Völkerkundemuseum Herrnhut (Ethnological Museum)

The Völkerkundemuseum in Herrnhut preserves unique items that testify to the cultural heritage of Alaska and Africa, Asia and America and shows them to anyone who sets out on a journey – not to distant parts of the world but to Herrnhut.

From 1732 onwards, members of the Moravian Church (Brüder-Unität) which was founded in Herrnhut, travelled to many different peoples in order to preach them the gospel. Numerous missionaries studied the languages and cultures of the various peoples and brought their fascinating objects back to Germany. These ethnographical collections and the many written observations recorded by the missionaries made an important contribution to the establishment of ethnography as a science. Other disciplines such as linguistics, geography, botany and zoology are also indebted to the missionaries for some of their basic literature.