Museum Godeffroy

About

The Museum Godeffroy was a museum in Hamburg, Germany, which existed from 1861 to 1885.

The collection was founded by Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy, who became a wealthy shipping magnate a few years after the expansion of the trade towards Australia and the South Seas. His expert collectors and captains brought back to Hamburg zoological, botanical and ethnographic material. Captains of vessels, traders and missionaries received exact instructions and appropriate equipment so that they could collect soft bodied animals into alcohol, properly set butterflies or beetles, and prepare bird and mammal skins and skulls. Herbarium instructions and mineral collecting kits were also issued. Duplicate or unwanted parts were sold. Throughout the museum's history it also sold human skulls from the Pacific regions (including Australia) where the company had a monopoly. This was very profitable. Anthropometry and "Missing Link" theories required especially Aborigine skulls and these were sold to scientific institutions and museums worldwide. The more important material was sold to Otto Finsch and Rudolf Virchow, then pre-eminent German physical anthropologists. The museum opened in 1861 in parts...

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- Henry A. Ward : Museum Godeffroy. In: Popular Science Monthly, Volume 8, 1. April 1876, (englisch).

- Rüdiger Bieler, Richard E. Petit: Molluscan taxa in the publications of the Museum Godeffroy of Hamburg, with a discussion of the Godeffroy Sales Catalogs (1864–1884), the Journal des Museum Godeffroy (1873–1910), and a history of the museum, Zootaxa, Magnolia Press, 2012, ISSN 1175-5334, ( PDF ).

- Fülleborn, Susanne Die ethnographischen Unternehmungen des Hamburger Handelshauses Godeffro y, 202 S., Magisterarbeit, Univ. Hamburg, 1985.

- Glenn Penny, H. Objects of culture : ethnology and ethnographic museums in Imperial Germany, Chapel Hill/London: University of North Carolina Press 2002.

- Kranz, Helene 2005 Das Museum Godeffroy, 1861-1881 Naturkunde und Ethnographie der Südsee. Eine Publikation des Altonaer Museums. marebuchverlag

- Lederbogen, Jan 1992 Ethnographische Photographie: das Beispiel Museum Godeffroy, 278 S., Magisterarbeit, Univ. Hamburg, 1992

- Scheps, Birgit 2005 Das verkaufte Museum. Die Südsee-Unternehmungen des Handelshauses Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Sohn, Hamburg, und die Sammlungen Museum Godeffroy. Goecke & Evers, Keltern-Weiler (Abhandlungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins in Hamburg; N.F., 40)

- Schmeltz, J. D. E. und Krause, R. 1881 Die Ethnographisch-Anthropologische Abtheilung des Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg : ein Beitrag zur Kunde der Südsee-Völker, 687 Seiten u. 46 Taf., Friederichsen, Hamburg.