Godeffroy Museum

The Museum Godeffroy was a museum in Hamburg, Germany, which existed from 1861 to 1885.

The collection was founded by Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy, who became a wealthy shipping magnate a few years after the expansion of the trade towards Australia and the South Seas. His expert collectors and captains brought back to Hamburg zoological, botanical and ethnographic material. Captains of vessels, traders and missionaries received exact instructions and appropriate equipment so that they could collect soft bodied animals into alcohol, properly set butterflies or beetles, and prepare bird and mammal skins and skulls. Herbarium instructions and mineral collecting kits were also issued. Duplicate or unwanted parts were sold.

Throughout the museum's history it also sold human skulls from the Pacific regions (including Australia) where the company had a monopoly. This was very profitable. Anthropometry and "Missing Link" theories required especially Aborigine skulls and these were sold to scientific institutions and museums worldwide. The more important material was sold to Otto Finsch and Rudolf Virchow, then pre-eminent German physical anthropologists.

The museum opened in 1861 in parts of the Kontorhäuser (Counting House Building) of the company "J. C. Godeffroy & son". The exhibition on two floors covered the natural history, ethnography and anthropology of the South Seas. Mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibia, butterflies, beetles and other insects, marine life (especially shells), masks, totems, costume, weapons, personal ornament and anthropological subjects, aboriginal skulls, photographs of native peoples and so on were displayed in small cases. Larger items, such as boats and reconstructed houses, stood free. Admission was weekdays from 11 to 14 o'clock for one Mark, and on the weekends from 10 to 14 o'clock for 50 Pfennig.

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