The roots of the Dresden Natural History Collections date back to the 16th century. At that time, natural history specimens were collected in the Elector’s art cabinet in Saxony. The oldest items in our collection are mentioned as early as 1587 in the first inventory of the Electoral Saxon court.
History
Founding
We consider 1728 to be our founding year. In that year, the Saxon-Polish Elector-King Augustus the Strong housed his natural history collection as a separate special collection alongside the city’s other important collections in the Dresden Zwinger—the most modern exhibition building of its time.
Since 2009, the former Dresden State Natural History Collections have been part of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, a consortium of research institutes and natural history museums headquartered in Frankfurt am Main.
Research Institute Dresden
Since 2009, the former Dresden State Natural History Collections—comprising the Museum of Zoology and the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology—have been part of the research institutes and natural history museums of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main.
Fusion
As a result of the merger with Senckenberg, the Senckenberg Natural History Collections Dresden are now members of the Leibniz Association, and our museum is one of the Leibniz Research Museums.
Today, these institutions benefit from their vast collections (over 8 million specimens) and state-of-the-art technical equipment, which enables first-class geoscientific and zoological research.
The museum not only showcases fascinating items from the collection, but is also intended to serve as a window into our research and to inspire a passion for scientific work among the scientists of the future.
