Decolonization, Germany invests 1 million to learn about origins of museum collections

The Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (“German Center for the Dispersion of Cultural Property”), a Magdeburg-based foundation established in 2015 and funded by the federal state with the aim of carrying out research on lost cultural heritage (for example, that looted by the Nazis during World War II), has received a grant of 1,067,780 euros with the purpose of carrying out research on the provenance of cultural property in the country’s museums, particularly objects from Asia. Indeed, there are a number of Asian objects in Germany’s museum collections that have been legitimately bought or traded, but also stolen.

This is the Center’s third funding program, split this time among eight institutions: the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony, the Ostfriesische Landschaft in Aurich, the Waldenburg Natural Museum, the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven, Friedenstein Castle, the Museum of the Five Continents in Munich, and the Übersee-Museum in Bremen.

In detail, the University of Freiburg’s project will be concerned with tracing the origin of African artifacts in the institute’s collections; that of Saxony Collections will be tasked with exploring the collection of objects from Togo between 1899 and 1939 (a time when Togo was a German protectorate), and will benefit the collaboration of Togolese scholars; the East Frisian Institutes’ project, on the other hand, will have the task of investigating objects from former German colonies in China; at the Waldenburg Museum of Natural History there will be instead an extensive survey of the institute’s acquisitions, which are still largely unknown; an investigation into the provenance of objects will also concern the German Maritime Museum, while at Friedenstein Castle there will be a focus on a collection of 30 human skulls from Indonesia whose provenance is not well known; finally, at the Museum of the Five Continents, research will delve into the collection of 160 objects belonging to colonial officer Max von Stetten, while at the Übersee-Museum the circumstances under which several objects from Papua New Guinea, another former German colony, were acquired.

In 2019, the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste was expanded precisely for the purpose of conducting more extensive research into the provenance of objects found in German museums and thus received significant funding earmarked for projects dealing with colonial contexts.

Pictured: a room at the Übersee-Museum in Bremen.

Decolonization, Germany invests 1 million to learn about origins of museum collections

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