Setting up and development

Being established as a foundation in 1937 the German Museum of Pharmacy was opened in Munich in 1938. The exhibits consisted exclusively of donations of the profession: The extensive private collections of the Rath family, Frankfurt (former owners of the Vial & Uhlmann Co.) and of the Heinrici family, Halle, built up the basis which was completed by numerous single donations.

Only a few years later – meanwhile the museum had closed down as a result of the outbreak of World War II – the building and a part of the collections that had not been transferred into safe store-rooms were hit by fire bombs and totally destroyed. After the end of the war the German Museum of Pharmacy found a temporary domicile for the collections which escaped happily from the destructions of the war in the prince-episcopal residence of Bamberg. As a matter of fact most of the stocks were saved. In 1958 the official reopening of the museum took place at Heidelberg in the Ottheinrich palace which used to be its location until today.

The purpose of the foundation can be described with the keywords enlargement, preservation and maintenance of the collections in order to depict the history of pharmacy in a lively arranged museum. These statutes have shaped the honorary work of the foundation until today and are guaranteed not least by the constant support of the profession of dispensing chemists and their umbrella organization – the Bundesvereinigung Deutscher Apothekerverbände (ABDA).