The mineral collection

History of the mineralogical collections

Important events

Main donations

Curators of the mineral collection

History of the meteorite collection

Research work in the Institute of Mineralogy

The mineral collection is the most extensive and historically important component-part of the institute of mineralogy with about 220 000 specimen. It is situated in the first floor above the exhibition in a almost 500 m room in fixed build in cabinets with drawers and glastops. 1889/1890, with the moving in the museum the minerals were systematically arranged, that means corresponding with the crystal-chemical mineralsystem of H. Strunz. With in each single sorts are arranged according to the place where they where found, that means from former Prussia, Germany, Europe and Overseas. This system is still valid.

Because of the alphabetically card file of minerals the collection is well documented, so that the minerals with the typically shaping and paragenese of the different finding places can be compared and studied. The systematically order is less suitable for historically studies, because all specimen included with no consideration for previous owner and kind of acquisition.

According to the genesis there are regional concentrations, for instance minerals from the Harz Mountains, former Silesia and former Prussia-Rhineland. The main emphasis is represented good and completely. Further specimen from Bohemian and parts of the old Austrian-Hungarian territory by donating the Rumpff-collection to the museum in 1889. Because of the close and long lasting relations to Scandinavia and Russia the parts from these countries are very extensive. The donations of one of the major collection of minerals by the Russian tsar Alexander I in 1803 and Alexander von Humboldt and G. Rose, who were collecting several specimen during travelling through Ural and Altai in 1829, contributed to it. The museum has one of the famous collections of specimen from the former mining-period in Tsumeb, because of the donation of the collection from E. Reuning and W. Thometzek in 1936. In the last decades the museum was working on specific acquisitions of minerals from the mining parts of the former GDR like Erzgebirge, Thuringia Forest and the area around Mansfeld. Those acquisitions have been integrated into the stock and they were instances for the exhibition.

A concentration of our work on the collection is to get new discovered minerals from all over the world by exchange or buy, because the collection has the function of comparative material for several scientific investigations. Now the mineral collection comprises about 75% of the accepted minerals.

Since early times it was common for different motives to collect or to keep objects from inorganic nature. Above all the treasuries of princes and later the cabinets of natural curiosity were the worldwide initial roots of the tradition of keeping and collecting.

Such a tradition one will also find in Berlin. Concerning objects from nature the Electoral and later „the Royal art and natural cabinet" created the basic stock for today’s Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.

Beside these early roots, there was a much later event which led to the Berlin Naturkundemuseum: the foundation of the Berlin Mining Academy as a training place for mining and metallurgical experts in 1770. This was the starting point for the typical and valid museum tradition which subordinates collecting to education and research purposes.

For object lessons the mining and metallurgical experts needed a proper and appropriate collection of minerals as illustrative material. In the beginning the Berlin Mining Academy had to use other sources like the private collections of the academy founder Mining Councillor Carl Abraham Gerhard (1738-1821). Gerhard, who worked out in 1770 the mining teaching concept, gave himself lessons in mineralogy and mining science. The lesson plans which still exist also covered the characteristics of minerals as a special subject, which he could not manage without illustrative materials. Later, in 1781 Gerhard sold his collection to the mining academy which paid him as an equivalent a 200 taler pension up to his death.

With his collection and its use Gerhard followed an already existing tradition in Berlin. In 1753 another mining councillor of the Prussian mining administration, J.G. Lehmann, gave private lessons on minerals by using his own collection

but only in a private sphere. It was in 1765 at the Freiberg Mining Academy, the Centre of the Saxionian ore mining industry, when a public collection for teaching purposes was opened for a public audience for the first time in Germany.

During Gerhard’s time there was an indication of the existence of a third important mineral collection in Berlin, which was linked with the activities of the „Berlin Society of friends of natural research", founded in 1773. This collection later became a part of the Berlin Mining Academy collection.

In 1789 the young Mining Assessor Dietrich Ludwig Gustav Karsten (1768-1810)

became the teacher of mineralogy and mining science and the curator of the mineral collection of the Berlin Mining Academy. He replaced Gerhard’s more or less plutonistic approach by a neptunistic one, followed so the Freiberg school of A.G.Werners, which gave priority to a highly developed and systematic mineral identification by outside features.

Karstens managed to multiply enormously the collection by purchase and acquisition of new minerals. The rooms of the academy of art, which hosted the collection, became too small and so the collection moved in 1810 as the „Royal Mineral Cabinet" to the „Alte Münze" in the old centre of Berlin.

The next important epoch started in 1810 when the Berlin University initiated by Wilhelm Humboldt was founded. Mineralogy became as a natural science subject a part of the university and in 1814 the collection became the „Mineral museum of the University" and moved into the main building in Unter den Linden.

In 1810, before the university was founded, Karsten died. In the same year the physicist Christian Samuel Weiß (1780-1856) became his successor as professor of mineralogy. Weiß found his passion for mineralogy while he was working together with A.G.Werner in Freiberg. Weiß preferred direct sensual observations to experiments or measurements. On this basis he found new facts about the outside shape of crystals. Thanks to Weiß we know today many rules about crystallometry (symmetry of axes, zones , Weiß zone law etc.)

During the long tenure of Weiß (46 years) mineralogical science started to become more and more differentiated.

While Weiß covered mineralogy as an entire science his students got specialised in the crystallographical, mineralogical-petrographical or paleontological directions. This leads also to a more diverse structure of the collection where Gustav Rose became responsible for the mineralogical part.

Gustav Rose (1798-1873), a student and a staff member of Weiß for many years, became his successor in 1856. He had an experimental style of working and his approach was also that the material consistence of minerals has to be a part of mineralogical research which differs from Weiß.

Rose’s research work covers all sides of mineralogy. He belongs to the founders of petrography and meteorite research. His efforts to understand the interrelation between physical and chemical pattern of minerals which allows drawing conclusions about the inner structure of minerals were especially remarkable. In his mineral table system he gave priority to material features and secondly to crystallographical data.

After Rose’s death the mineral museum was divided into three departments and H.E Beyrich (1815-1896) became director and at the same time also head of the paleontological department. J.Roth (1818 - 1892) became head of the petrographical department and general geology. Martin Websky (1824 -1886), who inter alia became famous for his improvement of the reflection goniometer became Rose’s direct successor.

Because of the lack of space and the absence of laboratories in the main building of the university a new house has to be constructed. In 1899 the new „Museum für Naturkunde" was ready in the Invalidenstrasse and become the main place for the Mineralogical museum and the Zoological museum.

In 1887 Carl Klein (1824 - 1907) became Websky’s successor as director. One year later the whole mineral collection was transferred into the new building. Out of the Mineralogical museum were formed two independent institutions, the „Mineralogical-Petrographical Institute and Museum" and the „Geological-Paleontological Institute and Museum". On 1 Februrary 1890 the public exhibition was opened.

Klein was a microscopist with a special interest in anomaly of the crystal optics of minerals. He became famous for the construction different auxiliary tools for microscopes like the axial turner.

In 1908 Theodor Liebisch (1852 - 1922 received the call to be the museum’s director. He preferred again an experimental style of working, concentrating on minerogenetical and paragenetical questions. The same style of working one can find in Arrien Johnson (1877 - 1934) who became 19921 Liebisch’s successor.

Paul Ramdohr (1890-1985) who became director in 1934 concentrated on contemplating nature and finding new natural rules. With the help of the new techniques of microscopy he worked out a special mineralogy of ore and become the world wide leading expert in this field. Ramdohr refurnished the „Manual of Mineralogy" by Klockmann and developed it into a handbook of special mineralogy.

At the end of World War II the museum was gravely damaged and the institute and the collection remained in a very bed shape. The majority of the exhibition was evacuated and has been lost up to now. A big part of the attic was burnt.

Then Ramdohr left in 1950 to become a professor in Heidelberg, the orientation to the crystallographical direction became again dominant in the students’ training. In 1953 Will Kleber (1906-1970) started as director. For him the crystal is the main link between all scientific fields dealing with inorganic solid matter. In his lecture „An introduction to crystallography" which was published to a great extent he tries to create the synthesis of science on crystals.

To satisfy the big need for trained mineralogists Kleber increased the number of students and put a maximum emphasis to their education.

In 1969 under the name „Natural History museum of the Humboldt University" the big mineral and petrographical collections were combined with the other famous natural history collections from palaeontology, zoology, botany and anthropology. Günter Hoppe (1919), the new director, initiated the work with accessorical minerals. Hoppe was also interested in scientific historical work like to study the important contribution of Berlin mineralogists for the development of mineralogical science.

In 1984 when G. Hoppe retired Hans-Joachim Bautsch (1929) became the Director of the Mineralogical Museum. He dealt first of all with ultra basic stones and their metamorphic transformed products. At the end of the 80’s he started research work, finding best materials for housing decoration and its maintenance.

After the reunification of Germany a new period of reconstruction of the museum started. The „Mineralogical Museum" became the „Institute of Mineralogy". Dieter Stöffler (1939) from Münster received the call to be the museum’s director. The institute got more stuff, more laboratories and modern equipment. Cosmic mineralogy and planetology became the main research subject.

The early beginnings of the mineral and meteorite collections of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin date back to 1781 when the mineral collection of Carl A. Gerhard (1738-1821), which contained a Pallas iron, was acquired. This collection laid the foundations to the Royal Mineral Cabinet which was housed in the Prussian Mining Academy. Several donations such as a further Pallas iron by the Russian tsar Alexander I in 1803 and the Durango (Humboldt) iron by A.v.Humboldt in 1807 followed. With the foundation of the Berlin university (now Humboldt University) in 1810 all minerals of this cabinet were transferred to the new Mineralogical Museum. In 1817 Christian S. Weiss (1780-1856) succeeded in buying 17 meteorites together with the mineral collection of Martin H. Klaproth (1743-1817), the discoverer of uranium and zirconium and a famous chemist of his time. He was one of the first scientists who noted the persistent existence of nickel in iron meteorites and its significance for their recognition. The first catalogue, a manuscript written by G.Rose in 18261, lists already 31 different meteorites. Weiss was also in close relation to Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827), the founder of meteoritics as a science. This and the early acceptance of Chladni’s ideas by the Berlin scientific community were probably the reasons that Chladni donated his collection of 41 meteorites by will. This collection has been described in detail in 18252 and 19873. Most of these meteorites are still preserved in the collection. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was another famous patron of the meteorite collection. He donated altogether nine meteorites which he collected or obtained as gifts during his travels through the world. Larger acquisitions of these years were the Bergemann collection in 1837 and parts of the Shepard collection in 1862. In 1864, Gustav Rose (1798-1873) who published catalogues in 18624 and 18645 established his systematics of meteorites on this collection which contained at that time 181 of 230 known meteorites. This systematics, later refined by Tschermak, has been used for several decades. Carl Klein (1842-1907) increased the number of meteorites from 217 to 500 and published several catalogues in the years 1889 to 19066-9. The latter includes a detailed description and investigation of all meteorites. In the following decades meteoritics was not a major research topic at the museum. Günther Hoppe revived the activities and published catalogues in 196910 and 197511. A large increase of the meteorite collection was achieved in 1993 and 1996 when major parts of Saharan meteorites from Acfer, Hammadah al Hamra, Ilafegh, Tanezrouft, etc. were acquired. The meteorite collection of the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History) Berlin now comprises meteorites from 1287 different locations with about 3800 specimens. All specimen of the Berlin meteorite collection are registered in a computerized database. For each sample the following data are recorded, if available: 1. meteorite name, 2. synonym name, 3. inventory number, 4. original mass, 5. present mass, 6. number of pieces, 7. kind of acquisition, 8. supplying person or institution, and 9. date of acquisition, 10. exchanges, 11. shape, 12. remarks, and 13. storage place. A new catalogue has been published in 199612.

The early evolution of the solar system and the accretion of organic and inorganic material into protoplanet bodies (cosmochemistry and cosmic mineralogy). The collision history of the terrestrial planets and the role of impact process on the evolution of the Earth biosphere and lithosphere (planetologie and geosciences).