History

The roots of the Dresden Natural History Collections go back to the 16th century. At that time, naturalia were already collected in Saxony in the electoral art cabinet. The oldest pieces are mentioned as early as 1587 in the first collection directory of the Electoral Saxon Court.

We define 1728 as our year of foundation. In that year, the Saxon-Polish Elector-King August the Strong housed his collection of natural objects as a separate special collection alongside the city’s other important collections in the Dresden Zwinger – at that time the most modern exhibition building.
Since 2009, the former Dresden State Natural History Collections have been part of the network of research institutes and natural history museums of the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main.
As a result of the merger with Senckenberg, the Senckenberg Nature History Collections Dresden are members of the Leibniz Association and our museum is one of the Leibniz Research Museums.
Today, these institutions benefit from their enormous collection (over 8 million collection items) and state-of-the-art technical equipment, which allows for first-class geoscientific and zoological research.
The museum not only displays exciting objects from the collection as examples, but is also intended to be a showcase for our research and to convey our enthusiasm for scientific work to the scientists of the future.