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FIGURE 1, 2. Portrait of Johan Cesar VI Godeffroy, founder of the Museum Godeffroy (from Schmack 1938). Figure 2. Portrait
of Johan Dietrich Eduard Schmeltz, curator of the Museum Godeffroy and editor of its Catalog series (from Starr 1892).
Hamburg’s natural history collections, both private and public, have long benefitted from captains and sailors
returning from exotic locales with biological and ethnographic specimens. The Hamburger Naturhistorisches
Museum (discussed in more detail below) fostered and formalized relationships with individuals, shipping lines,
and major trade companies in the city, resulting in massive collecting efforts around the world, its target regions
usually directly reflecting Hamburg’s commercial interests at the time (Panning 1957, 1958; Weidner 1969).
Captains and other collectors on these vessels often were instructed in detail and sometimes equipped with
appropriate tools, containers, and preservatives (Panning 1958: 18). The Godeffroys sponsored such efforts and, for
instance, supported Gerhard Krefft, a collector for the Hamburger Naturhistorisches Museum, with free passage to
Australia on a Godeffroy vessel (Panning 1956: 3). The material brought back to Hamburg fueled not only
scientific investigation but also a lucrative trade of natural and ethnographic specimens that ultimately supported a
series of display-based dealerships, of which the Godeffroy Museum became the most famous.
Johan Cesar VI Godeffroy had a strong interest in natural historal specimens and ethnographic artifacts and
soon instructed his own captains to obtain zoological, botanical, and ethnographic material from their journeys. His
original agent in Samoa, August Unshelm, also sent diverse specimen collections to Hamburg (Hertz 1922: 56).
Godeffroy’s personal collection grew rapidly into a sizable but uncurated collection occupying a warehouse on the
company’s premises. To sort and organize the accumulated material, Godeffroy initially employed the Swiss
zoologist Eduard Graeffe in 1861. Graeffe had a long subsequent history with the company and became one of its
major field collectors and ultimately the first editor of the JMG (see below). The Museum had a remarkable and
productive history, outlined in greater detail below, which was cut short because of the Museum’s dependence on
the wellbeing of the trading company. The Godeffroy business went through a financial crisis in 1857, but was
rescued through a major credit from Marianne Godeffroy, an aunt in Berlin (Schmack 1938: 119). More credits
became necessary as a result of Germany's economic crisis of 1873, and a third large credit (again from relatives in
Berlin) pledged the Godeffroy museum as security. Having shifted its investments increasingly to mining in the
German Ruhr (in competition with British coal mining), railway construction, plantations, and real estate, the
Godeffroy enterprise struggled for a few more years. The over-diversification of investments left limited funds for
the shipping business, which suffered from increasing competition with other companies and was left behind in the
MOLLUSCAN TAXA OF THE MUSEUM GODEFFROY OF HAMBURG
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