Fuhlrott Museum

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The entrance of the museum when it was still open (2007)

The Fuhlrott Museum was a natural history museum in Wuppertal . The museum, which is run by the development associations and the city of Wuppertal, was faced with increasing financial constraints, which led to a reduction in the range. The entire collection, which could not be fully presented to the public, includes 60,000 fossils and minerals , 220,000 beetles, bird preparations and insects. The museum was named after the Wuppertal natural scientist Johann Carl Fuhlrott .

history

Museum operation

The museum is from the collection of the Natural Science Association of Elberfeld and Barmen (founded in 1846) under the direction of Dr. Johann Carl Fuhlrott , emerged. Fuhlrott was the first scientist to recognize the mortal remains of another type of human species , Homo neanderthalensis , in the skull bones found in the Neanderthal .

After the collection was located in various locations in Barmen and Elberfeld in the following decades , it was housed at the last location on Auer Schulstrasse at the corner of Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse , a few hundred meters west of downtown Elberfeld, since April 1967 .

In the spring of 2003 there were serious budget cuts and director Hans-Hermann Schleich handed over the management of the museum. The natural science association continued to run the house on a voluntary basis.

closure

At the end of March 2008 the museum was temporarily closed. It had been known for a long time that the city buildings in which the museum was housed had to be completely renovated. After the renovation, the building complex should be used entirely by the adult education center. A new location was initially sought for the natural history collection. There were plans to move it to the zoo restaurants at the Wuppertal Zoo or to the building of the former Reichsbahndirektion Elberfeld . Due to the austerity constraints of the city of Wuppertal, these remained in the idea stage, because the zoo restaurants would have had to be extensively renovated beforehand. In June 2008, all exhibits were then stored in containers on Katernberger Schulweg for an indefinite period until a permanent solution was found.

In December 2010 it became known that most of the exhibits had been loaned to other museums and institutions and that the Fuhlrott Museum was “in fact no longer existing”. The city of Wuppertal was able to reclaim these loans until 2014, since then the exhibits have been considered donations. The depot at the former school building on Katernberger Schulweg was to be closed by the end of 2011, the building demolished and the property sold. The exhibits are then to be relocated to Münzstrasse. After an interview, Will Baltzer , chairman of the Förderverein Fuhlrott-Museum, said he was confident that there would be an interim solution in Münzstraße. According to him, there was a plan that, in cooperation with the director of the historical center , Eberhard Illner , a display collection for school classes could be created as an interim solution. According to him, the zoo restaurants would be best suited as a later solution. The chairman of the Natural Science Association, Wolf Stieglitz, contradicts Baltzer's statement in the spring of 2011 and sees no chance for a revival for a natural science museum in Wuppertal.

After the museum was closed in 2008, the city of Wuppertal donated the lepidopterological collection, in which Friedhelm Nippel had played a major role, to the Aquazoo - Löbbecke Museum in Düsseldorf in 2013 .

The museum building is used by the Bergische Volkshochschule and the Wuppertal media center.

exhibition

The museum put its focus on natural history exhibits, whereby ethnographic topics were partly dealt with in the special exhibitions. The exhibition was divided into two areas:

  • The permanent exhibition showed, among other things, the local fauna using numerous animal specimens and the development of species through evolution. Furthermore, numerous fossils, but also minerals and some living animals were shown.
  • In the two rooms of the temporary exhibition, exhibits on a specific topic were exhibited for a limited time.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The deadline expires in 2014. In: Wuppertaler Rundschau February 19, 2011.
  2. ^ Announcement from the Natural Science Association Wuppertal
  3. ^ Fuhlrott-Museum: Loans are distributed all over North Rhine-Westphalia. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . Retrieved December 12, 2010.
  4. ↑ Stieglitz: Fuhlrott Museum without a chance. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung. (online) from April 5, 2011.
  5. ↑ Fuhlrott Erbe: Does the city give away the collection today? In: Westdeutsche Zeitung. (online) from September 11, 2013.
  6. ↑ The end of the Fuhlrott Museum. Blog of the AGNU - AG Nature and Environment Haan e. V. of September 11, 2013, accessed September 2013.
  7. ↑ BVHS: Homepage (Home) Bergische-VHS. Accessed January 2, 2020 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 15 ′ 19 ″  N , 7 ° 8 ′ 20 ″  E