Ausstellungskatalog - Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum ...

Präsentieren und Erklären 1910 – 2010 · Presenting and Explaining 1910 – 2010
From the Original to the Model
Adolf Engler expressed clear ideas about the aim and target audience
of the public exhibition area, which was laid over three
floors and 1600 square metres in the west wing of the Botanical
Museum from 1907. ‘It is intended to provide the student and
every knowledge-seeking person ... with an overview of the most
important phenomena of plant life, plant history, plant distribution
and the use of plants.’ Engler’s concept of the exhibition as a
‘textbook’ with instructive objects was retained in the post-war period.
As the partly destroyed ‘Schaumuseum’ was reconstructed on
the basis of E. Strasburger’s standard botanical textbook Lehrbuch
der Botanik für Hochschulen, Engler’s approach was followed, but
with different objects and methods and without the latter’s colonialist
focus.
Before the Second World War, what was displayed in glass cases,
drawers and compartments were predominantly botanical ‘origi-
Die Ausstellung vor 1943: Die systematische Abteilung im dritten Stockwerk
des Botanischen Museums. BGBM, Archiv.
133
Blick in die im Entstehen begriffene Nutzpflanzenabteilung, aus: Museumskunde
1960.
nals’, in other words more or less everything that did not fit in the
herbarium. After 1945, by contrast, there was a reliance on new
ideas and didactic concepts from the Anglo-Saxon world: models,
dioramas and interactive installations complemented the few botanical
‘originals’, some of which had been irretrievably lost during
the bombing raids. From the time of the reopening on 12 November
1946, through the gradual expansion in the 1960s, to the final
completion in 1991, a range of displays was developed which, both
artistically and in terms of their content, are quite unique in central
Europe.
Although the tradition of special exhibitions in the Botanical
Museum dates back at least to the first fresh mushroom display
in 1914, it was only from the 1990s onwards that the number of
exhibitions started to rise sharply. Furthermore, the broader visitor
base, a change in viewing and learning habits and advances in
research necessitated a revision and modernisation of the permanent
display, which was carried out in stages up until 2006. KG