North Sea Museum (Bremerhaven)

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Castle house in the fishing port I

The North Sea Museum in Bremerhaven was a marine history museum in Geestemünde until 1999 . The unique natural history museum has been opened three times in its 78-year history . Located on the western pier of the commercial port , it had over 35,000 visitors annually when it was married in 1980.

history

Opening voucher

The senior teacher Fritz Lücke (1887-1970) headed the institute for sea fishing in the fishing port since 1919 . He had the idea of teaching the population about the tasks and problems of deep-sea fishing with a display collection .

Fishing Museum

On the upper floors of the newly built castle house (the later Wiking house), some rooms were still empty. They offered to accept the new museum. The scientific departments of the Institute for Sea Fisheries were housed on the lower floors. The Institute for Sea Fisheries opened a fishing museum on November 24, 1921. The tasks were:

  1. Transfer of specialist knowledge to those involved in fishing
  2. Promoting understanding of the importance and distribution of sea fishing and increasing fish consumption in the rest of the population
  3. Research work insofar as it promises results that can be used in practice
  4. scientific work through of all practical fisheries issues

The first exhibits came from the magazine of the Morgenstern Museum . There eclipsed the Fisheries Biological collection of Friedrich Duge . When the museum was at its best, the construction police closed it. The buildings are not suitable for visitors; there were no emergency exits. In retrospect, this closure turned out to be a stroke of luck; because in 1926 the Prussian Minister for Trade and Transport made an old cotton shed available at the trading port. After its renovation, the Fisheries Museum moved into the upper rooms in 1928. The extensive exhibition of prepared creatures from the North Sea and the North Atlantic was unique. It included algae , corals , worms , mollusks , crustaceans , echinoderms , fish , birds and marine mammals . Millimeter-sized snails as well as large objects such as walrus , polar bears or whales , from the mudflat to deep sea dwellers, were represented . The interior was as famous as the exhibition. During the heaviest of the air raids on Wesermünde on September 18, 1944, the museum partially burned down. Most of the exhibits have been lost. The rooms served briefly as a collection point for soldiers, then as a wood store.

Institute for Marine Research

In 1948, the state of Bremen took over the Institute for Sea Fisheries on the road to the double lock and made it the Institute for Marine Research . As a morning gift , the institute received 37 showcases worth 45,000  German marks . With the change of name and area of ​​responsibility, the biological collection also changed. In 1950, Erdmann Scholz, the first taxidermist, was hired.

On November 8, 1952, the museum was opened for the third time in the renovated rooms. On behalf of the Bremen Senate , Willy Dehnkamp thanked them for their work. The display collection was considerably enlarged in the following years. Not only sea fishing, but the entire marine environment should be presented to the visitor. In order to make the museum better known, special exhibitions were shown that had to find approval in a port city, e.g. B. What seafarers bring with them, "Ancient fishing" and "Ebb and flow". Some of these special exhibitions have been incorporated into the regular collection. As a result, their size grew steadily, as did the population's interest. Further halls were added in 1955 and 1965.

The taxidermist Scholz followed Paul Slominski to 1959. From 1960 was Günther Behrmann decades taxidermist . The museum was called the North Sea Museum since 1971 and was an independent department of the institute. Under Behrmann's guidance taxidermists were trained, museum educators were employed and numerous teaching materials were published for schools. From 1972 Behrmann became director of the North Sea Museum.

The collection grew very quickly thanks to its own research cutter. By 1981 there were 24 expeditions to the North Atlantic. In 1981 the North Sea Museum extended over three halls with a total of 642 m². 3500 animal species were exhibited in 75 showcases. There were also five dioramas, three biological groups, a functional model, an algae herbarium and a large display case on evolution with many fossils . Over 300 school classes visited the museum every year. From 1973 printing works were offered explaining the exhibits. From 1979 teaching aids for teachers and student work aids were available.

AWI

Museum building and AWI extension (Steidle) at the trading port (2015)

When 50 employees of the Biological Institute Helgoland came from Hamburg to Bremerhaven, the newly created Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) complained about the premises of the North Sea Museum. In 1986 the North Sea Museum was incorporated into the AWI. As a federal institution, the AWI was not allowed to maintain a museum. The North Sea Museum was closed. That is why Bremerhaven citizens founded the North Sea Museum e. V. Initially, the state-owned exhibits remained in the original rooms. They were still allowed to be viewed by school classes - after prior registration. A visit to the public was possible on one Sunday a month because members of the friends' association carried out the supervision on a voluntary basis. In 1999, however, the gates finally closed. The exhibits were professionally packaged under the direction of the Übersee-Museum and stored in a hall. The dioramas were lost. The long search for a new domicile was fruitless. The collaboration with the Atlanticum also came to an end when it closed in 2013.

meaning

The preparation methods developed in the North Sea Museum are used all over the world. It had developed from a local museum into an internationally recognized special collection.

literature

  • Günther Behrmann, Liebhild Grotrian-Pahl, Wolfgang Timm: North Sea Museum - history, presentation, environment . Ed .: Förderverein Nordseemuseum Bremerhaven e. V. Nordwestdeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft Bremerhaven, Bremerhaven 1991, ISBN 3-927857-31-9 ( digitized [PDF; 43.5 MB ; accessed on October 28, 2019]).
  • Wolfgang Timm: No North Sea Museum in Bremerhaven for 20 years. A natural history collection from the North Sea and North Atlantic in deep sleep . In: Men from Morgenstern , Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 838 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven October 2019, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 3.9 MB ; accessed on October 28, 2019]).

Web links

Commons : North Sea  Museum Bremerhaven - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Lücke headed the Federal Research Center for Fisheries in 1951/52 .
  2. a b c d e f g Günther Behrmann: 60 years of the North Sea Museum in Bremerhaven . Ed .: Institute for Marine Research. Self-published, Bremerhaven 1981, OCLC 248277393 .
  3. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Johann Duge. In: Website Stadtwiki Cuxhaven / Cuxpedia. Retrieved October 28, 2019 .
  4. ^ In: Nordsee-Zeitung . 17th February 1930.
  5. ↑ Three cheers to the whale experts! In: Website acrobats of the sea. Retrieved October 28, 2019 .
  6. Memory of mankind - animal preparations in Bremerhaven . In: Wolfgang Jeschke · Gesellschaft für Kommunikation mbH (Hrsg.): Laufpass . No.  29 . Self-published, Bremerhaven August 2011, p. 38 ( digital version [PDF; 13.2 MB ; accessed on October 28, 2019]).
  7. ↑ The North Sea Museum is in danger. Internationally recognized exhibition must make room for the institute. In: Nordsee-Zeitung . April 20, 1999.