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Duplicates under the hammer: natural-history auctions in Berlin's early nineteenth-century collection landscape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Anne Greenwood MacKinney
Anne Greenwood MacKinney*
Affiliation:
Klassik Stiftung Weimar
*
*Corresponding author: Anne Greenwood MacKinney, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The nineteenth-century museum and auction house are seemingly distinct spaces with opposing functions: while the former represents a contemplative space that accumulates objects of art and science, the latter provides a forum for lively sales events that disperse wares to the highest bidders. This contribution blurs the border between museums and marketplaces by studying the Berlin Zoological Museum's duplicate specimen auctions between 1818 and the 1840s. It attends to the operations and tools involved in commodifying specimens as duplicates, particularly the auction catalogue. The paper furthermore contextualizes the museum's sales in a broader history of duplicate auctions across Berlin's collection landscape.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 55 , Special Issue 3: The Issue of Duplicates , September 2022 , pp. 319 - 339
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science

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References

1 Karl Illiger to Section for Culture and Public Education, Brunswick, 21 August 1810, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (hereafter GStA PK), I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Bd. 1, fol. 24. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

2 Erwin Stresemann, ‘Hinrich Lichtenstein: Lebensbild des ersten Zoologen der Berliner Universität’, in Willi Göber and Friedrich Herneck (eds.), Forschen und Wirken: Festschrift zur 150-Jahr-Feier der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 1810–1960, Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1960, pp. 73–96, 76.

3 See Lichtenstein to Section for Culture and Public Education, Berlin, 3 April 1815, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 2, fol. 126. See also the museum's accession journal, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Historische Bild- und Schriftgutsammlungen (hereafter MfN HBSB), Zool. Mus., S I Eingangsjournal 1811–1857.

4 See MacKinney, Anne and Glaubrecht, Matthias, ‘Academic practice par excellence: Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein's role in Adelbert von Chamisso's career as a naturalist’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur (2017) 42(2), pp. 322–47Google Scholar.

5 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 20 October 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 4, fol. 91.

6 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 6 December 1819, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 5, fols. 205–6.

7 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 7 March 1820, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 5, fol. 262; Lichtenstein, op. cit. (5), fols. 92–3.

8 Bettina Dietz and Daniela Bleichmar have undertaken excellent studies on the interconnections between eighteenth-century collections curieuses and the budding commercial auction market that might serve as models for integrating a history of museums into a history of the auctions. See Dietz, Bettina, ‘Mobile objects: the space of shells in eighteenth-century France’, BJHS (2006) 39(3), pp. 363–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bleichmar, Daniela, ‘Learning to look: visual expertise across art and science in eighteenth-century France’, Eighteenth-Century Studies (2012) 46(1), pp. 85–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But the cabinet culture of the eighteenth century, as both authors themselves point out, is not identical with that of public, institutional museums in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whose relations to the auction market have yet to be comprehensively explored. More typically, when early institutional museums and their keepers are discussed in the context of auctions, they are presented almost exclusively as bidders and buyers, leaving out other ways in which they have historically participated in and shaped the commercial market. See, for instance, Dietz, op. cit., p. 382.

9 On the nineteenth-century origins of the ideal of museal permanence see Steven Lubar, Lukas Rieppel, Ann Daly and Kathrinne Duffy, ‘Lost museums’, Museum History Journal (2017) 10(1), pp. 1–14. See also Bennett, Tony, ‘The exhibitionary complex’, New Formations (1988) 4, pp. 73–102Google Scholar. Haidy Geismar's research on twentieth- and twenty-first-century Māori museologies that emphasize relational guardianship over collection objects rather than inalienable institutional ownership underscores not only the temporal, but also the cultural, specificity of European ideals of collection permanence. See Haidy Geismar, Treasured Possessions: Indigenous Interventions into Cultural and Intellectual Property, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013, esp. pp. 121–50.

10 Beth Fowkes Tobin, The Duchess's Shells: Natural History Collecting in the Age of Cook's Voyages, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014, p. 4; Brian Learmount, A History of the Auction, London: Barnard & Learmount, 1985, pp. 47–80.

11 H.C. Marillier, ‘Christie's’ 1766 to 1925, London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1926, p. xii.

12 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (5), fol. 93.

13 [Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein], Verzeichniss von ausgestopften Säugethieren und Vögeln welche am 12ten October 1818 u. folg. Tage im zoologischen Museum der Königl. Universität zu Berlin durch den Königl. Auctionscommissarius Bratring dem Meistbietenden öffentlich verkauft werden sollen, Berlin: s.n., 1818, p. iv.

14 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. iv.

15 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. iv.

16 Christopher M. Parsons and Kathleen S. Murphy, ‘Ecosystems under sail: specimen transport in the eighteenth-century French and British Atlantics’, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (2012) 10(3), pp. 503–29.

17 Parsons and Murphy, op. cit. (16), p. 531.

18 See, for example, traveller Wilhelm Hemprich's letter to Lichtenstein, in which he explains that many specimens he sent to Berlin from North Africa still required closer examination by museum staff to determine if they represented new species or items ‘useless to the museum’. Hemprich to Lichtenstein, 15 January 1821, in Erwin Stresemann, Reisen zweier naturforschender Freunde im Orient, geschildert in ihren Briefen aus den Jahren 1819–1826, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954, p. 24.

19 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (3), fol. 126.

20 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 22 March 1822, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 7, fol. 244.

21 See MfN HBSB, op. cit. (3). In 1818, the museum entered at least 410 new specimens into the collection (specimens considered duplicates were omitted from the journal); in 1820, 707 specimens. In 1822, the numbers reached four digits with 3,689 specimens. After 1828, which saw 18,484 new specimens, annual accessions remained steadily in five-digit territory into the 1830s.

22 Kristin Johnson, Ordering Life: Karl Jordan and the Naturalist Tradition, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, pp. 63–7.

23 The British Museum is a rare early example of a state or national museum auctioning its duplicate holdings, though it evidently organized only two natural-historical (mineralogical) sales, in 1803 and 1816. See John Michael Chalmers-Hunt (ed.), Natural History Auctions, 1700–1972: A Register of Sales in the British Isles, London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1976, pp. 68, 76. In 1698, the Ashmolean Museum, Britain's first public university museum, held an auction of fossil and geological duplicates. See Martin Gammon, Deaccessioning and Its Discontents: A Critical History, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018, pp. 275–7.

24 John Edward Gray, in Report from the Select Committee on British Museum; Together with the Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index (14 July 1836), Parliamentary Papers, p. 214 (§ 2691).

25 Gray, op. cit. (24), p. 213 (§§2683, 2688). See also Nichols, in this issue, for practices of establishing value equivalencies in ethnographic duplicate exchange in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mauuarin's and Buschmann's contributions in this special issue, moreover, show that, in the case of ethnographic duplicates, exchanges were not only limited to either equivalent objects or to cash, but also to photographs of objects or to other forms of capital, such as official state medals honouring civil achievement.

26 Gray, op. cit. (24), p. 213 (§2687).

27 Gray, op. cit. (24), p. 214 (§2689).

28 HM Treasury to secretary of the Trustees of the British Museum, 10 June 1859, in Gunther, A.E., ‘The miscellaneous autobiographical manuscripts of John Edward Gray (1800–1875)’, Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) Historical Series (1980) 6(6), pp. 199–244, 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Gray to [Richard Owens, superintendent of natural history collections at the British Museum], [c. July 1859], in Gunther, op. cit. (28), p. 221.

30 Evelyn Hanisch, Der Umgang mit Inkunabelndubletten: Kauf, Verkauf und Tausch von Wiegendrucken der Königlichen Bibliothek/Preußischen Staatsbibliothek (1904–1905) , Berlin: Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2019, pp. 11–13.

31 Hanisch, op. cit. (30), pp. 9–11.

32 Friedrich Wilken, Geschichte der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, Leipzig: Dunker & Humblodt, 1828, p. 127.

33 Wilken, op. cit. (32), pp. 127–8, 160–1.

34 Wilken, op. cit. (32), pp. 130–4.

35 Eberhard Dünninger (ed.), Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, 27 vols., Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1992–2000, vol. 10: Bayern, München, pp. 27–112. The British Museum and Dresden Royal Library also held duplicate book auctions in the eighteenth century. See Gammon, op. cit. (23), p. 276; and Torsten Sander, Die Auktion der Dubletten der kurfürstlichen Bibliothek Dresden 1775 bis 1777: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Buchauktionswesens, Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Univ.-Bibliothek, 2006.

36 Bettina Wagner, ‘“Duplum Bibliothecae regiae Monacensis”: the Munich Court Library and its book auctions in the nineteenth century’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (2017) 111(3), pp. 345–77, 347–57.

37 Karl Felix Halm, Erläuterungen zu den Verhandlungen der bayerischen Kammer der Abgeordneten vom 10. März 1859, die k. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München betreffend, Munich: Palm, 1859, p. 7.

38 Halm, op. cit. (37), p. 7.

39 [Anonymous], ‘Ein Stechapfel für Herrn Oberbibliothekar Dr. Ruland’, Würzburger Stechäpfel: Ein satyrisches Originalblatt mit Illustrationen (25 November 1859) 22, pp. 90–1, 91.

40 Anton Ruland, Die in der Schrift des Herrn Oberbibliothekars und Directors Dr. Karl Halm ‘Erläuterungen zu den Verhandlungen der bayerischen Kammer der Abgeordneten vom 10. März 1859, die k. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek in München betreffend’ gegen die Kammerverhandlungen vom selben Tage gemachten Angriffe zurückgewiesen, Würzburg: Becker, 1859, p. 65. The end of duplicate auctions in this case should not imply that the practice was fully obliterated. As Hanisch shows, public libraries have continued to sell and exchange items categorized as duplicates, indeed even ‘duplicate incunabula’, well into the twentieth century. Hanisch, op. cit. (30), pp. 44–60.

41 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. vii.

42 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (5), fol. 97.

43 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (5), fols. 99–100; Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 3 January 1819, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 4, fol. 148.

44 Like the professeur-administrateurs at the Paris Muséum d'histoire naturelle, the directors of Berlin's natural-historical collections were simultaneously university professors with teaching responsibilities. See Burkhardt, Richard W., ‘The leopard in the garden: life in close quarters at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle’, Isis (2007) 98(4), pp. 675–94CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

45 J.T.C. Ratzeburg, Forstwissenschaftliches Schriftsteller-Lexikon, Berlin: Fr. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1872, p. 311.

46 The museum's preparation methods are described in [Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein], Preis-Verzeichnisse der Säugethier- und Vögel-Doubletten des Zoologischen Museums der Universität zu Berlin, Berlin: s.n., 1819, pp. 45–54.

47 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (7), fols. 267–8.

48 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (7), fols. 264–5.

49 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (7), fol. 265.

50 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 13 September 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 4, fol. 61.

51 Bleichmar, op. cit. (8), pp. 96–106; Dietz, op. cit. (8), pp. 376–7.

52 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. 3, p. 15.

53 Bleichmar, op. cit. (8), p. 97; Dietz, op. cit. (8), pp. 376–7; Pierre-Yves Lacour, La republique naturaliste: Collections d'histoire naturelle et Révolution française (1789–1804), Paris: Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, 2014, p. 376.

54 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. vi.

55 Karl Illiger, Prodromus systematis mammalium et avium, additis terminis zoographicis utriusque classis, eorumque versione germanica, Berlin: C. Salfeld, 1811.

56 Koenraad Jonckheere, The Auction of King William's Paintings 1713: Elite International Art Trade at the End of the Dutch Golden Age, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2008, p. 66.

57 Jonckheere, op. cit. (56), p. 66; Tobin, op. cit. (10), pp. 223–5.

58 Quoted in A Catalogue of the Portland Museum, London: s.n., 1786, p. iv. Other auction catalogues that do not, or do not strictly, follow natural-historical taxonomy include [Edward Donovan], Catalogue of the Leverian Museum: Part I–IV, London: Hayden's Printing-Office, 1806; and [William Bullock], Catalogue (Without which no Person can be admitted either to View or Sale) of the Roman Gallery, of Antiquities and Works of Art, and the London Museum of Natural History (unquestionably the most extensive and valuable in Europe) at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, London: s.n., 1819.

59 MfN HBSB, Zool. Mus., S I Verwaltungsakten, Einnahmen und Ausgaben 1813–1822, fols. 15–22v, 31v.

60 MfN HBSB, op. cit. (59), fols. 66v, 81v.

61 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (5), fols. 93–4.

62 See Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein (ed.), Verzeichniss der Doubletten des zoologischen Museums der Königl. Universität zu Berlin nebst Beschreibung vieler bisher unbekannter Arten von Säugethieren, Vögeln, Amphibien und Fischen, Berlin: T. Trautwein, 1823, at https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.40281 (accessed 1 April 2021); see also [Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein], Verzeichniss einer Sammlung von Säugethieren und Vögeln aus dem Kaffernlande, nebst einer Käfer-Sammlung, Berlin: Druckerei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1842, at https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.42230 (accessed 1 April 2021).

63 See Dániel Margócsy's exploration of print media that are used as tools for commodifying specimens and other objects of curiosity culture: Dániel Margócsy, Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, pp. 110–34.

64 No. 43 Reglement und Instruction für die Auctionatores (12 April 1756), Novum Corpus Constitutionum Prussico-Brandenburgensium Praecipue Marchicarum (NCC), vol. 2 (1756–1761), §1, col. 59.

65 NCC, op. cit. (64).

66 Schultze, Johannes, ‘Bratring, Friedrich Wilhelm August’, Neue Deutsche Biographie (1955) 2, pp. 538–9Google Scholar.

67 [Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein], notice under ‘Auctionen in Berlin’, Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen (29 August 1818) 104, n.p.

68 The catalogue travelled as far as Florence, to the scholar Fillippo Nesti. See MfN HBSB, Zool. Mus., S I Auctionsverzeichnisse, Doublettenverzeichnisse 15. Keepers at other university collections in Halle, Breslau, Bonn and Greifswald also received Lichtenstein's catalogues. See Carsten Kretschmann, Räume öffnen sich: Naturhistorische Museen im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2006, p. 152.

69 Olaf Breidbach, ‘Oken in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Olaf Breidbach, Hans-Joachim Fliedner and Klaus Ries (eds.), Lorenz Oken (1779–1851): Ein politischer Naturphilosoph, Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 2001, pp. 15–34.

70 [Anonymous], ‘Verzeichniß von ausgestopften Säugethieren und Vögeln’, Isis, oder Encyclopädische Zeitung von Oken (1818) 1(6), pp. 1103–4 plus four unnumbered pages, at www.biodiversity.org/page/13264242 (accessed 1 April 2021).

71 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. vii.

72 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (5), fol. 94.

73 [Martin Hinrich Lichtenstein], Verzeichniss einer Sammlung verschiedener neuholländischer Naturalien welche am 6ten April 1837 durch den Königl. gerichtlichen Auctions-Commissarius Rauch, Schützenstrasse Nr. 10, öffentlich meistbietend versteigert werden sollen, Berlin: Druckerei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1837.

74 Bratring sold the museum's lots at auction until his death in 1829, at which point auction commissioner Rauch took over the position.

75 NCC, op. cit. (64), §. 3, col. 61.

76 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 27 November 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 4, fol. 124.

77 NCC, op. cit. (64), §. 2, col. 60.

78 NCC, op. cit. (64).

79 Surrogate bidders bought specimens for Coenraad Temminck, later the director of the University of Leiden's natural-history collection, and for the professors of zoology in Breslau and Halle, Carl Gravenhorst and Christian Ludwig Nitzsch respectively. See MfN HBSB, Zool. Mus., S I Auctionsverzeichnisse, Doublettenverzeichnisse 17.

80 MfN HBSB, op. cit. (79).

81 Dietrich Herm, ‘Reuß, Franz Ambrosius’, Neue Deutsche Biographie (2003) 21, p. 458.

82 J.H. Bartels and J.C.G. Fricke, Amtlicher Bericht über die Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte in Hamburg im September 1830, Hamburg: Perthes & Besser, 1831, p. 20.

83 See Gansauge's correspondence partners in Kalliope-Verbundkatalog at http://kalliope-verbund.info/de/eac?eac.id=116411465 (accessed 1 April 2021).

84 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (76), fol. 124; Kretschmann, op. cit. (68), p. 154.

85 [Lichtenstein], op. cit. (13), p. iv.

86 On the German natural-history public see Denise Phillips, Acolytes of Nature: Defining Natural Science in Germany 1770–1850, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, pp. 43–4, 57.

87 Lichtenstein, op. cit. (76), fol. 124.

88 Marillier, op. cit. (11), pp. xi–xii.

89 On the longer development of German public museums see Bénédicte Savoy (ed.), Tempel der Kunst: Die Geburt des öffentlichen Museums in Deutschland 1701–1815, Cologne: Böhlau, 2015. Compare British context in James Delbourgo, Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane, [London]: Allen Lane, 2017, pp. 303–42. On an older hands-on museum culture see Classen, Constance, ‘Museum manners: the sensory life of the early museum’, Journal of Social History (2007) 40(4), pp. 895–914CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Anke te Heesen, ‘Vom Einräumen der Erkenntnis’, in Anke te Heesen and Anette Michels (eds.), Auf/zu: Der Schrank in den Wissenschaften, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007, pp. 90–7; Classen, op. cit. (89), pp. 907–9.

91 Hinrich Lichtenstein, Das zoologische Museum der Universität zu Berlin, Berlin: Dümmler, 1816, p. 12. See also Kretschmann, op. cit. (68), p. 188.

92 [Friedrich Wilhelm August] Bratring, auction announcement, Staats- und Gelehrte Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten (11 December 1827) 197, n.p.

93 Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 22 September 1820, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 6, fol. 112.

94 On the exchange of duplicates between Berlin and Prussia's other university collections see Lichtenstein to Ministry of Culture, Berlin, 13 September 1818, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt. 2 Tit. X Nr. 15 Bd. 4, fol. 56.

95 MfN HBSB, Zool. Mus., S I Doublettenverkäufe u. -ankäufe 1820–1822 7, fols. 2–6, 139.

96 MfN HBSB, op. cit. (95), fols. 130, 120, 139.

97 MfN HBSB, op. cit. (95), fol. 68.

98 On the broadening of the German ‘educated public’ see Phillips, op. cit. (86), pp. 13–22.

99 MfN HBSB, op. cit. (95), fols. 10, 14, 9, 66.

100 MfN HBSB, op. cit. (95), fols. 156, 106.

101 Stresemann, op. cit. (2), p. 81.

102 Kretschmann, op. cit. (68), p. 154.

103 Stresemann, op. cit. (2). p. 80.

104 Stresemann, op. cit. (2), p. 80.

105 Kretschmann, op. cit. (68), p. 154.

106 Quoted in Kretschmann, op. cit. (68), p. 153.

107 Rudolphi to Lichtenstein, Berlin, 13 May 1824, MfN HBSB, Zool. Mus., S I Rudolphi, fol. 27v.

108 Weiss in Kretschmann, op. cit. (68), p. 153; Rudolphi to Lichtenstein, op. cit. (107).

109 Ehrenberg to minister of culture Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein, 13 May 1824, in Stresemann, op. cit. (18), p. 166.

110 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London: Routledge, 1995, p. 6.

111 Bennett, op. cit. (110), pp. 5–6; Thomas Großbölting, ‘Im Reich der Arbeit’: Die Repräsentation gesellschaftlicher Ordnung in den deutschen Industrie- und Gewerbeausstellungen 1790–1914, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008, pp. 64–76, 121–2.