Materials

The German Lost Art Foundation has published a number of papers on the subject of cultural goods and collections from colonial contexts. For example, several publications on the debate surrounding returns and colonial violence in Africa and Oceania have appeared in the series “Working Paper Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste”: In addition, one issue of the periodical “Provenance & Research” [2/2020] is dedicated to provenance research on cultural goods and collections from colonial contexts. It is also available as an e-book in English:

Jointly with the Berlin Medical History Museum of the Charité and ICOM Germany, the Foundation has also published the guideline “Interdisziplinäre Provenienzforschung zu menschlichen Überresten aus kolonialen Kontexten” (“Interdisciplinary provenance research on human remains from colonial contexts”).

This offers a practical introduction to provenance research on human remains from colonial contexts. It focuses on German institutions and includes an appendix outlining the situation in Austria. The main target groups are anthropological, anatomical and medical-historical collections of human remains held at universities, as well as those at natural history museums, ethnological museums, and multi-disciplinary museums. The guideline focuses on an interdisciplinary approach and a combination of methodologies. It contains detailed notes on the historical and anthropological methods used in provenance research as well as on the documentation of research findings. The transcultural and transnational dimensions of provenance research are also discussed.

In 2021, the Foundation held an international conference on “The Long History of Claims for the Return of Cultural Heritage from Colonial Contexts”, which looked at how the restitution debate emerged. The conference is fully documented and a transcript is to be published, too.

In addition, the series Kolloquium Provenienzforschung organised by the Foundation regularly features contributions from the field of cultural goods and collections from colonial contexts. These have included discussion events dedicated to the subject of colonial violence against the people of Papua New Guinea to mark the publication of the book “Das Prachtboot” by historian Götz Aly, for example, as well as on the challenges of digital provenance research and the possibilities of artistic provenance research on human remains.