Insights into the History of the Collection

Emanuel Ferdinand William von Baensch

11.10.1869 – ?

William von Baensch was born in Leipzig on 11 October 1869. In 1880 he started an apprenticeship at the Königliche Hofbuchdruckerei (Royal Court Printing Works) in Stuttgart and in 1881 he joined the Roechler company to learn the commission business. After further stations in Berlin and Gotha, he went to Dresden at the end of 1883 to work in the family business, the Wilhelm von Baensch Verlagsbuchhandlung und Buchdruckerei (Wilhelm von Baensch Publishing and Printing House). In 1888 his father retired from the business and William von Baensch became a partner in the Dresden publishing house. However, he had to retire from the business again in 1895 on the grounds of ill health. He lived in Freiburg between 1905 and 1907. In 1910, he founded the Wilhelm and Bertha von Baensch Foundation in Dresden with his mother Bertha, his brother Henry and his wife. The foundation's mission was to promote art, literature, science, arts and crafts, as well as technology.

Baensch Donation

William von Baensch donated ethnological objects from Asia worth 500 marks to the museum in 1906. How and where exactly he acquired these objects has not been documented. Only three objects now remain in the Ethnological Collection attributed to the name of Baensch. Baensch sold a number of natural history specimens, such as coral and shells, to the Museum für Natur- und Völkerkunde for 50 marks. In this instance too, there is no information regarding their whereabouts.