History
The museum building opened in 1889 at the same time as the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The two museums have identical exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz. The Museum was built to house the huge collection of the Habsburgs.
Both buildings were built between 1872 and 1891 on the Ringstraße according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer.
The insect collections date from 1793 when Franz I of Austria purchased the scientific collections of Joseph Natterer, Sr. (father of 6-year-old, and later zoologist, Johann Natterer). In 1806 the museum purchased a collection of European insects made by Johann Carl Megerle von Mühlfeld, and Megerle became the first curator of insects. He organised the purchase of the Gundian collection of European butterflies. These old collections with Megerle's specimens were destroyed in October 1848, during a Hofburg fire; however, Johann Natterer's journey to Brazil (1817–1835) had led to an enormous enhancement of the collections: 60,000 insects were a part of the "Brazilian museum" in the "Harrach' house" and escaped the fire.
In 1859, the frigate SMS Novara returned from a world voyage with Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld and Johann Zelebor, and the insects were incorporated in the Vienna collections. These were worked on by Ludwig Redtenbacher (Coleoptera), Friedrich Moritz Brauer (Neuroptera and Diptera), Henri Louis Frederic de Saussure (Hymenoptera excluding Formicidae), Gustav Mayr (Formicidae and Hemiptera), Ignaz Rudolph Schiner (Diptera), C Felder, R. Felder and Alois Friedrich Rogenhofer (Lepidoptera).
The present museum organization dates from 1876. The entomologists Ganglbauer and Karl Holdhaus (Coleoptera), Rogenhofer and Hans Rebel, Josef Emanuel Fischer von Röslerstamm, Josef Johann Mann (Lepidoptera), Franz Friedrich Kohl, Carl Tschek and Maidl (Hymenoptera), Brauer (Diptera and Neuroptera), and Anton Handlirsch (for fossil insects) contributed substantially to the international reputation of the museum.
Read more about this topic: Naturhistorisches Museum
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