Hungarian Natural Science Museum
The Hungarian Natural Science Museum ( Hungarian : Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum , MTTM or NHMUS) is a natural history museum based in the Hungarian capital Budapest . The museum, founded in 1802 , is Europe's third oldest natural history museum and, with around 10 million exhibits, is also one of its largest.
history
The history of the Natural Science Museum and its collections has long been closely linked to that of the Hungarian National Museum (MNM). That goes back to a foundation in 1802, when Count Ferenc Széchényi gave his 17,000 volume library including coin collection to the Hungarian state in order to form the basis for a national scientific collection and a national library (the future Széchényi National Library ). The mineral collection left one year later by his wife, Countess Julianna Festetics , became the basis of the natural history collection.
From 1810 the entire collection was presented in a nature and art chamber (lat .: Camera Naturae et Artis Productorum ). A donation followed in 1811 by Archduke Rainer of Austria , which established the paleontological collection, and in 1818 the plant collection of the botanist Pál Kitaibel was acquired for 7,000 forints , thus laying the foundation for the botanical collection.
In 1847 the collection moved into the new building of the National Museum on Museum Boulevard ( Muzeum körút ) designed by Mihály Pollack , and the collections were rapidly expanded in the following years through donations and purchases. The greatest expansion in the period after the Hungarian Revolution was the acquisition of the collections of the Royal Hungarian Scientific Society in 1856 . From 1870 the Hungarian National Museum had separate departments for botany, mineralogy and zoology. By 1896 these collections already comprised over 1 million specimens.
In 1927 the 10th International Zoological Congress took place in Budapest. The insect collection of the National Museum Headquartered this time around 3 million samples and had in its own building in the Baross-Straße 13 be laid. As the ever-expanding collections became more complex and crowded, the separate Natural Science Museum was established in 1933, but still as part of the National Museum. At the end of the 1930s, research at the museum was intensified and, among other things, a collaboration with the Josef University for Technology and Economics was established. Towards the end of the Second World War , the botanical collection was evacuated to Váchartyán in the small area of Vác and was largely lost, while the collections and exhibits that remained in the National Museum remained intact.
During the Hungarian Popular Uprising in 1956, the main building of the National Museum was hit by artillery fire and both the Africa exhibition and a large part of the mineralogical and paleontological collection items were destroyed. A few days later, the building in Baross-Strasse was hit and around 36,000 stuffed birds , 22,000 bird eggs , 13,000 fish , 40,000 amphibians and reptiles , 500,000 mollusks , 60,000 dragonflies , 200,000 two-winged birds fell victim to the flames, along with around 100,000 scientific volumes . In the 60s and 70s, the Africa exhibition was replaced by expeditions to Africa by the big game hunter Zsigmond Széchenyi , as well as regular research trips by Hungarian scientists to third-world communist countries such as North Korea , Vietnam , Cuba or Mongolia, the natural history collections added.
From the late 1950s to the mid 1990s, some of the Natural Science Museum's collections were repeatedly moved to different exhibition locations. In the early 1990s, the Hungarian government decided to relocate all of the museum's collections to the Ludovika Academy building complex , the former military academy of the ku Landwehr . In 1995 this new museum location was opened at Ludovika Square ( Ludovika tér ) 2-6 and was last major expansion in 2004. However, some parts of the 5,000 m² exhibition space are still being built today.
The general director of the museum has been the zoologist István Matskási since 1986 .
Research and collection
The five scientific departments of the museum are designed to be interactive. The Ludovika Academy houses the departments for anthropology , geology and paleontology , mineralogy and petrology , as well as the headquarters of the library. The Ludovika also houses the bird and mammal collection of the zoological department, a molecular genetic laboratory, a paleontological research group and the animal-ecological research group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .
Anthropological Department
The anthropological collection of the Natural Science Museum includes around 20,000 human bones from the Neolithic and Mesolithic period . The collection also includes Hungarian Neanderthal finds from the Subalyuk and Istállóskö caves .
Botanical Department
The herbarium holds a total of 1,800,000 specimens in the individual collections of palaeobotany , cryptogams , bedecktsamer and mushrooms . The historical collection items include the herbaria of some important botanists, such as Pál Kitaibel , Lajos Kossuth , Lajos Haynald , Árpád Degen and Sándor Jávorka . The oldest herbarium specimens in the Natural Science Museum come from the plant collection of the Danish botanist Franz Mygind (1710–1789) from 1759.
Geological and Paleontological Department
The Geological and Paleontological Collection holds around 100,000 fossils from Hungary and abroad. It is considered to be one of the most comprehensive paleontological collections in Europe.
Ursus spelaeus ( cave bear )
Limaysaurus tessonei (left) and Giganotosaurus (right)
Mineralogical and Petrological Department
Until 1956, the Mineralogical and Petrological Collection was one of the three most valuable collections in the world, but was almost completely destroyed by the fire. The newer collections cover minerals from across the Carpathian Mountains and the Carpathian Basin . This also includes rarities such as a medium amethyst and a piece of moon rock from an earlier Apollo mission . One of the newer attractions of the collection is a 15 million year old and 300 kg heavy wooden opal from the Mátra Mountains .
Zoological Department
The zoological collection is the fifth largest in Europe and comprises a total of over 7 million specimens of invertebrates and vertebrates . In the entrance hall of the museum there is a skeleton of a fin whale ( Balaenoptera physalus ) around 20 meters long .
Smilodon populator
Information and documentation
The library of the Natural Science Museum is the largest special natural science library in Hungary. The stock amounts to approx. 300,000 media and is publicly accessible via a digital library catalog ( OPAC ); including over 1,720 current magazines. Each of the five research departments has its own specialist libraries:
- Anthropological Library, Ludovika Square 2
- Botanical Library, Könyves-Kálmán-Boulvd. 40
- Mineralogical Library, Ludovika Square 2
- Pedagogical Library, 6 Ludovika Square
- Paleontological Library, Ludovika Square 2
- Zoological Library, Baross-Strasse 13
The museum publishes its own scientific journals. The first journal was published in 1877 by the naturalist Ottó Herman under the title "Journal of Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy and Geology" ( Természetrajzi Füzetek ).
Exhibitions and public relations
The Hungarian Natural Science Museum has a leading position in the field of knowledge transfer and museum education in Hungary . There is a joint working group between the Hungarian Museum of Natural Sciences and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences .
See also
literature
- István Matskási: The New Science Museum , Gutenberg Press, 1999.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f About us ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2011 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. , Hungarian Natural Science Museum, accessed April 15, 2012
- ↑ Extensive diversity: The Natural History Museum in Budapest , Pester Lloyd , October 9, 2009, accessed on April 15, 2012.
- ↑ Hungarian Natural History Museum , museum.hu, accessed on 15 April 2012 found.
- ↑ About us ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2013 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. , Library of the Hungarian Natural Science Museum, accessed April 15, 2012
- ↑ Publications ( Memento of the original from April 6, 2013 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. of the Hungarian Natural Science Museum, accessed April 15, 2012
- ^ Acta Zoologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae of the Hungarian Museum of Natural Sciences, accessed on April 15, 2012
Web links
- Hungarian Natural Science Museum (hu, en)
- Online catalog of the library of the Hungarian Natural Science Museum
Coordinates: 47 ° 28 ′ 56 ″ N , 19 ° 5 ′ 8 ″ E