Ethnological Museum of Berlin

The Ethnological Museum of Berlin is one of the Berlin State Museums , the de facto national collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presently located in the museum complex in Dahlem, along with the Museum of Asian Art and the Museum of European Cultures . The museum holds more than 500,000 objects and is one of the largest and most important collections of works of art and culture from outside Europe in the world. Its highlights include important objects from the Sepik River, Hawaii, the Kingdom of Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Tanzania, China, the Pacific Coast of North America, Mesoamerica, the Andes, as well as one of the first ethnomusicology collections of sound recordings
The Ethnological Museum was founded in 1873 and opened its doors in 1886 as the Royal Museum for Ethnology , but its roots go back to the 17th century Kunstkammer of the rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia. As the museum’s collections expanded in the early twentieth century, the museum quickly outgrew its facility in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße . A new building was erected in Dahlem to house the museum’s store rooms and study collections. In the Second World War, the main building of the museum was heavily damaged. It was demolished in 1961, and the buildings in Dahlem were reconfigured to serve as the museum’s exhibition spaces.

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