History and contents of the scientific bird collection

The Koller period, 1872-1891

In the early 1870's one became aware of the scientific importance of zoological collections, undoubtedly under the influence of the papers of Darwin and Wallace. A consequence of this was the foundation of a submuseum named Museum Fauna Neerlandica by the Royal Zoological Society in 1872, in which many specimens of each bird species of the Netherlands were planned to be exhibited, to show individual and possible geographical variation. To achieve this, the taxidermist Herman Koller was employed, who brought in a small older private collection from his former living place Delfshaven, but who (more importantly) also went out in the field to collect the required birds himself, and who build up a network of correspondents all-over the country to send in rare birds. In this way, many avifaunistically important birds were obtained. Also, birds died in the zoo now were labelled properly when stuffed.

A further scientific advancement in these years was the foundation of the Amsterdam University in 1877; a chair in comparitive zoological anatomy and morphology was formed, in which Max Weber was appointed as the first prosector (1879), then professor (1883). Weber and his assistants gradually build up a collection of animals. Though technically independant, the collections of the Royal Zoological Society and that of the University were housed in the same buildings and often even completely mixed, under supervision of taxidermists and collection managers employed by the Society and scientists employed by the University. This situation perpetuated until 1939, when the Royal Zoological Society became bankrupt and was forced to leave the zoological collections and most of the buildings to the University, in order to restrict its managing activities to the popular Amsterdam Zoo 'Natura Artis Magistra' (shortname 'Artis'). Next to his professorate, Max Weber was the first director of the Zoological Museum (1898-1922).

Major acquisitions obtained in the Koller period include:

(1) Natural history items which had been on show during the large international Colonial Trade Exhibition in Amsterdam in the summer of 1883. Among birds received after the end of the exhibition were many Indonesian ones from L. D. H. A. van Renesse van Duivenbode ('the King of Ternate') and his son-in-law A. A. Bruijn (c. 100 skins; normally, these gentlemen sold their bird skins to Paris), and of S. C. J. W van Musschenbroek (c. 930 skins from NE Sulawesi and the Moluccan Islands).

(2) Birds of the private expeditions of Max Weber to Spitsbergen (1881), South Africa (1894-95), and Indonesia (1888-1889; 157 birds of the originally 500-600 birds collected, the rest went to the Leiden Museum). The important museum expedition with the ship Siboga in 1899-1900, organized by Max Weber and his wife, did not collect birds alas.

(3) 166 birds from the Kei Islands (Indonesia) collected by C. J. M. Wertheim in 1888.