Ethnological museums are currently not to be envied for their task.

On the one hand they should dispel the suspicion that their exhibitions are nothing but stolen goods through extensive provenance research, secondly they should set themselves up in such a way that the population is addressed in all their colorful diversity, thirdly they should present their exhibits in such a way that nobody feels ignored or patronized , and as if that weren't enough, they aim to educate visitors to open-mindedness and engage them in debates.

Thomas Thiel

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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In practice, this often means that people who have been quickly fetched from their countries of origin walk through the exhibition rooms with a critical and concerned look, uttering a few warnings here and there, but in the end give their blessing to the whole thing.

The emotion is great when one of them bursts into tears in front of an object that reminds him of home and ancestors.

This is considered to be a particularly legitimizing act.

Hans Peter Hahn drives that crazy.

Legitimation through the emotions shown by others: For the Frankfurt ethnology professor, that is exactly the wrong way.

In his view, the justification for museums that is so urgently demanded today should rather come from shared responsibility for exhibitions or from collaboration;

as in the Humboldt Forum, which returned its Benin bronzes to Nigeria, but will continue to exhibit some in Berlin.

The owner is Nigeria, the responsibility for conservation lies with the Federal Republic.

The museum as a political place

The Humboldt Forum is one of the pioneers in this regard.

In Hahn's estimation, it will probably be at least a decade before exhibitions are created in series in joint work.

The ethnological museums, which suddenly became the focus of public attention as a result of the colonial debate, have neither the money nor the staff to fulfill their political mandate directly.

In their depots were hundreds of thousands of objects whose origin is to be investigated.

At the same time, the objects are to be digitized, which is also a mammoth task that will take decades or even centuries.

And then the exhibition concepts are to be revised and cooperations with overseas are to be initiated.

It is almost foreseeable that this will result in embarrassing, over-the-top actions, such as at the Grassi Museum in Leipzig, which felt it had to say goodbye publicly with a jackhammer to the bust of its former director, the ethnology pioneer Karl Weule.

In addition, there is moral pressure from postcolonial activists, who map people into good and bad along a skin color scale and thus do not make it easier to come to terms with colonial crimes.

However, the fundamental insight into the political character of museums, of which Hans Peter Hahn speaks, should not be confused with the subordination of the exhibits to political and moral fashions.

Hahn means the decision as to what is shown of a country, a culture and what is not.

The Franco-German doctoral college “Representing the Other: Museums,