Dr. Schürmann Foundation

The Dr. H.M.E.Schürmann collection

Schürmann was a collector since his secondary school days. During many field-trips, all over the world, he was able to build up a collection of about 16,000 specimens of (mainly Precambrian) minerals and rocks, 5,300 thin-sections, and hundreds of relevant documents and items of archaeological importance. He had a special interest in glaucophane-bearing rocks and inclusions in basaltic rocks of the Finkenberg – in fact a continuation of his PhD research – and other basalts in the Eifel of western Germany.

Initially, he kept his  expanding collection at home, but in the late 1960s they were donated to the National Museum of Geology and Mineralogy (at present Naturalis) in Leiden. The collection has been reorganised and made accessible for future scientific reference.