What traces of colonial and National Socialist histories and crimes can be found in the exhibitions of today’s Humboldt Forum?
In the collaborative project “Intertwined Memories”, international partners, experts from Berlin’s urban society, and staff members of the Ethnologisches Museum and the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss jointly explore ways of engaging, through education and mediation, with memories of the Holocaust and colonial crimes from multiple perspectives.
Through co-created workshops and guided tours, adults and school groups encounter examples of Jewish and postcolonial entanglements that can be traced in the exhibitions.
Learning to read history
Examples of such traces may be visible or invisible. We can find them in the museum collections and exhibitions or even at the Humboldt Forum itself, in its location and reconstructed architecture. They may take the form of objects or the stories behind them: the sculpture of the Cameroonian Queen Mother Naya, for example, was already presented in a 1933 National Socialist propaganda exhibition on the recovery of “living space” in former colonies. It ended up in the collection through looting by the colonial officer von Putlitz in 1905. When it comes to the history of the place, it might be interesting to point out that the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science was based in the Berlin Palace. A notable member of its senate was the physician Eugen Fischer, whose writings contributed significantly to legitimising the racist and anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi state.
The project “Intertwined Memory(s)” revolves around the central question of how we can translate the recognition of difference into a social memory that promotes empathy and solidarity, and creates a space for pluralistic Jewish and postcolonial voices of the present.
Project Key Info
Region: Namibia, Israel, Rwanda, Suriname, Berlin, Jamaica, Algeria
Cooperation partners: Tuli Mekondjo, Assumpta Mugiraneza, Imani Tafari-Ama, Roey Zeevi, Onias Landveld, Eliaou Balouka, Alex Stolze, Christian Hajer, Marc Wrasse (Stiftung Humboldt Forum), Caroline Assad (Stiftung Humboldt Forum), Kathrin Kollmeier (Stiftung Humboldt Forum)
Project management: Patrick Helber, Andrea Scholz, Ruti Ungar
Research: Patrick Helber, Andrea Scholz, Sophia Bokop, My Nguyen (intern), Anna Szöke
Project funding: Co Muse / 1.12.2024 Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion as part of the program for the prevention of anti-Semitism and promotion of interreligious dialog
Project duration: 01/2023 – 31/12/2025