ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Is the Special Loan Collection the ‘missing link’ between the later leading science museums in Britain and Germany?

• In Event: Spirit of 1876: The Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus: International Science Museum Links. 2

English Abstract

At the 1867 Paris World’s Fair a ‘Convention for Promoting Universally Reproductions of Works of Art for the Benefit of Museums of all Countries’ was signed by Prince Albert for England and Crown Prince Frederick William for Prussia among others. When, along this idea, nine years later the Special Loan Collection of Scientific Apparatus took place, the Munich engineer Oskar von Miller was among the visitors. However, his idea and vigorous realisation of a ‘Deutsches Museum of the Masterworks of Science and Technology’ started rather suddenly only in 1903. Its opening in 1906 then pre-empted that of the London Science Museum of 1909.
The question of how the decades-long preparation and collection of objects for a science museum in London compares to the rushed procurement of historic objects and 'masterpieces' in Munich is analysed by examining the objects selected for loan from institutions of the German Empire for the 1876 exhibition. The German loans are then compared with the meticulously executed wish lists for the departments of the Deutsches Museum, given the fact that a number of the special loans of 1876 later became 'masterpieces' in the Deutsches Museum. The question is asked in what sense an interdependence can be demonstrated between the two museums, which stemmed from the Special Loan Collection, albeit in different ways.

Author

• Arne Schirrmacher, Humboldt University, Berlin