The Haussknecht Herbarium was founded in 1896 in Weimar by Carl Haussknecht (1838–1903) as a private institution, housing the founder’s extensive collections in a separate building that was nevertheless accessible to the public. After Haussknecht’s death in 1903 and the establishment of a foundation from his estate, the collections were maintained and expanded by Joseph Bornmüller (1862–1948). Following the Second World War, the collections were moved to Jena and integrated into the Institute of Systematic Botany at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, to which they had officially belonged since the 1920s. Today, the Haussknecht Herbarium holds approximately 3.5 million plant specimens and is one of the major herbaria in Europe.
It is the most extensive herbarium of its kind in Germany. With more than three million dried plant specimens, a library comprising around 170,000 bibliographic units, and a substantial archive, the Haussknecht Herbarium at the University of Jena ranks among the 20 largest herbaria in the world.
Since 2024, the collection is part of the Herbarium Senckenbergianum.