“Research expeditions” as a colonial context of acquisition for ethnographic objects, human remains, photographs, and paintings – The “Research Expedition of the German Colonial Society to Cameroon” (1911–1913, Thorbecke)

In cooperation with the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum | Cultures of the World in Cologne, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim, and the Université de Dschang (Cameroon)—and, since 2024/25, also the Université de Ngaoundéré—the project served the scholarly investigation of the procurement and appropriation contexts of the so-called “Thorbecke Collection” (1911–1913). Its tangible and intangible holdings, as well as human/ancestral remains, are today distributed across several German institutions. The starting point was the lack of contextualized study of central sub-collections and the absence of a systematic consolidation of the existing layers of documentation; as a result, the historical context of acquisition and transfer had so far not been reliably reconstructed.

The aim was a source-based reconstruction of the historical conditions of acquisition of a research expedition under colonial conditions and their multi-perspectival assessment. This included in particular:

-analysis of the colonial, administrative, and military framework conditions of the expedition,

-reconstruction of the biographies of the objects and human remains, including their transfers and present-day places of custody,

-inclusion of local bodies of knowledge and cultures of remembrance from Cameroon to supplement and verify European archival sources,

-methodological consolidation of heterogeneous types of holdings (objects, photographs, watercolors, phonograms, written documents).

To achieve these aims, extensive research was conducted in museums and archives, colonial administrative files were evaluated, and empirical investigations were carried out in Cameroon. Teaching-research formats, interviews, and joint viewings on site made it possible to integrate local perspectives that had been missing from previous documentation. Cooperation with the universities of Ngaoundéré and Dschang in Cameroon ensured a regionally anchored review of the source situation.

The project created a robust scholarly basis for future provenance and restitution processes. The colonial acquisition and power contexts of the “research expedition,” and thus also of the “collection,” could largely be reconstructed in detail; the dispersed holdings were brought together for the first time and documented in a traceable way with regard to their historical genesis. The analysis highlighted the role of violence, administrative structures, diplomatic forms of exchange, and colonial interventions in the process of appropriation. The empirical work in Cameroon led to substantial insights into the social, ritual, and local meanings of the objects and thus strengthened the prerequisites for future coordination and decision-making processes between German and Cameroonian partner institutions.

© Abteilung Globalgeschichte am Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Philosophische Fakultät, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf