„Den Förderern der Heidenmissionen“. On the Provenances of the Ethnographica from the Former Possession of the Princes of Schönburg-Waldenburg, Today Museum - Natural History Cabinet Waldenburg

Waldenburg is home to one of the last well preserved classical cabinets of naturalia and “curiosities” in the world. Prince Otto Victor I von Schönburg-Waldenburg (1785-1859) founded it in 1845/46 in the form it still has today. The collection also contains numerous ethnographica from the former colonies of German East Africa, German Southwest Africa and British Southwest Africa, New Zealand, Asia and South America, among others.

Currently, the provenances of about 150 of these objects are being researched. The contexts of acquisition and injustice are to be illuminated. An important channel of supply for the statues, weapons, jewellery and ceramics were the good connections of the House of Schönburg-Waldenburg to Protestant missionaries, such as the Moravian Church, the Basel and Leipzig missions and the Rhenish Missionary Society. The role of Saxons nobility in colonial and missionary history may be considered practically unexplored.

In terms of museum history, the museum in Waldenburg can be considered one of the last remaining roots of today’s ethnographic museums (Völkerkunde-Museen). After the first collections were acquired in 1839, the Schönburg-Waldenburg family continuously added to their cabinet until 1945, first and foremost with natural history objects and ethnographica. However, a systematic collection of ethnographica was never the idea. The period of acquisition is broad, with about 100 years, between about 1838 to about 1938. Today the museum is owned by the town of Waldenburg.

(c) Museum - Naturalienkanbinett Waldenburg.