Southeast Bavarian Natural History and Mammoth Museum Siegsdorf

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The logo of the natural history and mammoth museum in Siegsdorf

The Southeast Bavarian Natural History and Mammoth Museum Siegsdorf is one of over 800 non-state museums in Bavaria . It is located in the municipality of Siegsdorf in the Upper Bavarian district of Traunstein . The special museum for geology , palaeontology and ice age finds provides knowledge about the formation of the landscape and geological structure of the region of Southeast Bavaria and neighboring Austrian areas, about fauna and flora of the ice ages and about the "Stone Age people". It focuses on the last 250 million years ( Triassic to Quaternary / Stone Age ). A particular attraction of the museum is an original mammoth skeleton that was found in 1975 near Siegsdorf. The museum is funded by the `` State Office for Non-State Museums in Bavaria at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation '' and is listed in the central register of biological research collections in Germany. It is the third largest natural history museum in Bavaria and receives around 50,000 visitors a year.

The museum

The museum is located in the center of Siegsdorf, directly on the Weißen Traun.
The geology department on the ground floor offers a large selection of regional fossils, also to touch.

history

The trigger for founding the museum was the discovery of a mammoth skeleton in 1975. Finders are the then students Bernard von Bredow and Robert Omelanowsky from Siegsdorf. You discover the bones of the skeleton in the Gerhartsreiter Graben near Siegsdorf. It was not until 1985 that Bernard von Bredow approached specialists and the community with the find. During the subsequent recovery on behalf of the Siegsdorf community in the second half of 1985, the bones of cave lions, wolves, giant deer, ancient cattle and woolly rhinoceros were also found. Von Bredow gave the community all the rights to find, and in January 1987 a cast of the mammoth made by Bredow was presented to the public. The keen interest in this led to an architectural competition at the end of 1987 for the establishment of a “Mammoth Museum” in Siegsdorf. A little later Josef Wührl, Munich, bequeathed his collection of fossils from the Siegsdorf area to the community: the idea of ​​a more comprehensive natural history museum takes shape. In May 1990 the conceptual planning and the purchase of exhibits started and in March 1992 the planning order was placed. Almost two years after the groundbreaking ceremony (June 21, 1993), the museum opened on May 13, 1995.

In May 2003 the museum was supplemented with the installation of a “bear cave” on the upper floor. The occasion is the discovery of the first cave bear cave in the Bavarian Alps in 1996. At the end of the “bear cave”, the Stone Age department concludes the museum tour in terms of space and content.

From the constantly expanding educational offerings, the Stone Age theme was staged in 2004 under the name " SteinZeit Siegsdorf " as a tourist offer in the Dießelbachtal near Eisenärzt , 6 km south of Siegsdorf. Modeled wooden huts and fireplaces give visitors and course participants the opportunity to familiarize themselves with Stone Age working methods and living conditions.

In 2010 the "SteinZeit Siegsdorf" will be relocated from the remote Dießelbachtal to the "SteinZeitGarten" directly at the Natural History Museum for practical reasons. On September 16, 2013, the Natural History and Mammoth Museum registered its one millionth visitor.

The museum's director has been the geologist Dr. Robert Darga. The museum has eight employees (as of December 2013).

Structure of the museum, permanent exhibitions

Basking shark head Carcharodon sp. life size.
With a shoulder height of 3.60 m, the Siegsdorf mammoth is one of the largest mammoth skeletons found in Germany.

The museum with a total exhibition area of ​​644 m² is divided into several floors, to which different topics are assigned. In addition, there is the area of ​​the forecourt (outside area), on which the content of the museum is attuned with several installations. All rooms in the museum are barrier-free.

In the basement with an area of ​​196 m² (14 × 14 m), the Alpine genesis is explained in a permanent exhibition using the example of the creation of the Chiemgau . A mechanical `` geo cube '' and a series of profiles exemplify aspects of tectonics, the processes of which led to the collision of the continents Africa and Europe and thus to the formation of the Alps . As part of the permanent exhibition, the genesis of the various types of rock in the Chiemgau is traced on the rock wall, the coalification series and mineral resources of south-east Bavaria are explained and the age of rocks and fossils and the drift of the continents are explained. Evidence such as the Kampenwandmulde as an example of a geological basin establish a connection to the region. In the media room in the basement, a film describes the geology of Siegsdorf. Here a panorama wall also puts the earth in the context of the solar system . After the section `` Natural resources of Southeast Bavaria '' you get from the basement through a replica iron ore gallery to the ground floor. In the basement there is a room for special exhibitions . In addition, the toilet, heating, ventilation and magazine are kept here.

On the ground floor (196 m²) there is a cash desk, cloakroom and foyer in the entrance area as well as the wheelchair-accessible elevator. The equipment of the permanent exhibition rooms is modeled on reef-like silhouettes of the underwater world, corresponding to the four seas that have helped shape the southeast Bavarian landscape and from whose deposits most of the exhibits come from. A salt water aquarium exemplifies the living conditions of the extinct sea creatures presented on the basis of today's reef world. In dioramas, showcases and using fossils (also to touch), exhibits of the Emanuel seam on Kressenberg near Neukirchen and from the Adelholzener layers of Bad Adelholzen are presented as well as the origin of Explains fossils and methods of their preparation . Eye-catchers are the panorama image of a duck-billed dinosaur (approx. 70 million years old), whose thighbones were discovered by Rudolf Ely from Trostberg in 1994, the lifelike replica of the head of a basking shark (Carcharodon sp, approx. 45 million years old), whose teeth were found in the region as well as a copy of the skull of the Mühldorf ancient elephant ( Gomphotherium angustidens , approx. 10 million years old).

The upper floor (196 m²) is dedicated to the Ice Age. The Siegsdorf woolly mammoth ( Mammuthus primigenius ) discovered in 1975 stands here as a cast, while the original bones are presented on a wall in a modeled find position. In addition to the mammoth, finds of other Ice Age animals such as the almost complete skeleton of a cave lion and bone finds from cave bears are exhibited in a replica bear cave. The 9 m² landscape model, which shows the Chiemsee in its development phase, starting 15,000 years ago after the last advance of the Alpine glaciers into the foreland, serves to illustrate the importance of glaciation in the foothills of the Alps. From the bear cave you get to an area dedicated to stone age people. Here, among other things, the processing of flint tools is explained. Pictorial representations of the environment give an impression of "life in the Stone Age".

The gallery (56 m²; 4 × 14 m) is largely designed as a walk-in cave bear cave. Narrow peepholes in the cave walls provide a clear view of bone cavities as they may have looked before the bear bones were removed. But other cave contents, such as bat bones and the remains of post-glacial brown bears (e.g. the Frasdorf brown bear) are on display. At the end of the bear cave, the room opens to the Stone Age department.

The museum forecourt introduces the visitor to the subject of the museum. For this purpose, a 30 m long timeline is used, which is true to scale and shows the 4.6 billion year history of the earth's origins. It leads from the main street to the museum entrance. The timeline ends there in a column, the lower part of which corresponds to the 250 million years that are treated in the museum.

There is a ball mill on the museum forecourt , which demonstrates the power of water and the transience of rocks. The water from the Traun flows through a bronze ammonite and through drawbars onto the turbine-like impeller of the ball mill. It can be used to grind spherical stones.

Special exhibitions

The special exhibitions, which are usually shown annually, complement the contents of the permanent exhibition of the house, also beyond the temporal (up to a maximum of 250 million years before today) and spatial framework (south-east Upper Bavaria). Most of them have so far been compiled - if not otherwise named - by the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology .

  • Otto Hölzl - miner and fossil collector, 1995.
  • Thunderbolt and devil's finger - fossils in popular belief, developed by Inatura - Experience Naturschau Dornbirn, 1996
  • Geotope protection , from the (former) Bavarian State Geological Office, 1997
  • 400 million years old tree, 1997.
  • Hare deer and dog bear. Fossils of Strange Animals, 1998.
  • Archeopteryx , 1999
  • Wonderful butterfly , from the Siegsdorf Museum 2000
  • In the realm of darkness. Contribution to cave research , by the Association of German Cave and Karst Researchers , 2001
  • Pterosaurs - Dragons of the Skies, from the Jura Museum Eichstätt, 2002
  • Stone Age in Chiemgau, from the Siegsdorf Museum, 2003.
  • Living fossils, 2004.
  • Ammonites - Success Spiral in Earth's History, 2005
  • Stone plant structures. Silicified tree trunks, formation of opal , 2006
  • From the edge of the glacier to the beach. Geological journey from Munich via Innsbruck to Bolzano and Verona , 2007
  • Reefs - oases of the world's oceans for 3 billion years. On the occasion of the International Year of the Reef, 2008
  • Pterosaurs - Dragons of the Skies, from the Jura Museum Eichstätt, 2009 to 2010.
  • Microbes - builders of the history of the earth. Function of microorganisms such as bacteria and cyanobacteria as well as fungi and algae in biological processes, 2010 to 2011
  • The Evolution on the track, 2011-2012
  • Teeth . More than 500 million years of tooth development. More than 500 million years of development history of the teeth, from predatory dinosaurs to cows , 2012 to 2013
  • Mollusks - hard shell - soft core. 500 million years of mollusc evolution, 2013 to March 23, 2014.
  • Africa - From the past of an old continent . Loan from the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology Munich , April 12, 2014 to 2015
  • Wunderding Butterfly, March 28, 2015 to February 28, 2016
  • From the edge of the glacier to the beach. A geological journey from Munich to Verona. March 19, 2016 to March 18, 2017

Museum educational offers

Museum educational activities have been offered since 2001 in the museum and in the neighboring SteinZeit Siegsdorf , an outdoor area of ​​the museum (selection):

  • Guided tours: “250 million years of geological history”, “With fire, making a fire like in the Stone Age”, “For good friends”, selected exhibits from the showcases to grasp, “At night in the museum”, on the go with a flashlight, “Alpine glacier -Special".
  • Other: "Leisure program", an active program made up of various modules, including a guided tour. “Children's birthday party”, “Holiday fun on Thursday”, colorful hands-on program during the winter holidays, “SteinZeit Thursday”, hands-on program in the SteinZeitGarten in the summer season; “SteinZeit-Handwerk”, braiding, pottery, grinding amber, working flint. July and August.

Target groups are children from schools and kindergartens, families and adults in groups. Materials are available for teachers (student quizzes for elementary schools and topics from the museum for grades 5 to 13). Around 12 trained people from the region hold around 4,000 events per year.

Support association and volunteer work

The life-size replica of the Siegsdorf mammoth was largely financed by the association.

The Association of Friends of the Natural History and Mammoth Museum Siegsdorf eV (founded in 1997) supports the museum in public relations with the aim of promoting the awareness of the museum. For this purpose, it organizes lectures, excursions to geological outcrops and thematically related museums, and supports both scientific and general publications on the topics of geology, paleontology and the Ice Age. The association made it possible, among other things, to purchase cave bear skeletons for equipping the '' bear cave ''. He also financed a significant part of the life-size replica of the mammoth on the grounds of the museum on the Traunbrücke and the mobile mammoth model. The friends' association currently (December 2013) has around 180 members.

Collections

For reasons of space, the museum does not maintain its own large collections. Finds are usually transferred to state collections. However, the museum has an inventory of comparative pieces and specimens that can be used to deal with inquiries about bones, fossils and stones .

SteinZeit Siegsdorf

Cooperations, advice (selection)

Advice is used by different target groups. The spectrum ranges from addressing finds from private individuals to advising municipalities through to planning and carrying out geological-archaeological excavations and salvage.

See also

literature

  • Robert Darga: Southeast Bavarian Natural History and Mammoth Museum Siegsdorf. (= Bavarian Museums. Volume 25). Weltkunst Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-921669-25-1 .
  • Robert Darga: Earth history of southeast Bavaria. Siegsdorf Natural History and Mammoth Museum. Pfeil-Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-89937-211-3 .
  • K. Zagoršek, R. Darga: Eocene Bryozoa from the Eisenrichterstein beds, Hallthurm, Bavaria. In: Zitteliana. A 44, Munich 2004, pp. 17-40.
  • A. Marciszak, Ch. Schouwenburg, R. Darga: Decreasing size process in the cave (Pleistocene) lion Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss, 1810) evolution - A review. In: Quaternary International. 2013.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Darga: Südostbayerisches Naturkunde- und Mammut-Museum Siegsdorf. Weltkunstverlag Munich 1998.
  2. ↑ Website of the Central Register of Biological Research Collections in Germany ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved November 29, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / zefod.genres.de
  3. ↑ The museum's brochure on group offers 2012.
  4. ^ Robert Darga: Südostbayerisches Naturkunde- und Mammut-Museum Siegsdorf. Weltkunstverlag Munich, 1998, p. 9, 121 ff.
  5. ^ Announcements from the museum director. November 27 and December 2, 2013.
  6. ^ R. Ziegler: The mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius BLUMENBACH) from Siegsdorf near Traunstein (Bavaria) and its accompanying fauna. In: Münchner Geowiss. Abh. (A), 26, Pfeil-Verlag, Munich 1994, OCLC 695248357 , pp. 49-80.
  7. ^ Robert Darga: Südostbayerisches Naturkunde- und Mammut-Museum Siegsdorf. Weltkunstverlag, Munich 1998, pp. 13-16.
  8. ↑ Community brochure : Siegsdorf community. 6th edition. 2008, pp. 52-55.

Web links

Commons : Südostbayerisches Naturkunde- und Mammut-Museum Siegsdorf  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 47 ° 49 ′ 19.6 "  N , 12 ° 38 ′ 34.7"  E