Following in the footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt, nineteenth-century German naturalists sought to explore and categorise the world. To them, the Australian continent offered a welcome opportunity to test Humboldt’s methods on a terrain hitherto largely unknown to European voyagers and researchers. Long before the arrival of these highly influential scholars, however, the place now called Australia was already intimately known. Its lands, waters, and skies had been named and classified by First Nations people, within Indigenous knowledge systems and languages. German naturalists at times heavily relied on the expertise of First Nations intermediaries, who acted as guides, collectors, trading partners or translators in their endeavours. From preserved animals and plants to rock samples, or drawings of fish and birds – the vast natural history collections held by museums across Australia and Germany today are not only objects of European scientific inquiry. They also embody Indigenous knowledge and stories about the natural world that have long been overlooked or silenced by the dominant frameworks of Western science. Berlin’s Australian Archive

See also: A Visit to the State Library Berlin