page_title: Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy
section_title: The Establishment of the Museum Godeffroy
hierarchical_section_title: Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy / The Establishment of the Museum Godeffroy
caption_attribution_description: Pseudobalistes fuscus syn. Balistes fuscus
context_page_description: Johann Cesar VI. Godeffroy was a German trader, blackbirder and Hanseat.
  He was the founder of Museum Godeffroy.
context_section_description: Beginning as a personal collection of birds, shells, fish, and other animals, as well as cultural objects from all localities visited by the Godeffroy ships, Godeffroy's natural history cabinet grew in size until it occupied a cluttered warehouse. It was time to find a proper place to house, list, organize, and finally display them to a fascinated public, and in 1860 Godeffroy wrote to Dr. Eduard Heinrich Graeffe (1833–1919) in Switzerland to request his services in founding a museum. The 28-year-old Swiss zoologist accepted and boarded a train for Hamburg in 1861. After a short time the Museum Godeffroy was founded, and Graeffe was sent to the Pacific in October 1861 to supervise the acquisition of more material. Graeffe settled in Apia and directed the Godeffroy operations there for the next decade while also collecting in Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, Australia, Samoa, and other South Pacific Islands. Other scientific collectors were hired by the company who, working in different areas of the Pacific Ocean, helped increase the holdings of the Museum with their successful collecting of birds, mammals, fishes, shells, butterflies, beetles and other insects, plants, and ethnographic objects. The museum also functioned as a natural history dealership. On the establishment of the museum, Godeffroy was made an honorary member of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.
caption: Fische der Sudsee Journal Museum Godeffroy
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2010:10:09 06:35:18"}