In the location's words:

Seafarers once brought fascinating finds such as beetles, birds, snails, whales and seals back to Hamburg from their expeditions around the world. Some of these valuable treasures were presented in the newly opened Hamburg Natural History Museum from 1891. The exhibition in the magnificent Wilhelmine building at the main railway station quickly became a magnet for the public. However, in 1943, during the Second World War, the museum fell victim to the bombing of "Operation Gomorrah". Parts of the collections were saved: The extensive alcohol collection survived the firestorm in subway shafts, while the bird collection was housed in a Saxon castle. In 1969, the collections finally became the property of the University of Hamburg.

The Natural History Museum itself had already been founded a century earlier, in May 1843, on the initiative of the Natural History Society in Hamburg. The first exhibitions for association members and school classes took place in 1844 in the new Johanneum building on Speersort. In the following decades, the collection grew rapidly, partly through the purchase of important private collections, such as those of Peter Friedrich Röding (1767-1846) and parts of the holdings of the shipowner Johan Cesar VI Godeffroy (1813-1885).

After the ruins of the destroyed museum were demolished in 1951, several attempts were made to rebuild it - but without success. It was not until 2016 that the Centrum für Naturkunde was founded under the direction of Prof. Dr. Matthias Glaubrecht at the University of Hamburg. Since then, the scientific collections have been expanded and the exhibition areas redesigned.

The merger of the Center for Natural History at the University of Hamburg and the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn to form the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) in 2021 paved the way for a new building. Now it's clear: Hamburg is getting a new research museum. Around 80 years after the destruction of the Natural History Museum, a modern location will be created in HafenCity that combines research, collections and exhibitions in the fields of zoology, palaeontology, geology and mineralogy. The former Museum der Natur Hamburg will be continued as the Evolutioneum.