Naturmuseum Senckenberg

Applies the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt am Main (next to the Berlin Museum of Natural History ) as the largest natural history museum in Germany with many interesting exhibits from the fields of biology and geology.

Location

The Senckenberg Museum of Natural History is located on the Senckenberganlage and is surrounded on three sides by the Campus Bockenheim the Goethe University. It is - according to the official Frankfurt city districts - in the Westend -Süd area, the vast majority of the Frankfurt but it locates in the Bockenheim district, as the Senckenberganlage considered as perceived boundary between the two districts.

Overview

Cult status, especially in children, enjoy the dinosaur skeletons Museum of Natural History: The Senckenberg Natural History Museum presents one of the most extensive exhibitions of large group dinosaurs in Europe. A special treasure is the original of a fossilized dinosaur with preserved, scaly skin. However, the nature museum also houses the world's largest with some 1,000 specimens, while most species-rich permanent collection of birds. In 2010, nearly 517,000 visitors registered (2009: 620,000 2008: 348,000 ). As a research museum, the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum is a member of the Leibniz Association.

Since 1 January 2009, the Natural History Collections Dresden and the Museum of Natural History Görlitz with the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum are connected by a merger.

Foundation

The building of the Senckenberg Natural History Museum was built in the years 1904-1907 in an open area outside the Frankfurt core city by the architect Ludwig Neher (1850-1916) built in the immediate vicinity, which was founded in 1914 Johann Wolfgang Goethe University. Client and to this day supports ( and co-founder of the university) was and is the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, which goes back only indirectly to the Foundation by Johann Christian Senckenberg from 1763.

Founded in 1817 by 32 citizens of Frankfurt Naturforschende association received, among others, at the suggestion of Goethe, the permission of Dr. Senckenberg Foundation to use the name Senckenberg for his work. 1821 was established as a forerunner of the museum building a " Public Naturalienkabinett " southeast of the Eschenheim gate. The new club took over by the parts of the library foundation and the foundation of the natural history collection. On the original site, the museum had to give way to pressure from the Frankfurt city council in the early 20th century. The Senckenberg land on which, among other things, the original Civil Hospital, Frankfurt Botanical Garden and an anatomical institute had been established, should be built up with residential and commercial buildings.

Staircase, 1908

Interior, 1908

Foyer, drawing

Foyer 1908

Elevation

Floor Plans

Cross-section

The Permanent Collection

Today the visitor is received prior to the building of two large replicas of dinosaurs, whose appearance was modeled on the basis of the latest scientific findings and in original size. In the building you can follow the reconstructed set into the ground tracks of a Titanosaurus in the covered atrium with dinosaur skeletons.

The types 18 presented the most comprehensive exhibition of dinosaurs in Germany. The main skeleton is an 18 meter long Diplodocus from the Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming (USA). The composite of original parts except for the skull skeleton of a sauropod was the first issued in the Senckenberg Natural History Museum dinosaur and was left Senckenberg Nature Research Society on the occasion of the opening of the new museum building on Victoria Avenue in 1907 from the American Museum of Natural History.

Original dinosaurs and Messel horse

The hadrosaur Parasaurolophus with the curved skull crest, Psittacosaurus with clear dissected bristles in the tail region and the clearly visible fossil stomach contents and Oviraptor on the original dinosaur Located among Europe's largest exhibition of large dinosaurs, which also includes the cast of " Quetzalcoatlus " ( " Quetzi " ), the largest known pterosaur, counts. Other crowd pullers are copies of Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops Iguanodon and from the Upper Cretaceous of North America, which also includes two original skulls are issued ( Triceratops horridus from the Lance Formation, Wyoming ( USA) ). The full copy is the " emblem " of the Senckenberg Natural History Museum. Extremely rare is the fossil of a mummy entenschnäbeligen Hadrosauriers.

While pulling the dinosaurs considering their size, most visitors, but the Senckenberg Natural History Museum has a large collection of exhibits of extinct animals from all geological ages, as well as a large number of originals from the oil shale Messel: bats, reptiles, fish and early equine Propalaeotherium hassiacum that lived about 50 million years ago and had a shoulder height of only 55 to 60 centimeters.

Unique in Europe is also the mounted in an upright posture cast of the skeleton of " Lucy ," one of the most complete skeletons of Australopithecus afarensis.

Movement of the Continents

The exhibition on the history of the Earth and of life is complemented by a "time machine": With the help of a great time wheel can be 750 million years back in time - or 250 million years into the future, which gives the visitor an idea of ​​how the earth will change. The quick overview of the continental drift can be put to the surrounding stations of the Earth's history in terms, so that among other things will be good to understand why fossil marine animals are today found in rocks inland.

The museum within a museum

As a " museum within the museum " designed, located on the upper floors, some areas with dry prepared ( " stuffed " ) animals in historical cases. And as you can see there one of 20 surviving copies of the extinct quagga since 1883.

Exhibitions and events

Since December 2008, the museum has in his backyard on the additional two-storey Wolfgang Steubing hall for expensive special exhibitions. First, the world of the deep sea was in her to around a thousand square meters of space made ​​visible, then followed from October 2009 to August 2010 a paleoanthropological "Safari to primitive man ." From July 2010 to January 2011 were in a tent hall at Frankfurt Güterplatz " GigaSaurier - the giants of Argentina " to see ( and original reconstructions of dinosaurs ). This was followed in the Wolfgang Steubing hall is an exhibition on the life of the wolves. From October 2011 to March 2012 were in it the " Body Worlds of Animals" see - more than 100 Plastinate from the manufactory Gunther von Hagens', including full-body Plastinate of elephant, giraffe, gorilla, brown bear and bouquet, as well as casts of the entire vascular system of animals such as shark, horse and pig.

The re- opening after reconstruction in 2003 newly designed Reptiles exhibition takes, in addition to the biodiversity of reptiles and amphibians, including the topic conservation of: A project initiated by the Senckenberg scientists Iguana Conservation Project in Utila in Honduras is also shown as the possibilities in your own garden to create living conditions for native reptiles and amphibians. A walk in a rain forest tree offers insights into different zones of the rain forest from the ground to the tree crown to make the habitats of exotic reptiles experienced.

Several smaller permanent exhibitions dealing among other things with the evolutionary history of plants, under the slogan " Giants and Dwarfs" with extra large and very tiny animals and plants, as well as Maria Sibylla Merian ( "From natural history to natural science ").

The Senckenberg Museum offers regular evening lectures and tours (usually no charge for admission) about scientific topics. On special occasions, disco parties or office parties, see the dinosaur atrium in the evening instead, in a truly picturesque setting.

Expansion plans

In the coming years it is planned to expand the exhibition space at the Natural History Museum considerably. In a first step the end of 2008 an additional exhibition hall was built in the backyard wood construction. In their place is up for the 200th anniversary of the Senckenberg Society in 2017, an extension of the Natural History Museum arise, should be integrated in the also a greenfield Planetarium.

The mythological decoration of the pediment

The figures depicted on the facade of the main entrance to both the Greek and Roman mythology borrowed. At the top, over the entire facade, perched Chronos. He is accompanied by two cherubs and is shown as an old man with hourglass and sickle - a symbol of the passage of time and death.

Left and right of Chronos are - on the curvature of the gable - two boys, keep the animals in his hand: the left boy a bird, the right fish - this as a symbol of the division of the world into a terrestrial and a marine sphere.

To the left of the three gable windows Europe sits on a bull. Europe was a mistress of Zeus, who fell in love with her ​​and approached her in the form of a bull. This bull abducted Europa on his back to Crete, where he transformed back into Zeus and fathered several offspring with her. Europe settled on the island, so that its history can be interpreted as a symbol for the " arrival ", " birth " and " colonization of the earth" and thus. Well as a symbol of the terrestrial area

To the right of the three gable windows, on the same level as Europe, Triton, god of the sea, on a river horse perched: He is depicted as centaur - front as a human, but instead of arms with the front legs of a horse, back as a dolphin.

Immediately below Chronos, within the semi-circular reliefs of red sandstone, is among other things a seated female figure, which is listed on their chalkboard something: Calliope, one of the nine Muses. She was the muse of epic poetry, in playing - and science.

Directors

Fritz Drevermann 1924-1932 was managing director and head of the geological and paleontological department.