The university of Göttingen has a wide range of scientific collections. Most of them are open to the public, but they’re distributed throughout the city and only accessible in very limited time frames. Therefore most inhabitants don’t know the treasures stored in the city. This changes with the Forum Wissen which was opened in 2022. It serves as a portal to these collections and presents important items at a central and well-accessible place.
The Forum Wissen can be found in an ancient but fantastically altered building next to the railway station. The museum itself focusses on knowledge; what it is and how it is created. Even people who have not studied can learn how research works and visit places were it happens: the laboratory, the ‘field’, the library, the archive, the desk. You can even walk through the blind alley like every scientist (in German it is called the ‘Holzweg‘ which translates to ‘wooden path‘).
All in all the Forum Wissen is a wonderful museum fitting very well to the city of science. It is open to the public for free, has programs for children and is completed by a small shop and a coffee bar with a nice terrace in the backyard. The only thing that needs to be improved is the introduction. People not knowing the background and the special focus of the exhibition might wonder a bit while stumbling through the process of scientific work.
The building the Forum Wissen is located in is a special historic one: It was created from 1873 on for the Naturhistorisches Museum (natural history museum) of the university. Until the end of the 1930s only the zoological collection (now named Zoologisches Museum) remained there. It was closed in 2018 to give space for the Forum Wissen and there are plans to re-open it as separate biodiversity museum.
Forum Wissen
Berliner Str. 28
37073 Göttingen
Germany
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