German Lost Art Foundation approves more than one million Euros for eight research projects in colonial contexts in the second round of applications in 2020

For cen­turies, Eu­ro­pean mil­i­tary per­son­nel, schol­ars and mer­chants have tak­en cul­tur­al and ev­ery­day ob­jects, as well as hu­man re­mains, from the colonies of their time to their home coun­tries. This is why Chi­nese Bud­dha fig­urines can still be found in East Frisia and skulls from In­done­sia are kept in Gotha in Thuringia. How they came to be in Ger­man in­sti­tu­tions, whether they were bought, ex­changed or stolen, is now al­so be­ing crit­i­cal­ly ques­tioned in this coun­try.

In or­der to clar­i­fy the ori­gin of col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts, the board of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg has now ap­proved eight re­search ap­pli­ca­tions from mu­se­ums and uni­ver­si­ties in the sec­ond ap­pli­ca­tion round 2020 on the rec­om­men­da­tion of its fund­ing com­mit­tee and ap­proved a to­tal of 1,067,780.00 Eu­ros in fund­ing. Six projects were new­ly ap­plied for, two al­ready run­ning projects will be ex­tend­ed.

For the first time, the fo­cus is on Chi­na, a re­gion that has re­ceived less at­ten­tion in the de­bate to date. Four in­sti­tu­tions in East Frisia – the Ger­man Siel­hafen­mu­se­um Car­o­li­nen­siel, the Natur­forschende Gesellschaft zu Em­den, the Os­t­friesis­che Teemu­se­um Nor­den and the Fehn- und Schif­fahrtsmu­se­um Westrhaud­er­fehn – are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the colo­nial con­texts of ob­jects and col­lec­tions from the for­mer Ger­man colony in Chi­na in co­op­er­a­tion with Chi­nese sci­en­tists. The project shows that re­gion­al mu­se­ums can al­so get in­volved in prove­nance re­search.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the re­spec­tive re­gions of ori­gin are al­so in­volved in oth­er re­search projects. The Stiftung Schloss Frieden­stein Gotha will col­lab­o­rate with ex­perts from In­done­sia to clar­i­fy the ori­gin of 30 hu­man skulls. The Ger­man Mar­itime Mu­se­um is co­op­er­at­ing with the Ocea­nia re­gion for its ba­sic project on the his­to­ry of Nord­deutsch­er Lloyd. The ship­ping com­pa­ny ad­vanced to be­come one of the largest ship­ping com­pa­nies in the world by 1890, car­ry­ing not on­ly ob­jects from all over the world to Eu­ro­pean ports, but al­so troops to the "Box­er War" in Chi­na.

The Mu­se­um – Nat­u­ralienk­abi­nett Walden­burg brings in a hith­er­to lit­tle ex­plored as­pect: The 150 ethno­graph­ic ob­jects housed there were pre­sum­ably col­lect­ed for the most part by mis­sion­ar­ies in the Ger­man colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries and went to the Prince­ly House of Schön­burg-Walden­burg as thanks for sup­port­ing the mis­sion. The dis­play col­lec­tion, found­ed by Prince Schön­burg-Walden­burg in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, is one of the last Eu­ro­pean cab­i­nets of cu­riosi­ties and nat­u­ralia: Such cab­i­nets are con­sid­ered the fore­run­ners of eth­no­log­i­cal mu­se­ums.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg is the cen­tral point of con­tact na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for all mat­ters con­cern­ing un­law­ful­ly seized cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. Since Jan­uary 2019, when the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion was ex­pand­ed to in­clude a de­part­ment for colo­nial con­texts as a re­sult of a fund­ing man­date from the Foun­da­tion Board, it has been pos­si­ble to ap­ply for fund­ing for projects deal­ing with cul­tur­al prop­er­ty and col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts.

Ap­pli­ca­tions for longer-term projects can be sub­mit­ted on Jan­uary 1 and June 1 of each year. All in­sti­tu­tions in Ger­many un­der pub­lic law that col­lect, pre­serve or re­search cul­tur­al prop­er­ty from colo­nial con­texts are el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply. These in­clude mu­se­ums, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er re­search in­sti­tu­tions.

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties is avail­able here.