Museum of man and nature

Entrance area

The Museum Mensch und Natur is a natural history museum in the northern part of Nymphenburg Palace in Munich . It is a museum of the Bavarian State Natural Science Collections . On 2500 square meters, the formation of the solar system , the history of the earth and the development of life, but also the anatomy and biology of humans, nutrition and environmental problems as well as the relationship between humans and nature are presented. There is a “Playful Natural History” section especially for children.

The prepared brown bear JJ1 has been exhibited in the museum since the beginning of April 2008 , just like its predecessor, the last brown bear in Bavaria hunted 170 years ago.

history

The predecessors of the museum, which opened in 1990, are the natural history exhibition rooms in the Old Academy , the former collegiate building of the Jesuit order on Neuhauser Strasse in Munich , which were destroyed by bombing in 1944, and the German Hunting Museum, which opened in 1938 in the north wing of Nymphenburg Palace. From 1967 the State Natural Science Collections were planning a modern museum for natural history in Munich. The plan for a new museum building costing 120 million DM on the southern Oberwiesenfeld failed in 1983. In 1984 the opportunity arose to set up the Museum of Man and Nature in the north wing of Nymphenburg Palace. It was opened in 1990 by the then Bavarian Prime Minister Max Streibl .

With the relocation of the institutes for genetics and microbiology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich from the neighboring building complex to Martinsried, the opportunity arose to realize the long-planned expansion of the museum. In 2014, the Free State of Bavaria decided to expand the Museum Mensch und Natur in a new building to be built on the site of the former faculty building. According to plans by the architect Volker Staab, the exhibition area is to expand from 2500 to over 7000 square meters. The museum is to be reopened under the name " Biotopia - Naturkundemuseum Bayern" . In autumn 2017, the cost of the planned new building was estimated at 95 million euros.

Due to the close proximity to Nymphenburg Palace , parts of the population expressed concerns about the planned new building and the future architecture. The responsible planning team and architects' office reacted by presenting an initial stage of development taking into account the protection of historical monuments and the designs by Joseph Effner in autumn 2017. The dialogue between architecture, monument protection and the population will continue to be maintained. At the beginning of 2017, the start of construction for Biotopia was given in 2019, ^{[out of date]} the completion in 2023 Template: future / in 3 years. The existing museum will be closed during the construction phase. For the transition phase, the Biotopia Lab, an exhibition and event area in the premises of the Munich Botanical Garden , will provide information on the topics and the development progress of the future museum.