Arv och nation: Nationalromantik i ett naturhistoriskt museum

Abstract

National romanticism in a natural history museum of 1923
In Göteborg on the West coast of Sweden a large zoological exhibition belonging to a natural history museum set up in 1923 has been kept well preserved right up to the present day. Only modest changes have been made during the 80 years since the inauguration of the museum. The architectural style of the building is that of national romanticism dating from the years before the First World War. The decision to build the museum was taken before the war. The exhibition is organised according a systemisation of the animal kingdom used by the German zoologist Carl Gegenbaur (1826– 1903). It is however largely constructed in the spirit of Carolus Linnæus (1707–1778), whose scientific ethic was manifested in his magnum opus Systema naturae: ”Nomina enim si pereunt, perit & cognitio rerum.” The keeper of the museum Leonard Jägerskiöld (1867– 1945) had already declared in 1903 that a modern zoological museum had to show in its exhibitions results from the most recent research. Why this programme was never realized is a question which might be related to the mental climate in Sweden, and Göteborg in particular, during the period before the war. The leading professors of the College of Göteborg together with the dominant group among the clergy were afraid that modern science might pose a threat to the values of Christian belief and idealistic philosophy. In books and oratory they agitated, sometimes vehemently, against modern science and its alleged materialism. In this intellectual environment an exhibition of modern, Darwinian biology, would necessarily have been regarded as a provocation. In contrast an exhibition which in different ways was reminiscent of Linnaeus was well suited to the demands of this period permeated as it was with nationalism.