State Museum Nature and Man

The State Museum Nature and Man (in German: Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch) is an archaeological, natural history and ethnological museum in the city of Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. The museum was opened in 1836 as Oldenburg's first natural history museum by Grand Duke Paul Friedrich August. It moved to its current location in 1880. The museum presents collections of from the fields of archaeology, natural history and ethnology in its permanent interdisciplinary exhibition, together with an aquarium. The museum, one of the oldest (1836) in northwest Germany, focuses on the interaction between man and nature. The traditional disciplines of archaeology, natural history and ethnology are presented from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives with one unifying central theme: the landscape and human life within and with it. Taking the diversity and the defining characteristics of different landscapes – fenland, salt marsh, the coast and fertile marshland – as its starting points, and the river Hunte as a linking element, the overall museum concept illustrates the dovetailing of research, science, museum curation and communication. Its permanent exhibition documents the past, the present and offers a view of the future in order to provide a critical appraisal of natural environments, their origins, development and cultural history.