Museum Bronbeek

Museum Bronbeek was founded in 1863 as part of the Colonial Military Home for Disabled. It is situated close to the city of Arnhem and contains a large collection of militaria, as well as ethnographic and other types of objects.

Description

After King Willem III ceded the Bronbeek estate in Arnhem to the Dutch state in 1862, a home was established there in 1863 for invalided colonial soldiers who had served in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL). From 1880 onwards, the home was also open to members of the Royal Navy, and from 1963 this was extended to other branches of the armed forces.

Over the years, members of the Dutch Royal Family, the Ministry of Colonies and retired civil servants and military personnel donated objects such as weapons, banners, medals and portraits to the home. Bronbeek thus developed into a showcase for the Dutch government, the Royal Family and colonial expansion, giving the home a museum function as well.

In 1951, the museum layout was redesigned in collaboration with curators from the Tropenmuseum (the current Wereldmuseum Amsterdam). The new layout was more ethnographic in nature and a section on the Second World War in Asia was added. After a complete renovation of the museum and building in 1998, the museum's focus changed in 2010: it became a colonial military history museum, focusing on the conduct of the colonial government.

Museum Bronbeek opened a new permanent display of the collection in 2024.

Provenance research

Museum Bronbeek's collection is searchable on the museum's collection website. The library of more than 15,000 books is searchable through Worldcat.

Archives related to Bronbeek can predominantly be found at the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague. There is also material at the museum itself, which can be consulted via the collection website. The museum is currently working on a digital reconstruction of its archive.

In 2024 Museum Bronbeek launched a website with 6,000 biographies of Knights in the Military Order of Willem. Various publications on the Military Willem Order have been collected, supplemented and made available online via this website. It is possible to search by name, year, rank or army unit. Individual pages contain personal information, information on postings and archival references. The museum also manages a blog, where articles about the museum's research can be found.

The museum manages various datasets on KNIL muster rolls, military personnel deployed between 1945 and 1950, and Japanese prisoners of war and civil servants. The datasets can be used in the museum and the indexes will be available in the future via the dataset register of the Colonial Collections Consortium.

Sources