The museum arose from a collection of over 3500 items belonging to ethnographer Wilhelm Joest.

After his death in 1897, the collection was left to his sister Adele Rautenstrauch.

[1] In 2018, the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum returned a tattooed Maori skull, which had been in its collection for 110 years, to a delegation representing the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington; the skull was purchased in 1908 by the first director of the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Willy Foy, from a London dealer.

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