Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg
Encyclopedia
The Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, founded in 1879, is today of the largest museums of ethnology in Europe. The approximately 350,000 objects in the collection are visited every year by about 180,000 visitors. It lies in the Rotherbaum
Rotherbaum
Rotherbaum is a quarter of Eimsbüttel, a borough of Hamburg, Germany. In 2006 the population was 16,853.In German, "roter Baum" means red tree. The "th", which in general was abolished in the spelling reform of 1900, was preserved in names...

 quarter of the Eimsbüttel
Eimsbüttel
Eimsbüttel is one of the seven boroughs of Hamburg, Germany. In 2006 the population was 246,087.-History:On March 1, 2008 Eimsbüttel lost a part of its area to form the quarter Sternschanze in the borough Altona.-Geography:...

 borough in Hamburg.

History

The museum originated as a small ethnographic collection of the city library, begun in 1849. This collection later became part of the Museum for Natural History in Hamburg, and in 1867 was opened to the public as "Die Ethnographische oder Sammlung für Völkerkunde im Anschluss an das Naturhistorische Museum in Hamburg". The collection, which at that time numbered 645 objects, was curated by Adolph Oberdörfer and Ferdinand Worlée. 1871 saw the renaming of the collection to "Culturhistorisches Museum", so that it progressed from the "Naturhistorisches Museum". On 29 April 1879 the "Museums für Völkerkunde" was founded. At first the businessman Carl W. Lüders led the museum in the position of provost until 1896. On 1 October 1904 Georg Thilenius
Georg Thilenius
Georg Christian Thilenius was a German physician and anthropologist who was a native of Soden am Taunus. He studied medicine in Bonn and Berlin, and in 1896 was habilitated as an anatomist at the University of Strasbourg...

took over the position of full time administrative director of the "Museums für Völkerkunde und Vorgeschichte".

Georg Thilenius strongly supported the building of a freestanding museum to house the collection. Once approved, the construction lasted between 1908 and 1912, with an expansion to house workspace completed in 1929.

External links



53.5683333333°N 9.98916666667°E
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK