Hungarian Natural History Museum

The Hungarian Natural History Museum (Hungarian: Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum) in Budapest, dating back to 1802, houses the largest natural history collections of Hungary and the region.

In 1802, Count Ferenc Széchényi offered his library and his numismatic collection for the benefit of the Hungarian nation, so as to establish the base of a future national library, and a scientific and education center. This foundation gave rise to the Hungarian National Museum (and the Széchényi Library). Within the museum, the mineral collection of Julianna Festetics, the wife of the count, served as the origin of the future natural history collections.

The first paleontological collection was a gift of Archduke Rainer in 1811, and the first zoological collection was bought in the same year. In 1818 the late Pál Kitaibel's herbarium was offered to the museum, giving rise to the new Botanical department.

At the time of Hungary's revolution against the Austrian Empire in 1848, the mineral collection harbored about 13.000 specimens and the zoological collection about 35.000 specimens. In the period after the fall of the revolution, however, the only major change was the acquisition of the collections of the Royal Hungarian Natural History Society in 1856.

From 1870, the Hungarian National Museum had separate departments zoology, botany, and mineralogy. The size of these collections exceeded 1 million specimens at by the end of the nineteenth century.

In 1927, when Budapest hosted the Tenth World Congress of Zoology, the insect collection harbored about 3 million specimens, thus it had to be moved to a building in Baross Street. The ever-increasing collections were too crowded and difficult to maintain within the framework of the National Museum, thus the partially separate Natural History Museum was established in 1933.

Most of the botanical collections perished during the war.

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