In 1811 the Ornithological Society of Görlitz was founded on the initiative of the cloth merchant Johann Gottlieb Kretzschmar and the actuary Giese.

In the years 1858 to 1860, the Görlitz Society established its own museum on the centrally located Marienplatz on the former city moat area on the initiative of the physician and pharmacist W. J. Kleefeld and the Economic Commission Councillor Georg von Möllendorff.

[citation needed] Reinhard Peck was appointed the first museum director of the Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in 1885.

After Freise's death in 1921, the biology teacher Oskar Herr took over the museum's management as a part-time member due to a shortage of money.

In 1858 the Society for Nature Research received a collection of African plants from Johann Christian Breutel from Herrnhut (an important cryptogamist).

Museum director Hugo von Rabenau acquired the Central Asian herbarium of Sintenis and the extensive Schwarzsche Käf collection.

However, it no longer found a place in the premises of the museum and was therefore housed in the former Vogtshof (at St. Peter's Church).

[citation needed] As of 2014, the collections contain around 6.5 million insects, mites, millipedes, snails, mussels, vertebrates (including 30,000 skulls), plants (around 375,000 specimens), mushrooms and thousands of minerals, rocks and fossils.

Guided tours, children's events and birthdays can be obtained from the museum's educational department.