Seven million objects - Senckenberg is about to move

The Senckenberg Museum of Natural History in Görlitz is preparing to move to its newly built campus in the city on the Neisse. In future, research, collection and teaching will be concentrated in the complex not far from the train station, said museum director Kristin Baber. She expects the buildings to be handed over in mid-2026. On May 22, the Museum am Marienplatz will open the exhibition "Packed & unpacked" to accompany the move to the new site. "The presentation will change again and again over the next two years," announced Baber.

Construction work on the Senckenberg institute campus began in 2020. According to Baber, around 79 million euros were invested to create more space for the research institute, which specializes in soil zoology. With around 120 employees, it is currently still housed at seven locations in Görlitz. "We have grown over the years and are bursting at the seams everywhere," admits the museum director. On the new campus with its short distances, it is possible to work more interdisciplinarily.

Seven million individual objects

Scientific collections with around seven million individual objects as well as the library, laboratories and work areas will be brought together in one place. "The first trucks will be rolling at the end of this year," Baber looks ahead. However, the "big packing" is already starting. The move is expected to take until 2028. With the exception of the museum on the central Marienplatz, which opened in 1860, all the locations in which the institute has rented space will be vacated.

Interested parties can follow the progress of the move in the entrance hall of the main building and regularly update themselves on the current status. The accompanying and dynamically developing exhibition is intended to show "how diverse our collections are and what challenges we are facing", said Baber. The range of the collection's activities will be on display using real objects, for example from botany, zoology and geology. The museum wants to illustrate packing scenarios and let visitors "look directly into the box".

The established research facility in Görlitz was a state museum of the Free State of Saxony until 2009. Since then, the institute has been part of the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, which has eleven locations in seven federal states.