I had been to this museum once before with the girls on a crowded weekend and was happy about Greta’s interest in dinosaurs, but (embarrassingly) mildly disappointed in the lack of dioramas. The Buffalo Museum of Science (housing the closest thing to a natural history collection) in the 1970′s was built around the diorama — at least in my memories — and I loved them. Rooms upon rooms of tiny models of animals and people with authentic-looking resin water and glowing fires. I remember them crumbling a little even then, and I am pretty sure most are no longer there.
So for my latest visit to Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde, just Simone and I went on a weekday morning (part of our campaign to play hooky on Fridays to save her from the freezing cold trip to the sport hall).
This time I stopped looking for dioramas and instead appreciated this museum for what it is — truly an archive not only of natural history (biggest dinosaur skeleton in the world!) but also of an institute of research. Everywhere, the craft of the collection is present.
It has quite the history, more of which can be found here. But briefly, in 1889 three separate museums founded in the early 1800′s as part of Berlin University merged to form the Museum für Naturkunde: the Anatomical-Zootomical Museum, the Mineralogical Museum and the Zoological Museum. Bombing during WWII ruined parts of the building and collection (a whale hall like the one at the Museum of Natural History in NYC, was smashed to bits). It was the first museum in Berlin to reopen after the war and remained an East German institution until the wall came down in 1989.
Somehow, in my quest of the diorama, I missed one of the most impressive things in the museum — a dark climate-controlled room (freezing) with floor-to-ceiling shelving of jars of shriveled things floating forever in formaldehyde.
There is a room dedicated to taxidermy, showing some early missteps (terrifying lopsided eyed wild-cat; for some reason I don’t have a picture). Throughout the exhibits, video and pictures show the scientists at work.
Though they seem to be enjoying their work (love the guys on/in the ox!), questions about the state of their world at the time of such documentation are sort of inevitable. Walter Arndt, a zoologist working at the museum was executed in 1944 for badmouthing the regime. During the GDR times, though Western scientists were allowed to work at the museum to ensure advancement of study, the East German scientists working there were not allowed to travel to the West, instead expanding the collection with trips to Cuba and Russia.
On the upper floors, there are semi-empty rooms too damaged to open to the public where one can see bits and peices of collections from days past. The huge jar behind the table has some horrifying specimen trapped in there. Perhaps too large to move downstairs?
