Ethnographic and Anthropological Spoils of War from Military Expeditions inGerman East Africa as Collection Items for German Museums

The History Department of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover has been one of the pioneers of German historical research on Africa since 1976. A thematic focus of the special field “History of Africa” under the direction of Prof. Dr. Brigitte Reinwald is dedicated to research on (German) colonialism and the problems of dealing with colonial heritage (provenance and restitution research), with a regional focus on former German East Africa.

In the colony of German East Africa (today Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi), far more than 200 military actions against local populations took place between 1885 and 1918. Looting was a systematic part of these colonial military operations. However, the extent of military looting of cultural artefacts as well as human remains and thus the whereabouts of corresponding war booty has not yet been researched.

The research project aims at scrutinizing ethnographic and anthropological war booty from German East Africa as a structural phenomenon of colonial military actions and collection material for German ethnological museums. This includes historiographical basic and context research on military looting of cultural artefacts and human remains based on a representative selection of colonial military operations. Subsequently, it will be examined whether corresponding war booty can be found in the collection of a German ethnological museum. This exemplary research will be conducted on the ethnographic collection of the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK), Hamburg, with its total of around 260,000 collection items. Research is thus guided by the question: To what extent was the looting of cultural artefacts and human remains part of colonial military operations in German East Africa and can corresponding war booty be located in the ethnographic collection of the MARKK?

In addition to the MARKK, this project is conducted in cooperation with the National Museum of Tanzania and the Department of History of the University of Dar es Salaam.

(c) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover