Society Museum
The Society Museum was a Bremen society that was created in 1783 through the merger of various groups, and today both the Club zu Bremen and the Überseemuseum refer to their successors .
history
From a group of Bremen merchants who decided in 1774 to read the translations of John Hawkesworth's collection of journeys around the world together, a reading society was formed which initially met in the houses of the members, exchanged books and discussed them. With the founding of a second society , initially limited to 18 members, in 1776 , the Physical Society , the aim was to promote interest in the natural sciences , collect natural objects and equipment , set up a library and give lectures. Thus society emerged as a bourgeois institution in which the ideas of the Enlightenment had found expression, but it could hardly solve the stagnation of the intellectual and social conditions in which Bremen remained in the 18th century.
After merging with other groups, it was called the Society Museum in 1783 , and until 1805 it was also called the Physical Society . In 1808, with 300 members now, a new building at the corner of Domshof / Schüsselkorb was moved into. The museum was closed by the French authorities in 1813, but reopened after the liberation. In 1838, Jacob Ephraim Polzin rebuilt and extended the building .
The Natural Science Association was founded in 1864 and took over the natural history cabinet of the Society Museum , whose collections also contained curiosities such as the skeleton and clothing of the poisoner Gesche Gottfried . By 1875 the society had grown into a literary and social club , and the membership had grown to over 700. The old museum building was replaced by a new building in 1873-75, but in 1911 it was sold to Deutsche Bank due to a decline in membership . The museum was moved to a building on Am Wall .
Succession
The "Society Museum", a reading society with a "Natural History Cabinet", went up in 1931 with the "Bremer Gesellschaft von 1914" in the Club zu Bremen , which has its club rooms in the historic Schütting House .
In 1875, the collections of the “Natural Science Association” and collections of an anthropological commission founded in 1872 became the property of the city under the name “Municipal Collections for Natural History and Ethnography”. In 1877 they were exhibited in the bell , until the “Municipal Museum for Natural, Ethnic and Commercial Studies” opened in 1896, today's overseas museum at the main train station .
literature
- Arnold Wienholt : History of the Museum in Bremen. In: Hanseatisches Magazin, Vol. 2, Bremen 1799, pp. 177-264.
- The history of the society museum . In: Yearbook of the Bremen Club, 1930/31.
- Herbert Abel: From the rarity cabinet to the Bremen overseas museum. The story of a Hanseatic collection from overseas . Monographs of Wittheit zu Bremen 10, 1970.
- Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .
- The Bremen Club: The Bremen Club 1783–2008 - 225 years in four centuries. Schünemann Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7961-1935-4 .