Colonial contexts
The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is facing up to its historical responsibility.
Historical context
The development of natural history museums and collections in Europe has been closely linked to colonial expansion since the late 15th century. Scientific, economic and political interests were closely intertwined and influenced one another. The aim of natural history collecting was to gather as large a number of objects as possible – particularly plants, animals and minerals. On this basis, the diversity of nature was to be documented, described and classified according to Western-influenced classification systems. At the same time, the exploration of natural resources in the colonised territories served not only scientific knowledge but also their economic development and exploitation.
The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is exemplary of these developments in terms of its origins and the history of its collections. Since its foundation in 1810, it has received collections from all over the world. These supplemented the existing objects from the Kunstkammer, the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Mining Academy. Here, as in all other major Western natural history museums, collection items from colonial contexts continue to form the basis of research and education to this day.
At the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, an intensive and critical examination of the institution’s and the collection’s history is taking place. The focus is on collection items from colonial contexts.
Open Access publication
Guidelines on dealing with colonial natural history objects
Natural history collections also bear witness to colonial power structures and relations of violence. The guidelines „Dealing with Colonial Natural History Objects: Recommendations, Research, Reflections“ bring together practical guidance, research findings and international perspectives on the responsible handling of objects from colonial contexts.
The publication is intended as an open and evolving document that encourages further development and exchange. It is aimed at museums, collections, archives, research institutions and universities, and outlines ways to research and make natural history collections accessible in a historically responsible, culturally respectful and dialogue-oriented manner.
The guide is freely available in German and English as an Open Access publication.
Contact
If you have any questions, suggestions or requests for collaboration, please contact: humanities@mfn.berlin
German colonial rule and the Museum of Natural History in Berlin
Particularly between 1884 and 1919, the Zoological Museum of what is now the Museum of Natural History (see illustration) played a prominent role in centralising and cataloguing the collections from the German colonies. It initiated a large number of expeditions and provided officials and military personnel in the colonies in Africa, the Pacific and China with basic knowledge of natural history collecting, as well as collecting guidelines and materials.
Following a Federal Council decision in 1889, it received all artefacts from every expedition funded by the Reich, as well as materials collected by colonial officials. The collections grew to an unprecedented scale, particularly due to the artefacts arriving from the colonies. The Jurassic fossils from Mount Tendaguru in present-day Tanzania, then part of the colony of German East Africa, gained particular prominence; they have been on display in the museum’s Dinosaur Hall for almost a century. But even collections that attracted less public attention benefited from colonial power structures and infrastructure.
Following the cession of the German colonies in 1919, the areas that remained partly colonised continued to be important focal points for the Museum’s collection and research activities. In this respect, researching the collection history of the museum’s approximately 30 million objects presents us with immense challenges.
Current research projects
The Center for Humanities of Nature at the Museum of Natural History is dedicated to researching this history. Several research projects are currently examining the colonial provenance of the collection.
Video: Tendaguru – Between research and responsibility
Completed research projects
- Guidelines for dealing with natural history collections from colonial contexts (2020–2025)
- Colonial Origins of Nature. The Expansion of the Museum of Natural History’s Mammal Collection around 1900 (2020–2024)
- Human remains at the Museum of Natural History (2024)
- Research focus: provenance (2021–2022)
- A window onto nature and art. A historical-critical reappraisal of the Brandenburg-Prussian Kunstkammer (2019‒2022)
- Animals as Objects. Zoological Gardens and the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, 1810 to 2020 (2019‒2021)
- Museums and Society. Mapping the Social (2021–2023)
- Dinosaurs in Berlin (2015–2018)
The series of international conferences on the theme of natural history and colonialism includes, for example:
- Politics of Natural History. How to decolonise the Natural History Museum (2018)
- Working on Things. On the social, political, economic history of collections (2016)
In addition to public events, internal workshops address the colonial institutional and collection history of the Museum für Naturkunde, as well as ongoing colonial structures and racism (Declaration: Together Against Discrimination, Prejudice and Racism).
Further discussion and educational formats, as well as guided tour programmes, are being developed that deal specifically with the museum’s colonial history. The Museum für Naturkunde is also participating in the pilot phase of the 3-way strategy for the cataloguing and digital publication of collection items from colonial contexts in Germany.
Video: Blandowski, First Nations and the natural history of Australia
References and further reading
Archival holdings
- HBSB, Zoological Museum S I, Early Catalogues, Folder 6 Accession Catalogue (1816‒1828)
- Mammal Collection
Publications
Angermann, Renate, The Mammal Collection of the Museum of Natural History at Humboldt University in Berlin, in: Säugetierkd. Inf. 3 (1989), No. 13, pp. 47‒68.
Report from the Zoological Museum in Berlin for the financial year 1915, in: Mitt. Zool. Mus. Berl. (1916), pp. 241‒255.
Brauer, August, The Zoological Museum, in: History of the Royal Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin, ed. by Max Lenz, Berlin 1910, pp. 372‒388.
Bruchwitz, Arend, Colonial Collection Practices between Cameroon and Berlin – The Mammal Collection of the Museum of Natural History 1889–1916, Master’s thesis, HU Berlin 2019.
Gissibl, Bernhard, The Nature of German Imperialism. Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa, New York 2016.
Heumann, Ina, Taking Nature. Collecting and the Exercise of Colonial Power, in: Science in Context 2026: 1–24, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889725100951
Heumann, Ina, Holger Stoecker, Mareike Vennen, eds. 2024. Deconstructing Dinosaurs. The History of the German Tendaguru Exhibition and Its Finds, 1906–2023. Leiden: Brill.
Kaiser, Katja, and Ina Heumann. forthcoming. "Provenance and Transformation: Humanities in Natural History Collections" Museum International 77 (307–308).
Heumann, Ina, Stoecker, Holger, Tamborini, Marco, Vennen, Mareike, Dinosaur Fragments. On the History of the Tendaguru Expedition and its Objects 1906–2018, Göttingen 2018.
Kaiser, Katja, Heumann, Ina (eds.): Dealing with colonial natural history objects. Recommendations, research, reflections, Sandstein Kultur 2025.
Kaiser, Katja, Collecting Practices and Collection Policy. The Example of Georg Zenker, in: Rahemipour, Patricia (ed.), Bipindi – Berlin. A scientific-historical and artistic contribution to the colonial history of collecting (= KOSMOS Berlin – Research Perspectives on Collections, Vol. 1), Berlin 2018, pp. 7–46.
Köstering, Susanne, Nature to Look At. The Natural History Museum of the German Empire 1871–1914, Cologne 2003.
Kretschmann, Carsten, Spaces Open Up. Natural History Museums in 19th-Century Germany, Berlin 2006.
Liebisch, The Geological-Palaeontological Institute and Museum, in: History of the Royal Frederick William University of Berlin, ed. by Max Lenz, Halle 1910, pp. 310‒319.
Heinrich Lichtenstein, The Zoological Museum of the University of Berlin, Berlin 1816.
Miehlbradt, Sandra, Of Royal Audiences, Silent Helpers and Hunting Trophies. Collecting Natural History Objects for the Museum of Natural History in a Colonial Context, in: Brogatio, Heinz Peter/Röschner, Mathias (eds.): Colonial Traces in the Archives of the Leibniz Association, Halle 2020, pp. 12‒23.
Nyhart, Lynn K., Modern Nature. The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany, Chicago 2009.
Pappenheim, Paul, Report on the Zoological Museum of the University of Berlin in the Years 1916–1926, Berlin 1928.
Stoecker, Holger, An African Dinosaur in Berlin. The Brachiosaurus brancai as a German and Tanzanian Site of Remembrance, in: WerkstattGeschichte, No. 77 (2018): pp. 65–83.
Uhlig, Manfred/Jaeger, Bernd, On the Study of the Beetle Fauna of the Afrotropical Region by the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, with an Overview of the Coleopterological Findings from the
first joint expedition of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the State Museum Windhoek in Namibia, in Mitt. Zool. Mus. Berl. 71 (1995), 2, pp. 213‒245.