The Moravian Church established a worldwide mission network beginning in 1732. The establishment of mission stations required missionaries to learn local languages and to acquire detailed knowledge of local conditions (e.g., climate, geology, flora and fauna).
They shared their cultural and scientific observations with scientists, thus becoming a part of global information networks and significantly influencing the scientific discourse of that era. Missions frequently intertwined with colonial structures. Due to their local knowledge, Missionaries were significant contacts for traders, settlers, and colonial administrators.
The Herrnhut Museum of Ethnology has benefited from these global networks since its founding in 1878: Missionaries acquired ethnographic objects or had them produced at the stations and transported them to Europe via the supply routes of the Moravian mission. Through trade, knowledge, and administrative networks, the museum also acquired objects that were outside of its own missionary regions and did not correspond to the actual ”collection profile” of the museum, like the Malanggan carvingson display here.