Museum at the Lion Gate
The Museum am Löwentor , often referred to as the Löwentormuseum for short , is a museum for paleontology and geology . It is part of the State Museum for Natural History Stuttgart , which also includes the Rosenstein Castle Museum and some branch offices. The Museum am Löwentor is located in the north of Stuttgart on the edge of Rosenstein Park and has around 110,000 visitors a year.
history
The State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart emerged in 1950 from the natural history collection established by the Dukes of Württemberg in 1791. In 1817, King Wilhelm I declared them to be the state's public collection. From 1854 Oscar Fraas worked on the systematic expansion of the geological, palaeontological and mineralogical departments in the Royal Natural History Cabinet and from 1894 his son Eberhard Fraas .
Before the Second World War , the collection of the State Museum of Natural History was housed in Neckarstrasse in the city center. Some of the exhibits were destroyed in the war, the much larger part, which was previously relocated, was preserved. The museum's biological collection has been on display in Rosenstein Castle since 1954 . A suitable exhibition area for the palaeontological collection was created in the new building of the museum at Löwentor after the location was found and the planning period was complete (construction started in 1981, opening 1985). The Stuttgart architects Siegel, Wonneberg und Partner designed a museum complex consisting of two buildings adjoining a spacious courtyard and connected underground.
In the building to the south-east there are magazines, research laboratories, workshops, work rooms, the management, public relations and administration on several floors, some of them underground.
In the north of the forecourt is the exhibition building with a cafeteria attached to it. The permanent collection is a "one-room museum" with three levels and a total of over 3,500 square meters of exhibition space, the ceiling height is up to 11 meters.
The director is currently (2017) Johanna Eder .
Permanent exhibition
The exhibition in the Museum am Löwentor shows a number of fossil finds mainly from southwest Germany , a region with comparatively rich fossil deposits. One exhibit in the museum is the skull of the Steinheim prehistoric man Homo steinheimensis (see also Prehistoric Man Museum ).
The entrance level of the museum houses the ticket office and information stand, the museum shop and space for changing special exhibitions. Right next to the entrance, a few steps lead into the so-called amber cabinet , which shows animals and plants enclosed in the fossil resin.
A staircase leads from the entrance to a mezzanine floor, on which the circular route through the exhibition begins, which covers 250 million years of geological history in Baden-Württemberg . The path starts with the Triassic period (approx. 250 to 210 million years ago), leads over the Jurassic period (approx. 210 to 140 million years ago) to the Tertiary period (65 to 2 million years ago) ) and ends with the mammoth , aurochs and the cave bear in the Ice Age of the Quaternary (two million years ago until today). Life-size replicas of the prehistoric inhabitants in dioramas ( red sandstone , shell limestone , Lower Keuper , Middle Keuper , Black Jura , White Jura ), combined with the original finds , are intended to provide insights into the world millions of years ago. More dioramas a. a. for the Quaternary are planned.
In 2007, the Baden-Württemberg State Exhibition “Saurians - Successful Models of Evolution” was shown in the Museum am Löwentor . This exhibition presented the dinosaurs as successful animals that populated the earth for 250 million years. A total of 328,000 visitors were counted. Since 2008 the entire exhibition has been revised and graphically renewed.
Museum education
Guided tours on various topics for groups from preschool age, as well as projects, holiday programs, excursions and family tours.
Sculpture dinosaur
The sculpture Saurier was created by Bernhard Luginbühl from 1982 to 1984. The steel parts come from the scrap yard of a shipyard in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg , where they were also assembled. On the back of the stylized, 3 m high and 7 m long dinosaur body is a kind of type case in which casts of paleolontological finds such as ammonites , bones and snail shells are exhibited.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ About us: Employees. State Museum for Natural History Stuttgart, accessed on March 25, 2017 .
- ^ Bernhard Luginbühl: Saurier, 1982-84 (compiled in 1984). City of Stuttgart, accessed on August 24, 2018 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 48 ′ 19 ″ N , 9 ° 11 ′ 25 ″ E