Albert Heim Foundation

A brief historical summary of the Foundation

Nearly complete dog skulls from Neolithic settlements, treasures of our collections

At the end of the last century large amounts of remains from Neolithic dwellings were found on the shores of Swiss lakes. Along with the archaeological remains, a vast number of animal bones were excavated. These bones were mainly considered to be remains from hunting and animal breeding and subsequent butchering and eating by our ancestors 3,000 - 5,000 years ago. In his book "Untersuchungen der Thierreste aus den Pfahlbauten der Schweiz" the zoologist and paleontologist from Basel, Karl Ludwig Rütimeyer (1825 - 1895), tried to reconstruct the Neolithic wildlife along with the domestic animals. For Rütimeyer the dogs he found were not domestic breeds from wild ancestors, but he thought them to belong to a now extinct wild species (Canis familiaris). Rütimeyer did not concentrate as much on the dog as on the bovines. The true founder of scientific cynology was the professor for zoology and anatomy at the University of Berne and director of the Natural History Museum, Theophil Studer (1845 - 1922). From 1874 on Studer's research concentrated on the origin of the domestic dog and the evolution of modern breeds. In order to gain exact and reproducible results, he consistently made use of craniometric methods, which consist in the comparison of metric values and proportions of skulls. During his years at the Museum he collected a large number of modern domestic and wild dogs. After Studer's death his collection was doomed to be forgotten because of financial problems and because the Museum had storage problems. His successor, Prof. Franz Baumann, although not personally involved in canine research, did not want to store away into oblivion these collections and he sought contacts with the "Schweizerische Kynologische Gesellschaft" i.e. the Swiss equivalent of the Kennel Club. These consultations lead to the idea of a foundation under the responsibility of the Museum. The foundation was to be named after the world famous Professor for geology, Albert Heim (1849 - 1937).

How the Foundation got its name

Prof. Albert Heim (1849-1937), drawing by his daughter

Dog show in Weissbad, Appenzell and 1918 at another show judging Bernese Mountain Dogs
Albert Heim was not only a scientist and a teacher, but a very avid cynologist, as many of his still cited publications show. He was a breeder of Newfoundland dogs -- he even imported dogs from Newfoundland, quite a feat at that time -- and an international judge on many dog shows. In this function his main concerns were the Swiss Mountain Dogs. The Appenzeller Cattle Dog and the Great Swiss Mountain Dog presumably owe their existence to Albert Heim. In honor of this great scientist and his 80th anniversary our Foundation received his name on the meeting of the board on April 14th 1929 in Berne. The charter of the Foundation was legally signed on March 21st and April 14th 1930.

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The growth of the Foundation and it's collections

A sample of our collections totaling over 2,000 skulls

According to the latest charter (1986) the Foundation aims at: a) The promotion and the consolidation of the Studer Collections. b) The support of scientific canine research, the propagation of the results and the dissemination of cynological knowledge. During the first years of it's existence the growth of the collections made good progress, but scientific results showed only very gradually. After a complete stand-still following the death of Theophil Studer, research on the collections re-started under the leadership of Prof. Walter Huber (1917 - 1984). The results were either published by himself or by numerous of his students. More and more cynology once again became a focal point of the Museum. In addition to problems on the origins of domestic dog, problems that were crucial to Studer and his contemporary, new questions arose: The changing of breeds, variability, the heredity of deformities and physiological problems in connection with body size. Independent of this research at the Natural History Museum there was an anatomical and medical research of high standard at the veterinary faculties of Berne and Zürich. Although there were no connections between those research topics and those more oriented towards prehistoric topics at the Museum, they should be mentioned here. And, to be complete, since about 1940 there was one more research topic: canine ethology.
In the meantime the funds of the Foundation have constantly risen and the Foundation is lucky to be able to grant research funds for many scientific projects, mainly to students of the veterinary sciences. One main reason for the good contacts to the faculty of veterinary sciences was that the board of trustees once again found a veterinary, Dr. Mark Flückiger, as a member. In order to inform the public on the results of such scientific work, it has been decided that abstracts of all projects funded by the Foundation had to be published in the official paper of the Swiss Cynological Society.
It should be noted that in the last years several exhibitions on canine topics could be produced and shown. One of the largest exhibitions with over 40 panels was first presented in 1979 at the world exhibition in Berne. As the title "From Neolithic to Modern Dog " suggests, we tried to show the long way from the wild ancestors to modern dog.
Supporting scientific research is but one of the activities of the Foundation. This is done by the members of the board of trustees. The main duty of the author is to care for the collections here at the Museum. As previously mentioned, these collections mainly consist of skulls. At the moment (October 1994) we have 2,038 skulls from 174 breeds, 216 furs from 99 breeds and 187 complete skeletons from 83 breeds in our collections. The whole of this collection is mostly well documented (pedigree, photos, reports from judges, etc.) and the most important measurements are registered in a database. A very well cared for library with over 500 volumes on dogs and a collection of reprints are not only accessible to the scientist but to the public as well.

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