Museum for Mineralogy and Geology Dresden

Building in Klotzsche

The Museum of Mineralogy and Geology in Dresden is an extensive collection of geoscientific objects from the subject areas of mineralogy and geology . It belongs to the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden . It currently has no exhibition space worth mentioning.

collection

This approximately 8.5 tonne, three meter wide and 2.1 billion year old iron ore block from North America belongs to the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology and is located in the Dresden Botanical Garden .

GDR postage stamp from 1978 with the stone imprint of a fossil frog of the species Palaeobatrachus diluvianus from the museum's holdings, issued on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Staatliche Wissenschaftliche Museen Dresden

Overall, the museum, which is one of the most important collections of its kind in Germany, has almost 400,000 objects from all over the world. They are mainly stored in the Adolf Bernhard Meyer Building, a large administration and depot building in the northern Dresden district of Klotzsche , where they take up an entire floor. In the same building, but one floor higher, are the objects of the Museum of Animal Science . The focus of the collection is on minerals , rocks and fossils . There are four departments within the museum: Mineralogy, Paleozoology , Paleobotany and Petrography .

The many special collections from different regions of the world are an important part of the museum. With the Richard Baldauf collection, among other things, it has owned one of the most valuable mineralogical private collections of the early 20th century in Europe since 1940 , which with around 10,000 individual items, including crystals and gemstones , has been almost completely preserved. The museum also has a meteorite collection as well as a collection of building and decorative stones . The special fossil collections are also important, for example on the topics of Saxon chalk (compiled by Hanns Bruno Geinitz , especially in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains ), tertiary plants and Solnhofen limestone .

In addition, the museum contains numerous valuable individual items. These include the 12.5 kilogram heavy meteorite that fell near Nentmannsdorf in 1872 and a six meter long fulgurite from Lausitz . Furthermore, the collections contain several silver specimens as witnesses of the great mountain scream from the Ore Mountains , including a copy of the Silver Table from Schneeberg from 1477 and the Silver Cross from 1623. The collection also includes an oyster colony from Plauenschen Grund , starfish from Saxon Switzerland , a female ichthyosaur with embryo and a hadrosaur clutch of 21 eggs . Of particular value are the numerous holotypes of various types of fossils and rocks in the museum , including the materials used for the first description of the ooid and the stromatolite by Ernst Kalkowsky (1851–1938), a sea crocodile from the Jurassic period and the Raumeria plant fossil , a unique piece. The paleontological collections as a center for paleo-biodiversity research contain around 1,500 type specimens.

Several pieces from Heinrich Cotta's petrification collection also belong to the museum, whose holdings include a large collection of Zöblitzer serpentines as well as Stolpen basalt , which, however, only consist of 69 preserved individual parts.

research

One focus of the museum's work is research, which is being advanced primarily in the areas of biodiversity and paleontology and is based on the museum's geological archive with a focus on Saxony. Four scientists are employed in the museum.

The museum library is part of the Dresden Central Natural History Library . The museum publishes two series of magazines on mineralogy and geology.

For research purposes, the museum maintains more than ten special scientific laboratories, including a thin section , a geochronology and a gemology laboratory .

history

Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach

Similar to the State Art Collections , the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology Dresden originally goes back to the Kunstkammer in the Dresden Residenzschloss , a universal treasury set up by Elector August in 1560 . The first collection objects were mentioned in an inventory list as early as 1587, such as the amethyst from Warmbad and the jasper from Lungwitz . The tradition of today's museum in Dresden mineral collection, which sees itself as one of the oldest geoscientific institutions in the world, is traced back to these individual pieces.

From 1728 the museum operated exhibition areas in the Zwinger .

In 1728, Elector August the Strong separated the natural objects from the art collections and housed them in the Zwinger . This is considered to be the actual foundation of the Natural History Collections .

Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach was director of the Royal Natural History Museum between 1820 and 1874 and also has services to the establishment of the Dresden Surgical and Medicinal Academy , the Botanical Garden and the Dresden Zoo . During his tenure, the Dresden May Uprising broke out in 1849 , during which the kennel burned down. The exhibits in the museum were badly affected. Only the mineral collection was completely preserved; the geological-paleontological collection, however, had to be completely rebuilt.

In 1857, the Mineralogical Cabinet split off from the Royal Natural History Museum , in which the Museum für Tierkunde Dresden and the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden remained united. Under the new name of the Royal Mineralogical Museum and under the direction of Hanns Bruno Geinitz and later Ernst Kalkowsky , it developed into a recognized research facility in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1874 a prehistoric section was established in the museum. From 1927 the prehistorian Gotthard Neumann was employed here as a scientific assistant. During the Weimar Republic, the institution was called the Museum of Mineralogy, Geology and Prehistory . Even after 1937, when its two zoological and ethnological sister museums moved due to a lack of space, the museum retained its exhibition rooms in the Zwinger and was given its current name in the same year, as the State Museum for Prehistory Dresden had split off. However, the exhibition space and many objects were lost in the air raids on Dresden in 1945. Other collectibles had previously been outsourced and thus outlived World War II .

After the end of the war, the museum holdings were secured under Walther Fischer and then rebuilt under Hans Prescher and Gerhard Mathé , but there has been no suitable exhibition space since then. Although the museum moved into its new domicile in the Ständehaus in 1959 , it was not until 1967 that smaller parts of its collection were made accessible to the public again. Only temporary special exhibitions were shown in the Zwinger. The new depot building in Klotzsche was moved into in spring 1999 . Since July 1, 2000, the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology has been combined with the Museum of Animal Science to form the Dresden State Natural History Collections . In 2003 they celebrated their 275th anniversary. On January 1, 2009, they were merged with the Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Görlitz State Natural History Museum . This means membership in the Leibniz Association as well as joint funding by the federal and state governments.

Hanns Bruno Geinitz Prize

In 2002 Dedo Geinitz, a descendant of the former museum director Hanns Bruno Geinitz , donated the prize named after him and endowed with 5,000 euros. It is awarded at irregular intervals by the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology to young geoscientists for outstanding scientific achievements, successful projects or extremely easily understandable publications. Two awards have taken place so far. In 2002 the Göttingen scientist O. Lenz received the Hanns-Bruno-Geinitz-Prize, in 2007 two academics were awarded with Sebastian Lüning and Dennis Palermo.

literature

Werner Quellmalz: From the history of the Dresden Mineralogical Museum . In: Sächsische Heimatblätter, issue 2/1967, pp. 49–62

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ uibk.ac.at

↑ meteorite-lab.homepage.t-online.de ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2

51.128888888889 13.79Coordinates: 51 ° 7 ′ 44 ″ N , 13 ° 47 ′ 24 ″ E

[1] uibk.ac.at