The Museum Mensch und Natur (English Museum of Man and Nature) is a natural history museum. It is a tenant of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, Germany.

In 2006, the museum was due to receive the stuffed and mounted body of "Bear JJ1", nicknamed "Bruno" in the German-language press, a brown bear that was shot dead by a hunter as a public safety measure after several unsuccessful efforts to capture him alive.] (JJ1 had been part of a wildlife restoration program in Italy but walked across Austria into Germany.)[2] The bear will be put on display next to the last bear previously killed (in 1835) in Bavaria.

A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more.²

The primary role of a natural history museum is to provide the scientific community with current and historical specimens for their research, which is to improve our understanding of the natural world.[1] Some museums have public exhibits to share the beauty and wonder of the natural world with the public; these are referred to as 'public museums'. Some museums feature non-natural history collections in addition to their primary collections, such as ones related to history, art, and science. Renaissance cabinets of curiosities were private collections that typically included exotic specimens of national history, sometimes faked, along with other types of object. The first natural history museum was possibly that of Swiss scholar Conrad Gessner, established in Zürich in the mid-16th century.[2] The Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, established in Paris in 1635, was the first natural history museum to take the form that would be recognized as a natural history museum today.[2] Early natural history museums offered limited accessibility, as they were generally private collections or holdings of scientific societies.[3] The Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683, was the first natural history museum to grant admission to the general public.[3] The natural history museum did not exist as a typical museum prior to the eighteenth century. Civic and university buildings did exist to house collections used for conducting research, however these served more as storage spaces than museums by today's understanding.[4] All kept artifacts were displayed to the public as catalogs of research findings and served mostly as an archive of scientific knowledge. These spaces housed as many artifacts as fit and offered little description or interpretation for visitors.[5] Kept organisms were typically arranged in their taxonomic systems and displayed with similar organisms. Museums did not think of the possibility of diverse audiences, instead adopting the view of an expert as the standard.[6] The mid-eighteenth century saw an increased interest in the scientific world by the middle class bourgeoisie who had greater time for leisure activities, physical mobility and educational opportunities than in previous eras.[7] Other forms of science consumption, such as the zoo, had already grown in popularity. Now, the natural history museum was a new space for public interaction with the natural world. Museums began to change the way they exhibited their artifacts, hiring various forms of curators, to refine their displays.[4] Additionally, they adopted new approaches to designing exhibits. These new ways of organizing would support learning of the lay audience.[8] Organised by the League of Nations, the first International Museography Congress happened in Madrid in 1934.[9] Again, the First World Congress on the Preservation and Conservation of Natural History Collections took place in Madrid, from 10 May 1992 to 15 May 1992.[10]