Mail from Greenland

With over 18,000 minerals, rocks and fossils, Goethe’s geoscientific collections at his former residence on Frauenplan are extensive and yet, relatively unknown. The poet collected and purchased many of these himself, while other items were gifted to him. Some of these are now presented in a studio exhibition in a special room of the permanent exhibition at the Goethe National Museum. His donors included, among others, such illustrious figures as Wilhelm von Humboldt, Kaspar von Sternberg, Goethe’s “geological friend” Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich von Trebra and the Greenland explorer Carl Ludwig Giesecke. The latter sent Goethe a box of minerals from the Arctic north. The small exhibition presents originals from Goethe’s collection and the items Goethe gifted to his benefactors in return – for example, the azure Coelestine from Dornburg which he had collected himself.