Forst- und Jagdmuseum Ferdinand von Raesfeld, History museum in Born auf dem Darß, Germany

The Forst- und Jagdmuseum Ferdinand von Raesfeld occupies the listed former Oberförsterei forest office at Chausseestraße 64 in Born a. Darß, where it was set up in 1996. Rooms I and II hold maps, resin-extraction history, first editions of Raesfeld's books, and mounted raccoons, badgers and bitterns. The attached barn, with its Bansen side section, keeps an almost complete antler-cast series, red deer trophies, roe buck antlers and two stags mounted in rutting combat.

A ducal hunting house is said to have stood on the site before the forestry office; it became the seat of the head forester in Swedish times. According to August von Wehrs, Tsar Peter I, Augustus the Strong and King Frederick IV of Denmark stayed there for two weeks in 1712, and Stanislaus I Leszczyński lived there before going into exile in France. After the dilapidated house collapsed, a new forest house was built in 1780 on the orders of Friedrich Wilhelm von Hessenstein; the museum opened in 1996.

The museum shows how hunting and forestry shaped life in this region over centuries and how people used these landscapes. Visitors can see which tools and methods were important for this work and how approaches to the forest and wildlife changed over time.

The museum occupies the former Oberförsterei forest office at Chausseestraße 64 in Born a. Darß. Exhibits fill several rooms plus the attached barn, whose side section, the Bansen, holds the stag group; the saw display is in the barn as well. The building is a protected monument, so expect historic doorways and thresholds rather than modern open-plan galleries.

In the converted barn's former side section, the Bansen, stand two full-body stags mounted in rutting combat; hunting journals quoted in the museum call the pose of the locked animals "unique in Europe". Behind them play rutting calls and a Raesfeld fanfare composed by Fabian Müller of Dorsten and recorded by the Leipzig orchestra.