“Give me a museum and I will fill it”. The first German Tropical Research Station at Ralum, Bismarck Archipelago, 1896-1897, in context of collecting for the Museum of Natural History Berlin

Abstract

The scientific significance of museum collections gained increasing attention recently, as it is realised that natural history objects stored in the respective museums worldwide for over two hundred years are of great relevance to modern science in several respects. We here reconstruct the history of and contextualize such a collection that dates back to the time of German colonialism and was compilated in the course of a remarkable project at Ralum in the western South Pacific during 1896 to 1897. Ralum was a research station in the Bismarck Archipelago, initiated by Anton Dohrn, the founder and director of the Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, together with Richard Parkinson, a plantation owner and trader in the German colony in the Bismarck Archipelago. The concept of a tropical research station as part of a network of worldwide research stations was a vision ahead of its time. In order to find a suitable scientist working at Ralum Dohrn re-established contact to an old acquaintance, Karl August Möbius, who meanwhile had become director of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin. Möbius suggested his former graduate student Friedrich Dahl, then professor of zoology in Kiel, and later curator in Berlin. During his one year stay at Ralum, Dahl had a regular correspondence with Möbius that is still kept, albeit until now disregarded, in the archives of the Berlin museum. We here transcribe and fully present this correspondence which vividly shows what collecting and research was like at the end of the 19th century in a remote tropical environment. Dahl made extensive observations on the fauna and flora, describing in detail also the ecology of the Bismarck Archipelago. Möbius in return gave Dahl instructions how to collect species in order to “fill the museum”. Dahl accomplished this quite successfully as his many specimens from Ralum today form part of the rich collections in the museum. Unfortunately, Dahl was not only the first but also the only scientist ever working at Ralum, as the project of establishing a tropical research station eventually failed due to dissensions between the influential zoologists Dohrn and Möbius. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)