10. May 2025 – 13. July 2025

This year, the Bamberg Natural History Museum is once again showing the winning images from the 27th edition of the international “Highlights of Nature Photography” competition in the form of a special exhibition. The renowned competition, which has been awarding prizes for fascinating, touching and spectacular photographs from all over the world since 1999, has honored outstanding images. With almost 23,000 images submitted by 949 photographers from 35 countries, the competition underlines the unbroken fascination for nature photography and our planet Earth worldwide. The award-winning images captivate with their aesthetic power, their narrative depth and technical sophistication.

Competition in new hands
Under this year’s new management of Florian and Lisa Marie Smit, the photo competition launched by Mara Fuhrmann will be continued responsibly and with full passion. A few things have already been changed and modernized, and the small adjustments are already having an effect: this year a new record was set for the number of photo submissions. The number of participants also reached its highest level since 2019, and more than 1,500 people became aware of the competition on social media in just a few weeks and followed the channels. This makes the “Highlights of Nature Photography”one of the three largest nature photography competitions in Europe. Further adjustments will follow step by step, but the basic idea of the competition remains the same: honest and genuine nature photography. The award-winning works not only show the beauty of nature, but also focus on the respectful treatment of it.

1. Aug. 2024 – 30. March 2025

Time determines our lives. Almost all of us are guided by the clock day in, day out – by deadlines and schedules. We take for granted how days, weeks, months and years pass – and realise that our own lifetime is limited. Time is therefore something quite commonplace, something that affects us all directly and yet is difficult or impossible for us to understand and explain. In the exhibition ‘All time in the world’, the Bamberg Natural History Museum and the Bayreuth Prehistoric Museum are focussing on this multifaceted topic.

In the exhibition, the well-known astrophysicist and science journalist Harald Lesch accompanies visitors on their journey through time and space. Numerous exhibits, spectacular images and stagings as well as hands-on objects and special children’s stations make the exhibition an experience for young and old alike.

The content of the exhibition was developed by the Museum Mensch und Natur team together with members of the planning staff of the Bavarian Natural History Museum. The collections and regional museums of the Bavarian State Natural History Collections were also involved in the project. The exhibition is also supported by a large number of other institutions worldwide.

Through time and space

With an impressive installation, the exhibition takes us back to the beginning of all things – the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Today, ever larger and better telescopes allow us to look not only to incredible distances, but also ever deeper into the past and thus into the early days of the universe. The history of the Earth, which was formed around 4.55 billion years ago, forms the second part of the exhibition. Among other things, the oldest minerals and rocks on earth, which are more than 4 billion years old, can be admired here. Numerous exhibits show how the earth is still in a constant process of change today and fossils show us different periods of the earth’s history.

Who actually turns the internal clock?

At the same time as the Bamberg Natural History Museum, the Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken in Bayreuth is showing another aspect of the special exhibition, showing how time is an elementary factor affecting living beings and their evolution. All higher organisms go through a cycle of growth, reproduction and ageing, which ultimately leads to death. However, the duration and course of this process differ significantly – some plants and animals only live for a few weeks, while others reach an age of hundreds or even over 1,000 years. The Bayreuth exhibition shows examples of particularly extreme lifespans and developmental paths.

Visitors with an admission ticket for the other museum receive reduced admission to the current museum.

24. April 2024 – 30. June 2024

In 2024, the Bamberg Natural History Museum will once again present the highlights of nature photography in the tried and tested tradition. The international photo competition is organised by Mara Fuhrmann and Udo Höcke from ‘projekt natur & fotografie’. This year marks the 26th edition of the competition.

Every year, a changing jury led by Mara Fuhrmann selects the best nature photographs, true ‘highlights’, in nine different categories, which are presented together with the winners of the Fritz Pölking Award and the Junior Award in our special exhibition.

Click here for the competition website: https://www.glanzlichter.com/

Can lightning actually ‘petrify’? And what about raindrops? What traces does wind leave behind? We will get to the bottom of these questions in our new special exhibition from 1 September 2023. The duration has been extended until 31 March 2024!

‘Bad weather!’ said the dinosaur.
Weather influences us always and everywhere, regardless of the short-term atmospheric condition. Weather has already decided wars and destroyed entire civilisations. Yet weather phenomena are much older than the dinosaurs.

What do we actually know about the weather in the past? Historical records of this go back
only go back a few millennia at best. Stones, on the other hand, can store data for much longer, over hundreds of millions of years. Almost every known weather phenomenon can leave fossilised traces, some of which are among the most aesthetic formations of inanimate nature.

Come with us on an unusual journey through the world of the weather of yesterday, today and tomorrow! With spectacular geological objects, ten well-known weather phenomena – drought, heat, wind, storm, thunderstorm, hail, rain, flood, frost and snow – are examined in detail. You can also ‘make weather’ yourself at interactive stations.

The special exhibition designed by the GEOSKOP Burg Lichtenberg prehistoric museum contains exhibits from several German natural history museums and scientific institutions. It was created especially for
Bamberg with artefacts from the holdings of the Bamberg Natural History Museum and from Franconian archaeological sites. It not only shows spectacular traces of weather in the rock dating back millions of years, but also invites young and old to experiment and participate with numerous hands-on exhibits on various weather phenomena, including a lightning machine and a mini tornado.

The bilingual exhibition (German/English) will be on display at the Bamberg Natural History Museum until 31 March 2024.

06. July 2023 – 27. August 2023

In 2023, the Bamberg Natural History Museum will once again be showing the highlights of nature photography in keeping with tradition. This international photo competition is organised by Mara Fuhrmann and Udo Höcke, the ‘projekt natur & fotografie’. This year marks the 25th anniversary of this competition.

Every year, a changing jury led by Mara Fuhrmann selects the best nature photographs, true ‘highlights’, in eight different categories, which are presented in the special exhibition together with the winners of the Fritz Pölking Award and the Junior Award.

Link to the competition website: https://www.glanzlichter.com/

20. January 2023 – 30. June 2023

The Bamberg Natural History Museum’s special exhibition ‘SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST T. REX!’ focuses on the palaeoart of artist Joschua Knüppe. Palaeoart is the artistic reconstruction of extinct organisms and ecosystems based on scientific findings. Over many hundreds of millions of years of evolution, the most diverse life forms have emerged and disappeared again on our planet. The public only knows a tiny fraction of them.

In this exhibition, Joschua Knüppe, born in 1992, shows a selection of his visually impressive works that span the entire history of the earth, ranging from the earliest life forms to well-known and lesser-known dinosaurs and the giants of the last ice age. The works on display include traditional drawings and paintings on paper as well as digital images, graphics and animations. The result is a plausible picture of prehistoric times beyond the mainstream, with countless facets that not only Hollywood but also the relevant specialist literature does not normally offer us.

Despite their often bizarre appearance from today’s perspective, extinct animals were more than just monsters. Knüppe’s works show, for example, that many of them were not only hunters or hunted, but also caring parents. Even back then, animals behaved clumsily or playfully, they contracted diseases or fought for their survival in disasters. In short, prehistoric times were much more than just T. rex, and even the Tyrannosaurus was so much more than what pop culture tells us.

July 12th, 2022 – December 30th, 2022

Tracks in the sand, snow or e.g. the feeding track of a snail may tell the observer who has left his “footprint”. But not all traces are visible to humans or they fade away with time: like the sound of a melody, the circles of an eagle in the sky or the path of a housefly in the air. Munich-based photo artist Lothar Schiffler has long been dedicated to such invisible traces. Using complex photographic and video techniques, he traces the flight paths of swifts, buzzards, cranes, insects and even flying seeds.

However, the possibilities of photography, i.e. writing with light, are not suitable for recording the movements in the air. Therefore, he uses exactly the opposite, i.e. writing with shadows, the so-called iskiography. Thousands of individual images of selected video passages are brought together with the most modern digital photographic technology and enable the reconstruction of a track of movement in the air. Comparable to the score of a piece of music, a flight track is captured with the help of iskiography and the moment of simultaneous emergence and decay can be perceived.

The reconstruction of the movement tracks of birds, which Lothar Schiffler records on a local scale, also has tangible scientific aspects. Ornithologists are using increasingly sophisticated technical methods to reconstruct the global movements of migratory birds, for example.

An expedition to Bavaria’s great apes, primal elephants and subtropical forests

27. October 2022 – 8. May 2022

A joint exhibition of the Museum Mensch und Natur, Munich and the Naturkunde Museum Bamberg in cooperation with BIOTOPIA-Naturkundemuseum-Bayern, the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Geology of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

Who would have guessed that 10 million years ago four-meter-tall tusked elephants and saber-toothed cats roamed through a landscape of cinnamon trees and bald cypresses right on our doorstep?The Molassic Park exhibition invites you on an expedition into our Bavarian past – into the era of the Upper Freshwater Molasse.

The reason for the creation of this exhibition was a spectacular find in 2019. A hitherto unknown, approx. 11.6 million years old ape was found in a clay pit in the Allgäu, scientifically named “Danuvius guggenmosi”. Under the more common name “Udo” this find has become known. Udo is a real sensation, because it is the oldest evidence of a living creature with an upright gait.

Imagine this figuratively: Suddenly hands and arms are no longer needed to move. Thus, the upright gait was not only a new form of locomotion, but a completely new way of life was possible. The exhibition shows an entertaining animation so that visitors can understand why it is possible to deduce the mode of locomotion from individual bones.

In addition, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey through how research elicits hidden secrets from the traces of time. Each visitor is invited to get hands-on. For example, they can pick up replica bones of Udo, or they can grind a fossil leaf of a plant species. You can determine pollen under the microscope or touch 11 million year old teeth and learn what can be said from these teeth about the life of such an animal.

Thus, one can follow how scientists gradually put together a picture of the past from many individual fragments. On display are many extraordinary molasse fossils from various sites in Bavaria. For example, the exhibition sheds light on what ecosystems looked like in the past or how the climate at that time might have affected biodiversity.

The exhibition is rounded off by large-format pictures by the well-known Spanish paleo-artist Mauricio Anton. They not only bring the flora and fauna of that time to life, but also make you literally feel the landscape.

The exhibition “Molassic Park” is designed as a touring exhibition and, after its launch in the Winter Hall of the Botanical Garden in Munich, will now also be on display in Bamberg, Eichstätt, Bayreuth and Nördlingen, as well as at other locations in Bavaria.

This unique exhibition was made possible by the cooperation of the Museum Mensch und Natur, the Botanical Garden Munich-Nymphenburg, the Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology and Geology, BIOTOPIA – Natural History Museum Bavaria and the working group of Prof. Dr. Madelaine Böhme at the University of Tübingen.

We rent special exhibitions from our own production. Currently we have three exhibitions on offer:

So much more than just T. rex!

The special exhibition at the Bamberg Natural History Museum focuses on the paleoart of the artist Joschua Knüppe. It shows a selection of his visually impressive works with countless prehistoric creatures in realistic scenarios. More information here.

Biodiversity in Entenhausen – Animals from a Parallel Universe

Have you ever heard of the Cucumber Rascal (zoological name: Ciller gurcae), and what devastating damage this insect belonging to the order of beetles can cause to the cucumber crop? Or do you know that despite its fearsome name, the Horrid Polyfoot (Multipes horridus) is actually completely harmless? No? Then you probably haven’t hooked an Oracle Sturgeon or a Haretooth Shark, or ridden a Latsch Horse.

The exhibition will remedy this glaring educational deficiency, as it introduces you to the animal world of the parallel world of Stella anatium. This rich and bizarre animal world was discovered by the ingenious Disney cartoonist Carl Barks (1901-2000), researched by scientists of the association D.O.N.A.L.D. (German Organization of Non-Commercial Adherents of honest Donaldism), and staged by the team of the Natural History Museum Bamberg.

Fossils from Wattendorf – A look into the Jurassic Period

An island archipelago under a bright blue sky, washed by a tropical sea. Crocodiles and sharks prey between reefs, turtles lay their eggs in the hot sand on the beaches. Seychelles or Maldives? No. It is the sea of the upper Jurassic period that covered our land 150 million years ago. In a quarry in Upper Franconia, Germany, a magnificent window into this bizarre, forgotten world has now opened up completely unexpectedly. The exhibition gives you a first impression of the unique fossils that the team of the Bamberg Museum of Natural History has unearthed in this quarry. You will also learn about the natural beauty, the exciting and also contemplative possibilities for leisure activities, the archaeological features and the beer culture of this beautiful Jurassic village and the region at the northern end of the Upper Main Valley.