Natural history cabinet Waldenburg

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Museum - Natural History Cabinet Waldenburg. New building from 1847 with a former coach house on the ground floor

The Museum - Natural History Cabinet in Waldenburg (Saxony) still houses the natural history cabinet of the Princes of Schönburg-Waldenburg , which has been in existence there since the 1840s in the outer area of Waldenburg Castle . In addition to objects from the natural kingdom ( mineralogy , paleontology , fish and reptile collections, conchiles , bird and mammal collections, herbariums ) the museum shows astronomical and physical equipment as well as handicraft exhibits from the Baroque period. A small ethnological collection concludes. Most of the exhibits were brought together in the 19th century. The museum's founder, Prince Otto Victor I. von Schönburg -Waldenburg (1785-1859), commissioned his forest secretary and later chief forester Gustav Adolf Gieße (1807-1846) to buy corresponding private collections for a natural history museum from 1838 .

View of the historical natural history cabinet
Alcohol preparations from the baroque collection of the Linck family of pharmacists

It all started with a small mineral collection, which was taken over by the pharmacist Karl Ferdinand Reichel (1800–1860) from Hohenstein in 1839 . In 1840 Gieße acquired the articulated animal collection from Karl Gerhardt from Leipzig and a bird collection from the confectioner Karl Ferdinand Oberländer (1805–1866) from Greiz. The latter comprised 1200 animals. After more than a year of negotiations, Prince Otto Victor I bought a rich collection of works of art and natural objects from the Linck family of pharmacists in Leipzig in December 1840 . This brought a bourgeois chamber of art and curiosities to Waldenburg, which had been assembled between 1670 and around 1800 and previously exhibited in the Löwen Pharmacy in Leipzig. Decisive for the purchase of the Linck collection was its richness and versatility.

In 1840, Prince Otto Victor I. decided without further ado to expand the indoor riding arena , which was already under construction, behind the stables in the outer area of ​​the palace, so that a full floor was created above the riding area for the collection of natural objects. Only a few years later, the climatic conditions caused difficulties for the natural products and preparations stored in the riding arena floor and they began to go moldy.

Thereupon, in 1845/46 Otto Victor decided to connect a new building to the riding hall, which was to serve on the one hand as a coach house on the ground floor and on the other hand designed and furnished as a museum on the upper floor. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Schönburgers in Waldenburg once again expanded their holdings. In 1846 the Egyptian mummy Shep-en-Hor came to Waldenburg, and around 1910 the African and Romanian hunting trophies of Prince Otto Viktor II. In the period between the two world wars, the collection was reorganized and the building cautiously redesigned (staircase).

Today there is also an important aspect of museum history: Rarity cabinets have seldom been preserved as completely as in Waldenburg. It is therefore a document of the history of science and collections during the Baroque period. The presentation of the objects in a show magazine , which was realized in the 19th century, has largely been preserved in its original form and, like the entire building, is a listed building.

Outstanding items in the collection are a mechanical world system by WJ Blaeu (1650), a Gärtnerscher burning mirror (around 1700), rare colored glasses by Johannes Kunckel around 1690 and the unique specimen of a human fetus with extensive malformations, known as the "chicken man of Taucha" (1735) was published.

gallery

  • A calf with dicephaly

  • Wooden anatomy of a pregnant woman (around 1650)

  • Mummy Shep-en-Hor (around 650 BC)

  • 1735 born "Hühner von Taucha"

  • Amber inclusion with frog mummy (baroque fake)

  • Tangerine preparation (19th century)

  • Chinese lucky dogs / Fu dogs (foo-dogs) made of shells (17th century)

literature

  • Johann Heinrich Linck (the Younger) : Index musaei Linckiani, or a short systematic index of the most distinguished pieces in the Linckische Naturaliensammlung zu Leipzig , 3 vols., Leipzig 1783–1787.
  • Alfred Seifert: The Linck family of pharmacists in Leipzig and their natural and art cabinet (1670-1840) , Mittenwald 1934 (publications by the Society for the History of Pharmacy).
  • Konstantin Wöpke: Guide through the Princely Schönburg Natural History Cabinet in Waldenburg / Sa. and through the collections it contains , Waldenburg 1937.
  • Peter Dilg : Pharmacists as collectors. In: Andreas Grote (Ed.): Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. The world in the room. On the history of collecting 1450-1800 , Opladen 1994, pp. 452–474.
  • Harry Beyrich: The Linck'sche Naturalien- und Kunstkabinett from Leipzig, now in Waldenburg (Saxony). In: Andreas Grote (Ed.): Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. The world in the room. On the history of collecting 1450-1800 , Opladen 1994, pp. 581-601.
  • Ulrike Budig: The Waldenburger Naturalienkabinett - a museum within a museum. In: Sächsische Heimatblätter , issue 5/1998, pp. 328–331.
  • Ulrike Budig: The Waldenburger Naturalienkabinett - a museum within a museum. In: Sächsische Landesstelle für Museumwesen (Hrsg.): Naturalienkabinett Waldenburg , Meerane 1999 (Sächsische Museen 7).
  • Ulrike Budig: A museum building for the Waldenburger Naturalienkabinett . In: Preservation of monuments in Saxony. Communications from the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Saxony, 2010 yearbook, pp. 58–63.
  • Katja Margarethe Mieth, Museum of the City of Waldenburg (Ed.): The Natural History Cabinet: Collect - Research - Show. Proceedings for the conference from May 2nd to 3rd, 2011 in Waldenburg and Chemnitz. Authors: Thilo Habel, Stefan Siemer, Susanne Köstering and others, ISBN 978-3-9810142-9-7 .
  • Eckart Roloff and Karin Henke-Wendt: A family of pharmacists, knowledgeable about collecting. (The museum with natural history cabinet Waldenburg) In: Visit your doctor or pharmacist. A tour through Germany's museums for medicine and pharmacy. Volume 1, Northern Germany. Verlag S. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 213-214, ISBN 978-3-7776-2510-2 .

Web links

Commons : Naturalienkabinett Waldenburg  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ U. Budig: The natural history cabinet Waldenburg. In: Mieth (Ed.) 2011, p. 16

Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 34 ″  N , 12 ° 36 ′ 22 ″  E