Founded by the Württemberg Society for Commercial Geography, the Commercial Geographical Museum, the forerunner of today’s Linden Museum, initially focused on samples of goods and products from German colonies and pursued economic goals. It was not until the 1890s that the focus shifted to anthropological collecting. Today, few of the original trade objects remain, and their whereabouts are unknown.
In the years that followed, the focus was on everyday objects, utilitarian items, and art. The regional focus was on the former German colonies. The core collections included the continents of Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Objects from Africa constitute the largest collection and still comprise some 40,000 objects today. Within the African collection, Cameroon has the largest number of objects. Along with the object collection, a map collection and a very extensive photographic collection were also established.
By 1910, the museum had more than 60,000 objects in its collection. The chairman of the association, Karl Graf von Linden, was largely responsible for this. He cleverly built a vast network of contacts around the world, attracting potential collectors and winning them over to the museum. Due to his former position at the royal court of Württemberg, he was able to offer a royal Württemberg order for significant object donations, which was widely known. The majority of the museum’s objects were donated at this time.
Later, significant acquisitions, such as those from the Stuttgart State Trade Museum, the Royal Natural History Cabinet in Stuttgart, collections from the Crown Estate, or the purchase of the object and photographic collection from the Colonial Museum in Berlin, expanded the object holdings. In 1962, the Stuttgart Badakhshan Expedition was the museum’s first own expedition.
An important turning point in the history of the collection was the nationalization of the museum in 1973. Especially after the Second World War there was a lively trade in objects, preferably with ethnographic dealers. For this reason, former objects from the Linden-Museum still appear on the art market today. Nationalization put an end to this system. At the same time, it made it possible for new acquisitions to be financed from the resources of the Central Fund of Baden-Württemberg and the Museum Foundation since 1974.
In the early 1970s, work began on building up the collection areas of the Orient, South and East Asia. Until the 1990s, acquisitions came mainly from art dealers.
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