COLLECTED. BOUGHT. LOOTED? The journey of objects to the museum

How did ancestral figures from Nias find their way onto the European art market in the early 20th century? Why was the museum able to make ‘bargain’ purchases in Paris and Amsterdam in the early 1940s? Is a weapon belt from South Africa actually spoils of war? These are just some of the questions that have arisen whilst examining the in-house collection as part of a research project involving four Frankfurt museums. For many objects, the route to the museum is unclear and the context of their acquisition is scarcely documented. In the joint research and exhibition project of the same name, ‘COLLECTED. BOUGHT. LOOTED?’, led by Julia Friedel and Vanessa von Gliszczynski at the Weltkulturen Museum, these questions were examined using selected case studies.

At the Weltkulturen Museum, two strands of provenance research converged: the acquisition of objects during the Nazi era and collecting practices in a colonial context. In many cases, it is difficult to reconstruct how objects from Africa, the Americas, Oceania or South-East Asia found their way to Europe and, from 1904 onwards, into the collection of what was then the Völkermuseum. Research into these case studies was further complicated by the fact that both the museum and its in-house archive were largely destroyed in a bombing raid during the Second World War in 1944. However, an initial exchange took place with institutions and private individuals in France, the Netherlands and South Africa. 

“Collected. Bought. Looted?” marked the start of a long-term examination by the Weltkulturen Museum into the provenance of the approximately 60,000 objects in its collection. The case studies presented in the exhibition provided insights into a wide range of collecting and acquisition practices. At the same time, the object biographies made it clear that not all details can be reconstructed. In the context of the Nazi era, the exhibition focused in particular on the acquisition of objects in the occupied territories during the Second World War. In the colonial context, the focus was on objects collected in the former German colonies or acquired by Germans in other colonies.

A collaboration with the Historischen Museum Frankfurt, the Museum Judengasse, the Museum Angewandte Kunst and the Fritz Bauer Institute.