Museum of Ethnology Dresden

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Japanese Palace - home of the Dresden Ethnographic Museum, January 2005

The Museum für Völkerkunde in Dresden houses ethnographic and anthropological collections with more than 90,000 objects from all parts of the world, including numerous valuable, irreplaceable testimonies to cultures that have long since disappeared. In addition to guest exhibitions on various topics, the museum shows changing exhibitions from its rich holdings.

The Völkerkundemuseum is part of the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony , which is part of the Dresden State Art Collections . The museum's exhibition areas are located in the Japanese Palace .

history

Elector August of Saxony

The oldest objects in the collection now come from the Kunstkammer, founded by Elector August von Sachsen in 1560 . The princely collecting activity was intensively continued in the 16th and 17th centuries. In addition to the art chamber, the growing number of objects was also recorded in the armory. Due to Augustus the Strong , King of Poland since 1697, there was an enormous increase in ethnographica in the now royal collections . Non-European objects were archived here, especially in the Indian Chamber and, after 1683, in the Turkish tent. In 1728 the Foundation for the Royal Public Collections was housed in the newly built Zwinger and the Kunstkammer was spatially separated from the natural science collections .

Adolf Bernhard Meyer

In 1875, the medical professional councilor Adolf Bernhard Meyer founded an ethnographic department in the Natural History Museum in the course of the progressive differentiation between natural and human sciences. Three years later it was named the Royal Zoological and Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum . The focus of scientific interest at that time was on material evidence of peoples and regions in which - shaped by the then progressive evolutionism  - one believed to recognize a primal state of human development. The main research and collection area at this time was the Indonesian-oceanic region .

Arnold Jacobi

The primary aim of the second director Arnold Jacobi was to fill all areas of the collection with specialists. The zoologists, anthropologists and ethnologists working at the museum took on teaching positions at Saxon academies in parallel to their museum work . The resulting permanent exchange of collection, research and teaching guaranteed high quality and topicality. Between 1906 and 1936 the ethnographic and anthropological collecting activity expanded further. During this time, various researchers embarked on several collecting trips, including the New Guinea Expedition in 1910.

In 1920 the museum was renamed “Museum für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde Dresden”. It received additional storage and special exhibition rooms in the orangery building in the Duchess Garden .

In 1923 the ethnologist Bernhard Struck became a research assistant at the Museum of Animal Science and Ethnology.

In National Socialism

During the time of National Socialism , which led to the almost complete destruction of parts of Dresden during World War II , the museum holdings could be relocated in good time thanks to favorable circumstances. Only the objects in an exhibition in the orangery An der Herzogin Garten , which included major large objects, were destroyed. The loss of parts of the historical picture collection must also be lamented.

post war period

As early as 1946, the relocated holdings could be made available again to the now separate State Museums for Ethnology and Zoology . The anthropological collection was incorporated into the holdings of the Museum für Völkerkunde.

The dominant sources of the expansion of the collection after 1945 were private collections and state trade. In addition, there was also evidence from regional studies. The cultural-political goal of this time was the historical documentation of the cultural work of the peoples of the world.

In 1954 the museum moved into rooms in the Japanese Palace . Three years later, the museum was again headed by a scientific director, Siegfried Wolf . Under his leadership, Africa research was promoted and the study collections were supplemented with evidence from around the world.

Current developments

The Dresden Damascus Room in the Museum of Ethnology

The museum received a further significant increase in its collection after 1990, primarily through several collective expeditions by the museum's scientific staff to Brazil , Indonesia , Papua New Guinea and Tunisia .

In October 2012, a new permanent exhibition on the home decor of the Orient was opened. An important part of the exhibition is the "Dresden Damascus Room" with Ottoman wood paneling from 1810, which comes from a town house in Damascus . In 1899 the photographer Hermann Burchardt bought the wooden parts and sent them to Germany on behalf of Karl Ernst Osthaus , the founder of the Folkwang Museum . Osthaus never exhibited the wood paneling. His heirs donated the "Damascus Room" to the Museum of Ethnology in 1930. There it was in the depot until 1997 and was then restored with donations.

In 1999, the Adolf-Bernhard-Meyer-Bau was built for the collections, a modern depot and functional building in Dresden- Klotzsche . The planning of the building, which today also houses the Natural History Central Library in Dresden and the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology in Dresden , was carried out under the director Heinz Israel .

The museum and its branch, the Herrnhut Ethnographic Museum , merged in 2004 with the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology to form the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony under director Claus Deimel .

The collections currently consist of around 90,000 objects and 70,000 pictorial documents. The collection includes the regions Oceania, Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe.

See also

Web links

Commons : Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Löffler: The old Dresden - history of its buildings . EASeemann, Leipzig 1981, ISBN 3-363-00007-3
  2. a b c Museum of Ethnology Dresden . State Art Collections Dresden. 2011. Retrieved November 15, 2011.
  3. Life like in the Orient. sz-online.de (chargeable), accessed on October 19, 2012 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 35.5 "  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 15.7"  E