Why the Berlin Naturkundemuseum was different. A history of culture, war, and division in one institution

How does one write the history of a scientific institution? What are the sources, the literature and the state of research? -- Using the example of the Berlin Naturkundemuseum, the seminar introduces the essential working techniques for the history of science in the 19th and 20th centuries and at the same time reveals that one of the best-known museums in Berlin is without a historiography that answers the key questions about science, politics and the audience that we would ask today. For instance, how it saw itself during the Nazi era, its political appropriation in the GDR or the audience before and after the Wall was built. As a museum of the University of Berlin, the museum has always been a place of research (and has remained so since the separation in 2009).