specimens at the museum The earliest collections of the Natural History Museum Vienna date back more than 250 years. It was the
Holy Roman Emperor Francis I,
Maria Theresa’s husband, who in 1750 purchased what was at the time the world's largest collection of natural history objects from the Florentine scholar and scientist Jean de Baillou. This was the first step on the road to creating the Natural History Museum Vienna. Baillou's collection comprised 30,000 objects, including
rare fossils,
snails,
mussels, and
corals, as well as valuable
minerals and
precious stones. Emperor Francis, who founded the
Schönbrunn zoo in 1752 and the botanical garden in 1753, also organized the first scientific overseas expedition. In 1755 he commissioned
Nicolaus Joseph Jacquin to travel to the
Caribbean, the
Antilles,
Venezuela, and
Colombia. Jacquin returned from this expedition with many live animals and plants for the zoo and the botanical garden, as well as 67 cases full of other items of interest from the natural world. After the Emperor's death, Maria Theresa gave the natural science collection to the state and opened it up to the general public. Thus she created the first museum in line with the principles and visions of the
Enlightenment. It was Maria Theresa who brought the
mineralogist Ignaz von Born to Vienna. Born, who had developed a new method of extracting precious metals, was tasked with classifying and expanding the collections. To this end he had minerals from many different regions sent to Vienna, where they were added to the collection. Under the leadership of Ignaz von Born the cabinet of natural history quickly developed into a center of practical research.
Expeditions Expedition to the Brazilian rainforests To mark the marriage of his daughter
Leopoldine to the heir to the Portuguese throne,
Dom Pedro, Emperor
Francis II sponsored
a scientific expedition to her new home country of
Brazil in 1817. Two Austrian frigates accompanied the
archduchess on her journey to
Rio de Janeiro. Those taking part in the expedition, carried out under the scientific direction of the head of the history collection, included the researchers Johann Mikan and Johann Emmanuel, as well as the taxidermist
Johann Natterer and the landscape painter
Thomas Ender. The expedition lasted 18 years and aimed to collect all plants, animals, and minerals of scientific interest and bring them back to Vienna.
The Novara sails the globe The most ambitious Austrian expedition was carried out by the
SMS Novara, a
frigate which sailed the world between 1857 and 1859. The scientific responsibility for this expedition was shared by the
Academy of Sciences and the Geography Society. The man behind the project was
Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, Commander in Chief of the Austrian Navy. Among the advisors was the naturalist and researcher
Alexander von Humboldt. Many scientists took part in the two-year journey, including the geologist
Ferdinand von Hochstetter, ethnologist
Karl von Scherzer and zoologist
Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld. The entire journey was documented in hundreds of sketches and paintings by the landscape artist Josef Selleny. The scientists returned home with a vast haul of minerals, animals, plants and items of
ethnological interest. In the mid-19th century, there was much interest in the natural sciences, and the encouragement of this interest was a concern of the young sovereign,
Franz Josef I: The newly built museum was inscribed:
"Dem Reiche der Natur und seiner Erforschung —Kaiser FRANZ JOSEF I" ("To the realm of nature and its exploration —Emperor FRANZ JOSEPH I"). The new
Imperial-Royal Natural History Court Museum thus documented the benevolent sentiment of the Imperial Household. Excavations for the construction of the new Museum of Nature started in the fall of 1871, and construction was completed more than ten years later. On April 29, 1876,
Emperor Franz Joseph I signed the document certifying the Natural History Court Museum, and
Ferdinand von Hochstetter was appointed as the managing director of the museum. Hochstetter proposed a new organization for the museum and its collections. Four departments having far-reaching autonomy were created as successors to the older Cabinets; the Imperial-Royal Mineralogical Court Cabinet was divided in an Imperial-Royal Mineralogical-Petrographical Department and an Imperial-Royal Geologic-Paleontologic Department. The petrologist and meteorite specialist Aristides Brezina became director of the former and was supported by scientific colleagues:
Friedrich Berwerth, with
Felix Karrer and
Rudolf Koechlin providing voluntary unpaid services. Felix Karrer became Secretary of the Wissenschaftlicher Club (Science Club) and founder of the Mineralogy collection of the department. By 1886, Rudolf Köchlin became scientific assistant and, later, maintained an inventory of the collection and even kept a diary. Hochstetter died on July 18, 1884, and did not live to see the completion of the building for whose founding he had been so actively engaged. His successor as superintendent was
Franz Ritter von Hauer, a
geologist and
paleontologist. In the presence of the Emperor, the new
"K.k. Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum" (Imperial-Royal Natural History Court Museum) was inaugurated on August 10, 1889. Initially, it was open to visitors four days per week—free on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, on Tuesdays for an admission price of one
florin. The museum building and the collection it contained were popular: from August 13, 1889, to the end of December 1889 the museum counted 175,000 visitors, of which most (134,000) visited the museum during the 19 Sundays over this time span alone. During 1889, the
"Mineralogisch-Petrographische Abteilung" (Department of Mineralogy-Petrography) was under the directorship of
Aristides Brezina. In 1889, the museum purchased the collection of
William Earl Hidden from
Newark, New Jersey (
USA) for a sum of
ƒ15,000 with the aid of an advance from the "All-highest Family Fund" of the Imperial Household. This loan had to be repaid in a series of complicated transactions, effected within a timeframe of ten years (i.e. through the sale of mineral doublets, meteorite sections, and precious-metal redemptions). These redemptions also included samples of silver and gold from the former "Ambrasian Collection" of
Archduke Ferdinand II, a loss and impairment to the collection. In the same year of 1889, several items from the former private collection of
Crown Prince Rudolf, whose death was reported as suicide, were passed on to the department, although apparently this had been against his will: the Crown Prince had left his natural history collection to Viennese teaching institutions. In accordance with these terms, the geologic and paleontological collection and his
mineral collection were to be passed to the "K.k. Hochschule für Bodenkultur" (Imperial-Royal University for Agriculture). Instead, the glass imitations of precious stones and some other mineralogical items were entrusted to the Imperial Natural History Court Museum. Koechlin became an assistant in 1892 and was promoted to assistant custodian in 1896. In the same year,
Friedrich Berwerth was put in charge of the department, taking over from Aristides Brezina, who retired on August 30. Voluntary, unpaid assistance, from 1896 to the end of the monarchy was provided by Felix Karrer, alternately by
Anton Pelinka,
Hermann Graber,
Friedrich Wachter and
Karl Hlawatsch. In one last transaction before the collapse of the monarchy, the museum managed to purchase, during the years 1906–1907, the magnificent collection of
Staatsrath Freiherr von Braun (totalling more than 2,500 items, doublets not included). There followed the far less important collections of
August von Loehr and
Rudolf von Görgey, although those were not entirely taken into inventory until after the Second World War, the delay being due to war and subsequent poor economic conditions (the same had happened to the collection of
Friedrich Freiherr von Distler, acquired in 1932). Kommerzialrat
Isidor Weinberger was a patron at the start of the 20th century. He was one of the sponsors of
mineralogy, and donated the large specimen of
amethyst sample from the
Serra do Mar in
Brazil, weighing about . Particularly valuable are the more than 500 meteorite thin sections, formerly owned by Aristides Brezina, custodian and former director, which Weinberger had purchased and later presented to the Museum. == Directors==