State Museum for Natural History Karlsruhe
The State Museum for Natural History Karlsruhe (SMNK for short), formerly the State Collections for Natural History Karlsruhe , is one of the largest natural science research museums in Germany. Its origins lie in the margravial Baden collections of curiosities and natural objects, which were set up in the middle of the 18th century . The permanent exhibitions show fossils , minerals and preparations from native and exotic animals as well as living animals in the vivarium . There is a close cooperation with the Natural Science Association Karlsruhe .
The landmark of the Natural History Museum is the giant salamander Andrias , whose fossil from Öhningen was mistakenly described by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in 1726 as a poor sinner drowned in the Flood ( Homo diluvii testis , the leg structure of a person who drowned in the flood).
The museum has a reference library that is not generally accessible to the public.
With around 150,000 visitors per year, the SMNK ranks third among the museums of the city of Karlsruhe behind the Badisches Landesmuseum and the Center for Art and Media .
history
Between 1752 and 1783, the interests and commitment of Margravine Caroline Luise (1723–1783) expanded the margravial Baden collections of curiosities and natural objects to such an extent that an important scientific collection was created. The natural history cabinet was first made accessible to the public in 1785, after having been relocated to the court library a year earlier. The building on Friedrichsplatz, in which the museum is located today, was built between 1866 and 1872 by Josef Berckmüller for the natural history cabinet and the court library.
Botany held a special place in the first half of the 19th century, as the first three directors Karl Christian Gmelin , Alexander Braun and Moritz August Seubert were well-known botanists who also left herbaria.
The vivarium emerged from a private collection of aquariums and terrariums that a teacher at the Daxlanden elementary school had set up for his biology classes in 1938, and was initially housed in what was then the teachers' seminar on Rüppurer Straße.
During the Second World War , the building was destroyed by phosphorus bombs on the night of September 2 to 3, 1942 , and large parts of the collection were lost. In addition to parts of the Badische Landesbibliothek, also located in the building , the libraries of the geological - paleontological , mineralogical and botanical departments were completely destroyed. Staff and 50 freed teachers were only able to save the zoological library from the flames. Therefore, the library now has only 97 books from before 1800.
The remains of the museum collection were destroyed when Karlsruhe Palace was bombed in September 1944 , where the remains of the zoological exhibits and parts of the collection had been relocated. Among the destroyed collection items also included preparations of the now-extinct species passenger pigeon , Carolina Parakeet and Lappenhopf . Only the mollusc collection has largely been preserved to this day.
After the war, the museum's collecting activities focused primarily on the reconstruction of the exhibition collection, which Helmut Knipper drove on through his trips to East Africa. Today the focus is on the scientific collection. From 1948 the vivarium was housed in the basement of the museum and showed not only local animals but also exotic animals before it found a new home on the ground floor in 1962. At the end of the 1960s, dioramas were created showing native animals in their natural habitats.
Irreplaceable losses remained for the library in spite of the targeted purchases made after the war and the receipt of donations and bequests. The library is now available to staff and, with restrictions, to specialist scientists and private individuals active in natural history.
The reconstruction of the building on Friedrichsplatz was carried out under the leadership of the city's building construction office architect Alfred Friedrich Siekiersky and was provisionally completed in 1972. In July 2016, the renovation of the west wing, which began in November 2013, was completed, adding 1200 square meters of additional exhibition space to the museum. The rebuilding of the original dome as a planetarium, which was originally planned, has been suspended until further notice due to the lack of funding.
The sculpture "Jumping Panthers" by Andreas Helmling now stands on the square in front of the building .
The museum has been a founding member of the Humboldt Ring since September 24, 2009 .
Museum focus
On more than 4000 m² of exhibition space, the museum shows permanent exhibitions, the vivarium and changing special exhibitions. The permanent exhibitions include:
zoology
The dioramas from the 1960s on the ground floor show a wild boar family on Wallow, a jagendes pack of wolves , chamois and ibex in the Alps , a vixen with young foxes before building and the red deer .
In the area of vertebrates of cold seas , in addition to a polar bear ( Ursus maritimus ) and a bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus, the skeleton of a not yet fully grown, more than 12 meter long Atlantic north caper Eubalaena glacialis , which was shot in 1968.
The Africa area shows the three typical landscapes of desert , savannah and tropical rainforest . In addition to specimens showing lions, gnu and zebra, you can also see live thorn-tailed dragons and African lungfish .
insects
Insects make up the largest collection and many of the preparations in the permanent exhibition show the wealth of colors, shapes and patterns of this group of animals. Live hornets , beetles , stick insects and ghosts show the adaptation to different habitats and climatic conditions.
Minerals
In addition to minerals from the Kaiserstuhl region and the Black Forest, the mineral exhibition shows minerals from all over the world such as fire opal , pebbles , topaz , agate , rose quartz , ruby , emerald , tiger's eye , malachite , azurite , lapis lazuli and turquoise . To show the fluorescent properties of some minerals, there is a darkroom illuminated with ultraviolet light . In addition to fluorspar (fluorite), which gave the fluorescence its name, you can see the white-greenish scapolite , which emits bright yellow light, and Cölestin from Sicily, which emits bright green light.
geology
The geology hall was redesigned in mid-2006 and shows the geological past of the Upper Rhine . The model of a glacier gate shows how the landscape is shaped by the forces of nature - the “trail of stones” shows the transport of rock, which is ground into fine sand by the force of the water on its way from the glacier to the sea. This cross-border topic has information boards in German and French.
Fossils
The large staircase and Holzmaden -Wand show about 140 million year old fossil crinoids , ammonites , the Ganoidfisch Dapedius punctatus with shiny coat of mail, an ichthyosaur (Ichthyosauria) and the skeleton of the sea crocodile Steneosaurus . The complete skeleton of a Coloborhynchus and the arm skeleton of a Quetzalcoatlus , the largest flying lizard ever found with a wingspan of 13 meters, can be seen on the upper floor. A life-size model of each flying lizard hangs over the staircase.
From the Höwenegg site in Hegau , around 11 million year old remains of plants and animals that lived on the slope of an extinct volcano can be seen. These include the hipparion , saber-toothed tiger , giant sloth and deinotherium .
From Öhningen on Lake Constance fossils of plants and animals that lived on and in a lake are exhibited. The exhibits shown include fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects and mammals.
The skeleton of an approximately 280 million year old Dimetrodon is a cast with reconstructions of individual parts, as the original in the paleontological collection of the University of Tübingen is not complete.
The fossil skeleton of a whale ( Balaenoptera siberi ) from the Pisco formation in Chile is on display.
Vivarium
The vivarium comprised over 30 aquariums. Representatives of tropical fresh waters and coral reefs as well as habitats of the Mediterranean Sea and its inhabitants could be observed . The second part of the vivarium was made up of the terrariums, which show many reptiles and amphibians from tropical forests and steppes. The offspring of the various animals could be viewed in a specially set up baby corner.
A female bamboo shark has been able to give birth to multiple offspring here since 2001 without having been fertilized by a male. This is the first known virgin generation of sharks in Europe.
After a renovation in 2016, the original vivarium had to give way to a larger permanent exhibition "Form and Function". The “Climate and Habitats” room with a number of aquariums and terrariums was not affected by the renovation and remained in place.
Bionics
In 2016, the new permanent exhibition "Form and Function" was opened in the newly opened west wing of the museum, including some areas of the vivarium. The thematic focus of the exhibition is bionics - the structure of natural materials and functional principles and how humans can reproduce them technically. In the exhibition rooms, however, live animals are also integrated into the exhibition concept, including freshwater crocodiles and a large aquarium with initially one, and since the beginning of 2019 two blacktip reef sharks .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Urban development, visitors to the museums and collections - Part I (figures for 2005)
- ↑ Library on smnk.de
- ^ Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg: press release. Retrieved August 15, 2016 .
- ^ Article in the Baden newspaper about the maiden generation
Coordinates: 49 ° 0 '26.3 " N , 8 ° 24' 1.4" E