Our collections are repositories of knowledge in time and space.

Stories of life

The LIB's collections comprise almost 16 million objects from the fields of zoology, mineralogy, geology and palaeontology. There are also environmental samples and a library on the history of biology. In its entirety, this nationally and even internationally significant research archive provides a comprehensive insight into the diversity of living creatures and habitats on earth - from our present day to the deep history of evolution.

Documentation of the decline in species

Using the collections as a repository of knowledge, researchers reconstruct the species populations of past times and measure changes in biodiversity due to natural evolutionary processes as well as human intervention and climate change. The valuable stocks of preserved objects, viable cell samples and genetic and genomic information on entire habitats are systematically indexed, digitised and networked with other collections at an international level using modern technology and methods. As a reference centre for global biodiversity research, our aim is to make our store of knowledge - from genomes, living cell cultures and collection specimens to environmental samples from ecosystems - freely accessible to national and international research in the long term.

16 million objects

While the collections in the Museum der Natur Hamburg are primarily based on worldwide expeditions initiated by the middle classes in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the collections in the Museum Koenig Bonn are based on the expeditions of museum founder Alexander Koenig and his wife Margarethe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

History of the Museum Koenig Bonn

History of the Museum der Natur Hamburg