spurred on to search for the underlying meaning. Systematic inquiry is often based on narratives, some of which may turn out to be mere fiction. It is human interpretations that shape the profile of natural science collections, sometimes even giving these collections an artistic twist.Room 11
»Preparing specimens every day« - Rudolf Virchow
From 1856 to 1902, Rudolf Virchow engaged in a broad spectrum of activities as a researcher, teacher and collector in the Institute of Pathology, which had been set up especially for him. His work there made him world famous. He is a good example of 19th-century attempts to treat medicine and anthropology as natural sciences. Virchow set up and added to a collection of pathological specimens to that end, whilst also carrying out extensive anthropological measurements and building up several comprehensive anthropology collections. Furthermore, Virchow was a member of Berlin's Town Council from 1859 to his death and was elected to the Prussian Diet in 1861. He was also a member of the Reichstag for a few years (1890-93). His urban renewal scheme helped to radically change Berlin's appearance in the second half of the 19th century. Virchow thus symbolises the 19th-century belief that progress in the natural sciences would make the world more humane.Room 12
DUMMY --- »Preparing specimens every day« - Rudolf Virchow
From 1856 to 1902, Rudolf Virchow engaged in a broad spectrum of activities as a researcher, teacher and collector in the Institute of Pathology, which had been set up especially for him. His work there made him world famous. He is a good example of 19th-century attempts to treat medicine and anthropology as natural sciences. Virchow set up and added to a collection of pathological specimens to that end, whilst also carrying out extensive anthropological measurements and building up several comprehensive anthropology collections. Furthermore, Virchow was a member of Berlin's Town Council from 1859 to his death and was elected to the Prussian Diet in 1861. He was also a member of the Reichstag for a few years (1890-93). His urban renewal scheme helped to radically change Berlin's appearance in the second half of the 19th century. Virchow thus symbolises the 19th-century belief that progress in the natural sciences would make the world more humane.Room 13
Traditional and highly topical - The Institute of Biology's Zoological Teaching Collection
The Zoological Teaching Collection, which was established in1884, is still a useful visual aid to help in teaching biology students. The collection was developed at some speed; after just a few years the collection already encompassed several thousand exhibits, including models, information panels and microscopic specimens. Much of the collection was destroyed during the Second World War. The collection was then expanded in the sixties, only to shrink dramatically again in 1970 as a result of the GDR's third university reform programme. A chair of »Comparative Zoology« was established and took charge of the Zoological Teaching Collection during reshuffling of the Humboldt University's Institute of Biology after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The emphasis over the past few years has been on preserving existing exhibits whilst re-organising and extending the collection. Despite the painful losses of the past, this can probably be counted as one of Germany's largest zoological teaching collections. This exhibition demonstrates that an almost 120-year-old zoological teaching collection still has an important role to play in training future biologists, even in the age of genetic research and virtual mediation of knowledge.Room 14
DUMMY --- »Preparing specimens every day« - Rudolf Virchow
From 1856 to 1902, Rudolf Virchow engaged in a broad spectrum of activities as a researcher, teacher and collector in the Institute of Pathology, which had been set up especially for him. His work there made him world famous. He is a good example of 19th-century attempts to treat medicine and anthropology as natural sciences. Virchow set up and added to a collection of pathological specimens to that end, whilst also carrying out extensive anthropological measurements and building up several comprehensive anthropology collections. Furthermore, Virchow was a member of Berlin's Town Council from 1859 to his death and was elected to the Prussian Diet in 1861. He was also a member of the Reichstag for a few years (1890-93). His urban renewal scheme helped to radically change Berlin's appearance in the second half of the 19th century. Virchow thus symbolises the 19th-century belief that progress in the natural sciences would make the world more humane.Room 15
Humans in wax - anatomical models and clinical mould-formed models
Wax is a special substance. Extremely realistic reproductions of the shape, colour and texture of the human body can be made with this natural product. Medicine discovered wax as a medium in the 18th century and used it subsequently for explanatory, teaching and study purposes. Initially the focus was on portraying healthy »normal« humans in three dimensions. From 1750 on, sumptuous collections of wax models grew up in Bologna and Florence, inspired by the techniques and themes of cast bronze works, encaustic painting, death masks and votive objects. Clinical wax images appeared alongside anatomical wax figures from the early 19th century on. These clinical works are prints (moulds) reproducing aspects of illness in the human body. They are astonishingly realistic, as can be seen in the most frequent theme, dermatological views of the human body from the exterior. These individual portraits of ailments also focus attention on specific historical patients as individuals.Room 16
Berlin's green treasure chamber - The botanical collections
Until 1946 the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Museum in Berlin-Dahlem were part of the Friedrich-Wilhelms University. After that date they were spun off from the university and came under the aegis of Berlin's regional government, the Magistrat (later to become the Senat). Since 1995 the museum and the gardens have formed a central establishment within the Free University of Berlin with four focal points: the living plants collection, the collection of preserved plants, the library and the Botanical Museum.
There are many different facets to working with plants. Flora are arranged, drawn, described and named. Experimental research is done using plants, which are also analysed and then preserved. Work with natural science collections encompasses all of these diverse activities. The pattern of daily work changes very little and looks much as it did 200 years ago. These aspects of scientific practice are illustrated using examples from the work of famous researchers such as Adelbert von Chamisso, Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch, Georg Schweinfurth and Adolf Engler: a voyage through the ages and through work done by generations of botanists.Room 17
»With these treasures ... in a worthy form« - The Zoological Museum's collections in the university building on Unter den Linden 1810-1889
The Zoological Museum was set up at around the same time as the University of Berlin was founded. Initially the museum collection was made up of a few large private collections, the academic collection of the Collegium medico-chirurgicum and the rare pieces kept in the Royal Art Cabinet. The collection grew rapidly, as treasures brought back from trips around the world were added to it, along with exhibits obtained through exchanges with other academic institutions. Many of these »early« objects were the basis for the rich and varied collection now housed in the Museum of Natural Science. The provenance of the animals was indicated with coloured labels giving the scientific name, the »fatherland« and the collector in order to »edify« visitors. A plan of the rooms housing the collection gives an overview of how the objects used to be arranged in the Unter den Linden museum formerly located in the university building.Room 18
Old collections, new perspectives - The Institute of Systematic Zoology's research projects in the Museum of Natural Science
The theory of evolution has opened up new prospects for research in the natural sciences. The full dynamism of nature can now be apprehended. In the 1860s a Berlin zoologist, Hilgendorf, was one of the first natural scientists to try to prove Darwin's theory of evolution using fossil snails. The Institute of Zoology's current research projects have looked at these collections, which are so steeped in tradition, in the light of new questions. The methods employed span morphology and microscopy, acoustic techniques and DNA analysis. These projects focus in particular on speciation, ecological interactions, geographical distribution and habits. A zoological collection that has taken shape over a lengthy historical period also bears witness to long-term environmental changes. The ecological crisis makes such questions and projects even more acutely relevant to society as a whole and to scientific policy.Room 19a
The importance of dimension - mineralogical research in Berlin
There has been a shift in the focus of mineralogical research as more modern methods of observing nature have been developed. On the one hand, ever more minute dimensions can be explored, yet on the other hand, the Earth is increasingly viewed in its entirety and compared with other heavenly bodies. It is only when all these observations are slotted together that nature reveals itself to us as a system.
The natural sciences have been considering the link between the internal structure and the external appearance of crystals since the early 19th century. These studies took on a new twist in 1912 when X-ray diffraction by crystals was discovered, as this proved that crystalline material is made up of atoms.
The idea that life on Earth has been influenced by cosmic catastrophes is now widely accepted. In seeking to grasp the extent and consequences of these catastrophes, it is important to look not just at the cosmic dimension, but also to consider the effect on the crystalline structures of minerals, which were altered by meteorite impacts.Room 19b
Brachiosaurus, Tendagurutherium and the Tendaguru biotope - palaeontological studies in Berlin
A chance find in the colony of "German-East Africa" (Tanzania) in 1907 lead to the discovery of one of the world's largest deposits of dinosaur remains. The exhibition subsequently organised by Wilhelm von Branca, the director of Berlin University's Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, ran from 1909 to 1913. The institute's curator, Werner Janensch, and his assistants, Edwin Hennig, Hans Reck and Hans von Staff directed a squad of around 400 Africans, who recovered the dinosaur bones. The Museum of Natural Sciences' staff is still engaged in scientific work on the Tendaguru material. From August to September 2000 a team from the Institute of Palaeontology travelled to Tanzania to carry out further excavations. The bones have been examined in detail for decades, and scientists have examined their anatomy, taxonomy and phylogeny. Now the emphasis has shifted to the geology of the deposit site and the feeding habits and biocoenoses of dinosaurs, mammals and small reptiles.