Museum of Nature Gotha

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The west tower of Schloss Friedenstein : Home of the new permanent exhibition “Animals in the Tower”, in April 2010
Ducal Museum: Former domicile of the Museum der Natur (until 2010)

The Museum der Natur Gotha is one of the four museums of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation . It houses geological, palaeontological and zoological collections that date back to the 17th century.

The museum was located in the Ducal Museum Gotha until 2010 . In the course of the fundamental redesign of the foundation's museums, it has since been relocated to the western part of Friedenstein Castle. The Ducal Museum has been renovated and has housed the art collections since October 2013. Animals in the Tower is the name of the first new permanent exhibition at the Museum der Natur, which has been on view in the west tower of the castle since December 2010.

history

Duke Ernst II.

The Gotha dukes began collecting natural objects as early as the 17th century . Together with the works of art, they took up a lot of space in Schloss Friedenstein. For this reason, Duke Ernst II (1818–1893) of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha decided to have a new museum building built. It was built in the former ducal kitchen garden of Friedenstein Castle in the neo-renaissance style between 1864 and 1879.

The new ducal museum housed the art cabinet , the Chinese cabinet, the natural history cabinet, the copperplate cabinet, the picture gallery and the collection of plaster casts. This gave the Gotha residence a museum of great scientific and artistic importance, which, however, suffered great losses at the end of the Second World War in 1945 due to relocation, looting and taking . The remaining parts of the art collections were transported to the Soviet Union in 1945. After their return in 1956, they were housed in Friedenstein Castle. The natural science collections remained in the museum building and were expanded to include the natural history museum. After the renovation of the building, the Central Biological Museum was opened on August 1, 1954 . The largest natural museum in Thuringia at the time was named Natural History Museum - from 1971 it was called the Museum of Nature Gotha . The backgrounds of the dioramas, made by the hunting and animal painter Friedrich Reimann between 1952 and 1954, were significant . Reimann also designed the wall paintings in the entrance area and in the stairwell. The museum has been part of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation since 2004.

New museum of nature in the castle

Former special exhibitions

  • 2006 Bionics - From the primordial dinosaur to the running robot
  • 2007 Gotha - In the realm of the goddess freedom. The first English landscape garden on the continent
  • 2008 night (s) in the museum
  • 2009 The clothes of animals
  • 2010 Anatomy - Gotha gets under your skin (together with the Castle Museum and the Museum of Regional History and Folklore)
  • 2011 Elefantastisch (together with the Castle Museum and the Museum of Regional History and Folklore)
View of the permanent exhibition Animals in the Tower

Animals in the tower

This first new permanent exhibition was opened on December 17, 2010 in the west tower of Friedenstein Castle. It is conceived against the background of the scientific research and discovery practice of the 18th and 19th centuries, which replaced the era of the baroque natural history cabinets and became groundbreaking for modern natural science. Four icons of the natural sciences of that time are presented right at the beginning of the exhibition: Carl von Linné , Alexander von Humboldt , Charles Darwin and Alfred Brehm .

Following this, the following topics await the visitor:

  • Skin and bones - internal and external skeletons
  • Hunters on quiet paws - small and large cats
  • Wings, tails, arms, fins - limbs of the terrestrial vertebrates
  • Travel into the unknown - researchers discover the world
  • Expulsion from Paradise - Disappeared and Endangered Species
  • The big eat - specialization in obtaining food
  • Forest of Wonders - Fascinating diversity of the tropics
  • Light off! - Animals of the night

The natural history cabinet

A natural history cabinet was just as indispensable for a baroque prince for the purpose of adequate representation as owning an art chamber. Both corresponded to a mostly universalistic and encyclopedic collecting passion that was typical of the Baroque period. The beginnings of the scientific collections at Schloss Friedenstein go back to Duke Ernst the Pious , who, among other things , was able to acquire the largest collection of conchylia in Germany from the Gotha naturalist Friedrich Christian Schmidt in 1827 . The collections continued to grow even under his successors. Friedenstein Castle became a magnet for numerous natural scientists from all over Europe at an early stage. In addition to rare animal preparations and some curiosities, it is above all the minerals and conchylia from the 17th to 19th centuries and a very extensive insect collection that make the collection significant.

Ursaurier

Holotype of Orobates pabsti named after Wilhelm Pabst in the museum

The exhibits in the museum include sandstone slabs with skeletons and footprints of various urchin species from the group of Temnospondyles , ancestors of today's amphibians , and pelycosaurs , which were discovered in a former quarry at Bromacker near Tambach-Dietharz . This also includes the so-called Tambach lovers . These primeval dinosaurs (approx. 290 million years old), whose development has already been fully adapted to rural life, are the oldest fossil finds of their kind in the world.

Permanent exhibition "Thuringian Forest"

A new permanent exhibition is planned, which will be devoted to researching the flora and fauna of the Thuringian Forest . In addition, visitors get an insight into regional research and science.

Museum collections

Insects (dry collections)

The main focus of the collection are beetles (Coleoptera), butterflies (Lepidoptera), hymenoptera (Hymenoptera), jumping terrors (Orthoptera or Saltatoria), two-winged birds (Diptera) and dragonflies (Odonata). Origin is the Palearctic Region (Palearctic), Central Europe and Thuringia.

Conchylia collection

The main focus of the collection are molluscs (Mollusca). Origin are the West Indies and tropical South America .

Corals and sponges

The focus of the collection is on flower animals (Anthozoa) - corals and sponges (Porifera).

Mammals

The main focus of the collection are mammals (Mammalia). Origin are Central Europe and Thuringia. There is evidence of " melanistic (black) hamsters" in Thuringia.

Bird collection

This is mainly an acquisition between 1820 and 1890. Today, apart from local finds, birds are no longer a focus of the collection. The focus of the collection was on the birds (Aves) from Central Europe, the Oriental , the Palearctic Region (Palearctic) , the Antarctic , the Neotropical and the Nearctic , all of which are documented in an inventory catalog.

Fish, amphibians and reptiles

These are approximately 300 dried animals or parts thereof that are of national importance. There are around 600 animals from Central Germany and Thuringia that are preserved in liquid form.

Geological collections

The geoscientific collections of the museum include around 5,000 rocks , around 18,000 minerals and around 50,000 fossils . The collection of minerals, rocks and fossils from Central Europe and the Thuringian Forest by Gotha geologist Karl Ernst Adolf von Hoff (1771–1837), the “ meteorite collection” and skeletal remains of the forest elephant find from Burgtonna from the year are of scientific historical importance 1695. The scientifically significant collections include:

  • the primeval dinosaur skeletons found at Bromacker near Tambach-Dietharz since 1974 (more than 40 skeletons of 12 terrestrially adapted tetrapods)
  • a collection of fossil Conchostraken of Lower Permian Central Europe and the USA and comprising several 1000 objects
  • a collection of tetrapod tracks, invertebrate tracks and plants from the Rotliegend (Unterperm) Thuringia.

Other special features

The most extraordinary collection items include the anatomical preparation of a human from 1731 (known in Gotha as "Schlotfeger". This is linked to a popular legend), the bladder stone by Johann Saubert from 1646 and Miss Baba , the oldest preserved preparation of an elephant cow ( 1857). In addition, the Museum der Natur has collection material from the Antarctic through its connection to the Friedrich Schiller University Jena . From 1987, Jena researchers who took part in the Soviet Antarctic expeditions handed over birds, mammals, invertebrates and plants that had been collected several times, thus expanding the collection to include material from this unique continent.

See also

literature

  • Museums of the Schloss Friedenstein Gotha Foundation . German art publisher, April 2007.
  • The baroque universe of Gotha . Print Media Center Gotha, 2011.
  • Thomas Martens: Ursaurier between the Thuringian Forest and the Rocky Mountains. A journey through time into the history of the earth 290 million years ago (=  booklet accompanying the exhibition by Thomas Martens, Museum der Natur Gotha ). 2000, DNB  961751592 .
  • W. Zimmermann: The entomological and arachnological collections of the Museum of Nature Gotha . In: Treatises and reports of the Museum der Natur Gotha . tape 12 , 1984, pp. 39-43 .
  • W. Joost: The entomological collections of the Natural History Museum Gotha . In: Treatises and reports of the Natural History Museum Gotha . tape 2 , 1965, p. 79-96 .
  • R. Bellstedt , R. Samietz: Catalog of the types kept in the collections of the Museum der Natur Gotha . In: Treatises and reports of the Museum der Natur Gotha . tape 22 , 2002, p. 187-196 .
  • R. Bährmann: To the knowledge of the Dipterensammlungen Germany . In: Contributions to Entomology . tape 49 , 1999, pp. 173-209 .
  • M. Joost: The Conchylia collection in the Museum of Nature Gotha . In: Treatises and reports of the Museum der Natur Gotha . tape 16 , 1990, pp. 37-50 .
  • W. Zimmermann: On the knowledge of the bats (Chiroptera, Mammalia) in West Thuringia . In: Treatises and reports of the Museum der Natur Gotha . 1971, p. 77-94 .
  • Gerd Seidel: Thuringian Basin (=  collection of geological guides . Volume 85 ). Bornträger-Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-443-15058-6 .
  • Thomas Martens: Thuringian Forest (=  collection of geological guides . Volume 95 ). Bornträger-Verlag, Berlin / Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-443-15078-0 .

Web links

Commons : Museum der Natur Gotha  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ I. Schamscha-Küpper: The animal and hunting painter Friedrich Reimann 1896-1991. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1996.
  2. ↑ W. Zimmermann: The current distribution of melanistic hamsters (Cricetus c. Cricetus) in Thuringia and comments on their morphology (=  Hercynia, NF volume 6 (1) ). 1969, p. 80-89 .
  3. ↑ Christian Acker: Riesenalk und Zwergmotmot - The bird collection of the Museum of Nature Gotha . Ed .: Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha. 2015, ISBN 978-3-940998-28-6 .
  4. ^ Andreas M. Cramer: The Gotha legends. Gotha 2005, p. 61.
  5. ↑ The smoking castle cup. on www.echt-gothsch.de
  6. ↑ R. Samietz: "Those who came from the cold". Antarctica in Gotha. Report on a permanent exhibition in the Museum der Natur Gotha. In: Polar Journal. 1, 01/98, 1998, pp. 27-29.

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 36 ″  N , 10 ° 42 ′ 21 ″  E