I The Museum's Pre-History

Martinus van Marum and the Beginning of the Age of Museums

In a letter to the Dutch Minister of the Interior Anton Reinhard Falck posted in July 1819, the ornithologist and collector Coenraad Jacob Temminck left no doubt as to what he thought two of his colleagues really wanted to do to him, if the opportunity ever presented itself: “Both”, he wrote, “would stop at nothing to clear me out of the way”. He was referring to Sebald Justinus Brugmans, professor of botany and director of the botanical gardens in Leiden, and Martinus van Marum, the director of Teylers Museum and secretary of the Holland Society of Sciences in Haarlem.

This was more than just a letter of complaint. Temminck himself was no angel, and at the time was in fact pursuing his own political agenda. He had dined with Falck just a few days earlier, and the two men had discussed the establishment of a national museum of natural history in the Netherlands – of which Temminck was to be handed the directorship. Just thirteen months later, Temminck's highly valuable and widely recognised personal ornithological collection, consisting of more than 4000 stuffed birds, had indeed been merged with both the University of Leiden's natural history collections and the former Royal Cabinet of Natural History in Amsterdam, to form the new National Museum of Natural History (Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie) based in Leiden.

Although Temminck does not explicitly refer to these plans in his letter – but concentrated instead on pointing out how in his opinion the university collections in Leiden were insufficient to form the nucleus of a national collection, which he suspected Brugmans was hoping would be the case – it is highly likely that the plans that were eventually implemented, including Temminck's directorship, were already on the table. Perhaps in order to get ahead of the opposition, and sensing that he currently held the upper hand, Temminck urged Falck to make haste with his plans of establishing the national museum, adding in a thinly veiled threat that “if a national museum comes to nothing, or if the facilities remain inadequate, no one shall be able to blame me if I continue my eager quest for the extension of my knowledge of nature in another country”.

Brielle, Streekarchief Voorne-Putten en Rozenburg: SVPR

– Gemeente Rockanje (1811-1920); vol. 097

– Notarissen; vol. 110

Delft, Archief Delft

– Bevolkingsregister 1839

Deventer, Stadsarchief en Athenaeumbibliotheek Deventer

– Natuur-en Scheikundig Genootschap te Deventer, 1817-1839; ID 972

Haarlem, Noord Hollands Archief: NHA

– Nederlandsche Maatschappij voor Nijverheid en Handel te Den Haag; vol. 609

– Archief Van Marum; vol. 529

– Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen; vol. 444

– Koninklijk Nederlandsch Instituut van Wetenschappen, Letterkunde en Schoone Kunsten (KNIW) te Amsterdam, 1808-1851; vol. 175

– Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (KNAW) te Amsterdam, 1851-1940; vol. 64

– Gemeentebestuur Haarlem 1813-1957; vol. 1323

– Gemeente Haarlem Doodsoorzaken 1878

– Archief Lorentz; vol. 364

Haarlem, Archief Teylers Stichting: ATS

Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden Bijzondere Collecties: UBL BC

– Archieven van Senaat en Faculteiten, UBL042

– Epistolarium Veth; BPL1756

– Collectie Sijthoff; SYT

Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society

– Archives; Record Group IIa

The Hague, Nationaal Archief: NL-HaNA

– Ministerie van Waterstaat, Handel en Nijverheid: Handel en Nijverheid I; nummer toegang 2.16.60.04

– Familie Falck; nummer toegang 2.21.006.48

I Summary

Before addressing the main points that have transpired from this study of the history of Teylers Museum from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, briefly recalling some of the most important dates in the history of the Museum is probably helpful.

Its history begins in 1778, with the death of Pieter Teyler van der Hulst. Largely upon the initiative of Martinus van Marum, the Oval Room was completed in 1784. The first chapter of this study highlighted how the Oval Room had sprung from the relative ambiguity of Pieter Teyler's last will and testament and how Teylers Museum was just one of many institutions – alongside Teylers Learned Societies and an almshouse – financed by the Teyler Foundation and its five trustees.

Van Marum was appointed director of Teylers Museum – although, rather importantly, a caretaker (kastelein) was simultaneously in charge of the Foundation's collection of fine art, which was also stored at the Museum. Van Marum remained in this position throughout his long life, until his death in 1837. He famously experimented with the world's largest electrostatic generator at the Museum in the 1780s. By the early nineteenth century, however, Van Marum had fallen out with the trustees, and essentially reduced his activities at the Museum to a minimum.

When his successor, Jacob Gijsbert Samuël van Breda, arrived in Haarlem in 1839, he not only took the important decision to preserve scientific instruments that were deemed to be of historical value (because of Van Marum's inactivity the collection had been mellowing for almost three decades), but also found that a new annex to the Museum had been completed, the sole purpose of which was an aesthetically pleasing display of the Foundation's growing collection of paintings by contemporary Dutch artists.

The completion of this annex heralded Teylers Museum's gradual transition from an eighteenth-century repository conceived as an aid to two learned societies and as a nodal point in the republic of letters, to a public art museum with a scientific laboratory attached to it. The gradual removal of scientific research activities from the museum premises began with the construction of a separate chemical laboratory for Van Marum in 1790, but this separation became ever more pronounced once “science” became the exclusive reserve of professionally trained experts.

I Teylers at the Paris Electrical Exhibition

Gerard Oyens was not keen on being upstaged by the British. But in March of 1881, he was worried he might be – and justifiably so. Oyens had just been tasked with organising the Netherlands’ contribution to the Paris Electrical Exhibition of 1881 and, from his perspective at least, things had not got off to a good start.

The idea behind the Electrical Exhibition was that every country in the world could present the newest electrical devices its engineers and scientists had developed. The grand total of these separate, national sections to the Exhibition would then amount to a spectacular celebration and public demonstration of the immense progress that had been made in the field of electrical science in the space of just a few decades. As one official announcement published in France stated: “This exhibition will comprise everything to do with electricity: it will bring together apparatus of various types and various origins which serve to generate, transmit and use electricity”.

The Paris Exhibition was not the first large-scale international exhibition. Ever since the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851, a veritable hype had developed around what came to be known as the World's Fairs, with every country that could afford to do so organising various international exhibitions on a wide variety of topics. The exhibition in Paris was, however, the first that was devoted exclusively to electricity. What prompted it were the groundbreaking developments that had occurred over the course of a fairly short period preceding the exhibition. Not many years had passed since James Clerk Maxwell published his theory of electromagnetism for instance, and even more recently patents had been filed for the electric telephone and the electric light bulb, by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison respectively. The world was quick to realise the far-reaching implications these and other inventions had, and the Paris Exhibition can be seen as the epitome of the excitement they generated, both amongst the general public and amongst scientists and engineers. The exhibition itself was held from August until November 1881 at the Palais de l’Industrie on the Champs-Élysées, and it was accompanied by a four-day conference to which specialists from all over the world were invited. One “hot topic” at this conference was the establishment of standard units to describe electromagnetic phenomena.

“Instructie voor den Directeur van Teylers Musaeum

Art. 1

De Directeur zal in orde te houden hebben en door Bediendens moeten laaten schoon-houden, de Fossilia, de Physische Instrumenten en Modellen van nuttige Werktuigen: alsmede de Boeken, die aan de Fundatie behooren.

2.

Van alle die Verzamelingen zal hij Catalogus hebben op te maaken, namelijk eene Systhematische Catalogus van Fossilia, eene tweede van de Physische Instrumenten en Modellen, en eene derde van de Boeken, en in dezelve telkens hebben op te tekenen, hetgeen van tijd tot tijd in het Musaeum geplaatst word.

Deeze Catalogi behooren altoos in het Musaeum voor den hand te liggen, ten einde elk hieruit zien kan, wat er in het zelve te vinden is en teffens in dezelven de beschrijving kan leezen, van het geen hem in het Musaeum onder het oog valt.

3.

De Fossilia, die in laaden gelegd kunnen worden zal hij in de beste Systhematische orde te schikken hebben, en om dit te beter te kunnen doen, zal hij zig moeten bevlijtigen, om ongenaamde Fossilia, die de Fundatie door Aankoop verkrijgt, of aan dezelve worden present gedaan, te leeren kennen, en tot hunne geslachten en Zoorten te brengen. Hij zal ook bij de Fossilia, die in laaden liggen, bijschriften te plaatsen hebben, waaruit te leezen is, welke zoorten zij zijn, en waar zij gevonden worden; alles in diervoege, als hij bij de Fossilia die thans in het Musaeum zijn, gedaan heeft.

4.

Bij de Fossilia, gelijk ook bij de Physische Instrumenten en Modellen, welke men zal goedvinden aan het Musaeum present te doen, zal hij, wanneer zij stukken van aanmerkelijke waarde zijn, de naamen der Geevers te plaatsen hebben, ten einde anderen die het Musaeum beschouwen, hierdoor stilzwijgend aan te moedigen om ook iets aan hetzelve te vereeren.

Art. 5

De Eerste Directeur zal als Aanlegger van deeze Verzamelingen, zich inzonderheid hebben te bevlijtigen, om dezelven zo veel hem doenlijk is, te verrijken, en allen Luister bij te zetten.

Ten dien einde zal hij, a) na te spooren hebben, welke daar in voegende Fossilia, Physische Instrumenten, Modellen en Boeken konnen verkreegen worden, en hoe zij op de minst kostbaare wijze te verkrijgen zijn.

I An Unexpected Guessing Game (Intro)

One year after Elisa van der Ven had been appointed the new curator of Teylers Museum's scientific instrument collection, he sent his first detailed report on his activities and future plans for the collection to the trustees of the Teyler Foundation. It was April 1880, and Van der Ven reported that he had spent a great deal of time trying to gain an overview of what instruments he had inherited from his predecessors, and trying to figure out what exactly they had acquired them for. This, he stated, had been far more difficult than he had expected for a number of reasons: his predecessors appeared not to have been particularly eager to record their thoughts and plans in writing, for instance, and the instruments did not appear to have been stored in a particularly orderly fashion. As Van der Ven complained: “In the museum the strangest objects were then to be found together, so that often from a cupboard that seemingly served for the storage of similar instruments, different ones emerged, that had nothing to do with the others scientifically”.

While this delayed his compiling a catalogue of the collection, what completely stumped Van der Ven was a small building in the garden behind the Museum that had been constructed by his immediate predecessor, Volkert Simon Maarten van der Willigen, sometime between March 1866 and February 1867. The report to the trustees contains a remarkably frank admission that he didn't have a clue why this building – which was roughly the size of a large hut, was built in stone, had a large slit in its roof and was referred to as the “observatory” – had been erected. Van der Ven literally wrote about this building in the garden: “For what purpose it has been put there is difficult to guess”. The only thing that was clear was that the building had been used for measurements of some sort. One promising clue seemed to be that no iron had been used in the building, which suggested that any sort of electromagnetic induction was to be avoided. However, Van der Ven pointed out that this, too, failed to explain why he had found a Universal Instrument “with thick iron axles” in the building.

I Van Marum's Work at Teylers Museum

Van der Vinne Resigns

After having spent more than one and a half years helping John Cuthbertson construct the largest electrostatic generator ever to be built and helping him negotiate all the unexpected challenges this brought about – the huge, 65 inch glass discs that are rotated to generate friction were in themselves an extraordinary feat of glass casting – finally seeing the machine installed at Teylers Museum and being able to crank it up for the first time must have made Van Marum feel like a child unwrapping an eagerly anticipated birthday present. After much delay this stage was finally reached in December of 1784, just one month after Van Marum had been appointed director of Teylers Museum. Conscious of whom he had to thank for this amazing machine, Van Marum wasted no time in demonstrating it to the trustees of the Teyler Foundation.

But as enamoured as Van Marum was of this powerful device now at his disposal, his fellow employee of the Teyler Foundation, Vincent van der Vinne, was not. As mentioned in the previous chapter, it did not take him long to complain about Van Marum's constant experimenting to the trustees. They, however, took Van Marum's side in this dispute and explicitly stated that

Because Van Marum wanted to perform experiments with the electrostatic generator, he would have to

Van der Vinne was granted some respite when damp weather prevented Van Marum from continuing with his experiments throughout the winter, but the apparent serenity did not last long. As soon as “an unexpected Frost” befell Haarlem in early February, Van Marum took this opportunity to demonstrate the electrostatic generator to his fellow members of Teylers Second Society. They were suitably impressed, recording that the “experiments […] have completely answered or even surpassed the expectations that had been formed of this exceptionally large and excellent piece of artisanship”.

I Themes of the Chapter

By the mid-1920s, the Teyler Foundation had hit dire straits financially. At a meeting in May 1926, one of the trustees graphically summarised that money was “tighter than tight” and the Foundation's current situation “unsustainable”. This was not an exaggeration. In fact the situation was so serious that, at this particular meeting, the trustees began debating what should be liquidated first, should the worst come to the worst: the Foundation's collection of paintings or its scientific laboratory. As events unfolded, the trustees were not forced to make any such stark choices. For the next few decades, selling off all duplicate drawings and prints from the Foundation's collections and economising by cancelling various annual contributions to other institutions proved sufficient to keep the Foundation and all the institutions it financed – i.e. its almshouse, the Learned Societies, and Teylers Museum – operating. Nevertheless, the fact that such scenarios were debated in the first place of course struck at the heart of the Foundation's identity.

The fact that the Foundation found itself in financial difficulties is all the more striking because this would have been virtually unimaginable just a few years earlier. On the eve of World War I, to an outsider at least the Foundation's resources would have seemed almost limitless. Over the preceding decades, three events in particular would have helped bolster the impression that the Foundation's trustees were a safe pair of hands where money was concerned: in 1885, the hitherto largest and lavishly decorated extension to the Museum had been inaugurated; then, just eight years later and as if to prove that their resources had not been stretched to the limit, the trustees added another glamorous-looking annex to the Museum – the so-called Second Art Gallery; finally, in 1912, the Foundation appointed the Nobel Prize laureate Hendrik Antoon Lorentz as curator of the Foundation's laboratory and instrument collection – a clear sign that Teylers Museum was still held in high regard in scientific circles. Yet it was during the negotiations on Lorentz’ contract that the first augurs of what was to come might already have been discernible: one trustee, Louis Paul Zocher, opposed the Nobel Prize winner's appointment.