Museums - Übersee-Museum Bremen

The history of Bremen's Übersee-Museum traces back to 1783 with the foundation of the Gesellschaft Museum, which was a natural history collection formed by donations and exchanges, envisioned as a type of "natural history cabinet" for the city's Physical Society (Physikalischen Gesellschaft). This initial collection later absorbed the holdings of the city's Natural History Association and Anthropological Commission between 1874 and 1878. The success of the 1890 Northwest German Commerical and Industrial Exhibition spurred great interest in creating a museum related to Bremen's overseas trade operations, and the concept came to fruition in 1896 with the opening of the Municipal Museum of Nature. The museum building was expanded with a second atrium in 1911 and was renamed the Übersee-Museum in 1951. Further renovations came in the late 1970s, and in 1979 new areas dedicated to various ethnographic departments were constructed. From 1999 to 2008, additional renovations and expansions were made to the ethnographic galleries and the museum was linked to an adjacent building housing the operations of the museum's magazine, Übermaxx.
The identity of the Übersee-Museum as an ethnographic museum, which dates back to the 1890s, has grown stronger over the last century and today embodies its primary role. Permanent and temporary exhibitions, which draw from the museum's collections, display works from Oceania, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.