Museum of Ethnology Hamburg, Germany

The Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg (German: Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg), founded in 1879, is today one 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 quarter of the Eimsbüttel borough in Hamburg.

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 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.

The Museum of Ethnology Hamburg is one of largest ethnological museums in Europe. Its exhibitions and events deal with the worldviews and ways of life of people around the globe, with the examination of the dynamic nature of culture playing a central role in all of these activities. In a globalised world shaped by cultural interrelations and dependencies, this is a many-layered enterprise, one the museum pursues in cooperation with local, transregional, and international experts and collaborating partners. This understanding of our mission has also guided the transformation of the institution from a traditional museum of display cases into a lively, intercultural centre of encounter with a diverse program. The extensive and, in some cases, unparalleled collections that have been brought together since the museum’s founding in 1879 constitute the foundation for our work. They comprise objects from all of the earth’s regions: from North and South America to Africa, Europe, and the whole Asian continent, to Australia and the Pacific Islands. These holdings are complemented by an archive consisting of a collection of unique documents, some 300,000 photographic images, and the wide-ranging book and periodical collection of the museum library. As a social institution whose roots reach back to the peak of European colonialism, the Museum of Ethnology Hamburg sees the systematic, critical examination of this part of Europe’s past and its significance for the present as one of its vital tasks.
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