Cover Page the Handle
Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/22522 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Weiss, Martin Paul Michael Title: The masses and the muses : a history of Teylers Museum in the Nineteenth Century Issue Date: 2013-11-27 Chapter II: The Birth of a Musaeum I The Museum’s Pre-History 1. Martinus van Marum & the Beginning of the Age of Museums In a letter to the Dutch minister of the interior Anton Reinhard Falck posted in July 1819, the ornithologist and collector Coenraad Jacob Temminck left no doubt as to what he thought two of his colleagues really wanted to do to him, if the opportunity ever presented itself: “Both”, he wrote, “would stop at nothing to clear me out of the way”.1 He was referring to Sebald Justinus Brugmans, professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens in Leiden, and Martinus van Marum, the director of Teylers Museum and secretary of the Holland Society of Sciences in Haarlem. This was more than just a letter of complaint. Temminck himself was no angel, and at the time was in fact pursuing his own political agenda. He had dined with Falck just a few days earlier, and the two men had discussed the establishment of a national museum of natural history in the Netherlands – of which Temminck was to be handed the directorship. Just 13 months later, Temminck’s highly valuable and widely recognised personal ornithological collection, consisting of more than 4000 stuffed birds, had indeed been merged with both the University of Leiden’s natural history collections and the former Royal Cabinet of Natural History in Amsterdam, to form the new National Museum of Natural History (Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie) based in Leiden.
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