About Us

The Academic Coin Cabinet of the University of Rostock was founded in the year 1794, at the instigation of the outstanding orientalist Oluf Gerhard Tychsen (1734–1815) and the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Friedrich Franz II. Thanks to the legacy built by Tychsen,complemented with numerous later acquisitions, Baron Erhard von Nettelbladt (1792–1663), responsible for the Cabinet as the librarian of the University, was able to enlarge the collection from 6’500 to no less than 27’000 entries. Several inventory settlements and many losses caused by World War II resulted in the dissolution of the Coin Cabinet in 1944. Consequently the section containing the Ancient, Byzantine and Oriental coins, as well as a number of modern coins, were assigned to the corpus of the Archaeological Collection of Rostock University.

The Archaeological Collection of Rostock University has its seat at the Heinrich Schliemann Institute for Ancient Studies. It can be described as a typical academic research and study collection, mostly used for academic teaching. Moreover, there are permanent exhibition rooms, opened to the public once per week. Apart from the coins, the collection contains archaeological objects of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman periods, as well as a number of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures. In 2008 the collection was significantly increased, as the inventory of the Collection of Antiquities of Greifswald University was added, which by that time was given over as a permanent loan.

To date, the collection of coins consists of c. 4’000 Ancient and Byzantine, c. 800 Oriental and c. 4’500 modern coins and medals. In addition, there is a small but rather important collection of fish glue casts taken in the time of Tychsen from a number of Islamic coins. A small part of the coin collection is integrated into the permanent collection open to the public. The coins kept in the deposit are mainly used for academic teaching. They offer the opportunity to learn and practice the methods of numismatics by using original objects. Furthermore, the coins are regularly used in the context of workshops held by the working group ‘School&Museum’.

Up to date, only the Roman and Byzantine coins have been investigated scientifically. These coins were published by Silke Burmeister in 1999. Since 2019 we are adding, to begin with, the data of c. 900 Greek and Roman coins to the NUMiD database. More will follow.

Archaeological Collection of Heinrich-Schliemann-Institute for Ancient Studies of Rostock University

Project leading: Prof. Dr. Detlev Wannagat

Project managament: Dr. Christian Russenberger (since 2018) / Dr. Jutta Fischer (until 2017)

Editorial: Dr. Christian Russenberger / Anne Gürlach, M.A. (until 2022)

Academic staff and responsibilities: Dr. Christian Russenberger / Anne Gürlach, M.A. (until 2022)

With collaboration of students of the Heinrich-Schliemann-Institute for Ancient Studies at Rostock University (Vivien Gallasch / Lara Bock / Kathleen Klotzsch / Julia Dabel / Lars Schüler / Sam Liam Rathjens).

Programming: Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Freundel, Ilmenau

Photography: Anne Gürlach, M.A. and Lars Schüler (see each object entry's print view for details)
Layout: Goldland Media
Maps: Goldland Media, Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Freundel, Ilmenau

This project is in cooperation with the Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin: Coin database and online catalogue based on http://ikmk.smb.museum/ with shared data administration for the NUMiD-Network and the semantic web.