Location of Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Germany | |
Former name | Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin-Dahlem |
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Established | Original in 1873, new building in 1886, and after World War II rebuilt in present form in 1970 |
Location | Mitte |
Coordinates | 52°31′03″N13°24′10″E / 52.5175°N 13.402778°E |
Type | Ethnological |
Director | Viola König |
Website | Ethnologisches Museum |
The Ethnological Museum of Berlin (German : Ethnologisches Museum Berlin ) is one of the Berlin State Museums (German : Staatliche Museen zu Berlin ), the de facto national collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presently located in the Humboldt Forum in Mitte, along with the Museum of Asian Art (German : Museum für Asiatische Kunst ). The museum holds more than 500,000 objects and is one of the largest and most important collections of works of art and culture from outside Europe in the world. [1] Its highlights include important objects from the Sepik River, Hawaii, the Kingdom of Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Tanzania, China, the Pacific Coast of North America, Mesoamerica, the Andes, as well as one of the first ethnomusicology collections of sound recordings (the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv).
The Ethnological Museum was founded in 1873 and opened its doors in 1886 as the Royal Museum for Ethnology (German : Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde), but its roots go back to the 17th-century Kunstkammer of the rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia. [2] As the museum’s collections expanded in the early 20th century, the museum quickly outgrew its facility in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße (today named Stresemannstraße). [3] A new building was erected in Dahlem to house the museum’s store rooms and study collections. In the Second World War, the main building of the museum was heavily damaged. It was demolished in 1961, and the buildings in Dahlem (in what was then West Berlin) were reconfigured to serve as the museum's exhibition spaces.
Following German reunification, although many of the Berlin museum collections were relocated, the collections of the Ethnological Museum remained in Dahlem. Starting in 2000, concrete plans were developed to relocate the collections back to the center of the city. In 2021, the Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art were reopened in the Humboldt Forum in the reconstructed Berlin City Palace (German : Berliner Stadtschloss ) immediately south of the main Museum Island complex.
Beginning in January 2016, the Ethnological Museum began the process of dismantling its exhibitions in preparation for its move to the Humboldt Forum. Until January 2017, the museum will remain open to the public, and its permanent exhibitions of works from Africa, Mesoamerican archaeology, and South Asia can still be viewed. Highlights include the collections of painted Maya vases and drinking cups, Benin bronzes, sculpture from Cameroon, and power figures from Congo.
The collections themselves encompass more than 500,000 from around the world. In addition, the museum holds more than 280,000 historical photographs, a substantial archive, more than 125,000 sound recordings, and 20,000 ethnographic films. The collection is organized according to geography as well as methodological approaches. The main divisions are Africa, Oceania, East-and North-Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia, American ethnology, American archaeology, and ethnomusicology. The museum also houses a specialized reference library of more than 140,000 volumes relating to ethnology, non-European art, and global art.
These collections are all housed in the museum complex in Dahlem. Long-term plans are being made to relocate the collections not on display to Friedrichshagen, an eastern suburb of Berlin, where the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (German : Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz ) has already constructed storage facilities for the Berlin State Library (German : Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ).
In 2021, the museum announced plans to return some of its holding of Nigerian artifacts, including a large collection of Benin Bronzes, to Nigeria. The Bronzes had been looted during the British Benin Expedition of 1897. [4]
In 2022, a group of 23 artifacts from the collection, including precious jewelry and pottery, was returned indefinitely to Namibia. [5] The items were taken between 1884 and 1915, when Namibia was part of the German Empire colony German South West Africa. [6]
The museum's first building in the center of Berlin on Königgrätzer Straße (now Stresemannstraße at the corner with Niederkirchnerstraße) was already too small to accommodate the collections when it opened in 1886. [3] The situation deteriorated further in the last years of the 19th century, as the collections expanded rapidly because of increased institutional support for ethnology and the growth of the German overseas colonial empire after the Berlin Conference.
By 1906, the first construction began on a second facility for the museum in Dahlem. The museum intended to use space in Dahlem to store and conduct research on the large collections, but to continue to exhibit portions of the collection in the building in the city center. Plans were developed for a large complex in Dahlem, consisting of four large buildings, one for each of the non-European geographical regions of the globe: Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, the latter department directed by Konrad Theodor Preuss. Construction began in 1914, the architect Bruno Paul was commissioned to build the structure to house the Asian collections on Arnimallee, Dahlem. The work was stopped, however, because of the First World War and was only completed in 1921. However, the museum lacked the resources to erect the other three planned buildings. The museum continued to function with two separate facilities housing its collections until the Second World War.
Following the Second World War, as a result of the division of Berlin, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation decided to house the portions of the Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery) that were returned to West Berlin in the Bruno Paul building. This decision required moving the collections of the Ethnological Museum to a new facility. The architect Fritz Bornemann developed plans for an extension to the Bruno Paul building, which was erected from 1966 to 1970. The Bornemann building faced onto Lansstraße with an uncompromisingly modernist pavilion and contrasted sharply with the older neo-classical Bruno Paul structure, with its main entrance on Arnimallee.
Albert von Le Coq was a Prussian/German brewery owner and wine merchant, who at the age of 40 began to study archaeology.
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and Soldiers councils and was dedicated to bringing current developments and tendencies in architecture and art to a broader population.
The Museum of Cultures in Basel is a Swiss museum of ethnography with large and important collections of artifacts, especially from Europe, the South Pacific, Mesoamerica, Tibet, and Bali. It is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.
The Museum of Asian Art is a part of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin since 2020. Before its relocation it was sited in the neighborhood of the borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf, Berlin, Germany. It is one of the Berlin State Museums institutions and is funded by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It houses some 20,000 Asian artifacts, making it one of the largest museums of ancient Asian art in the world. The museum is located in the same building as the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. The museum houses important collections of Art houses of South, Southeast and Central Asian countries and art from the Indo-Asian cultural area, from the 4th millennium BC to the present. Its geographic reach covers regions in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Autonomous Region of Tibet and Xinjiang of the People's Republic of China, the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and also the Indonesian Islands or archipelago.
The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters; several research institutes; libraries; and supporting facilities. They are overseen by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and funded by the German federal government in collaboration with Germany's federal states. The central complex on Museum Island was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1999. By 2007, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin had grown into the largest complex of museums in Europe. The museum was originally founded by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia in 1823 as the Königliche Museen.
The Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv is a collection of ethnomusicological recordings or world music, mostly on phonographic cylinders, assembled since 1900 in Berlin, Germany by the institution of the same name.
Albert Grünwedel was a German indologist, tibetologist, archaeologist, and explorer of Central Asia. He was one of the first scholars to study the Lepcha language.
The Museum of European Cultures – National Museums in Berlin – Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation came from the unification of the Europe-Department in the Berlin Museum of Ethnography and the Berlin Museum for Folklore in 1999. The museum focuses on the lived-in world of Europe and European culture contact, predominantly in Germany from the 18th Century until today.
The Leipzig Museum of Ethnography is a large ethnographic museum in Leipzig, Germany, also known as the Grassi Museum of Ethnology. Today it is part of the Grassi Museum, an institution which also includes the Museum of Applied Arts and the Museum of Musical Instruments, based in a large building on the Johannisplatz.
The German Turfan expeditions were conducted between 1902 and 1914. The four expeditions to Turfan in Xinjiang, China, were initiated by Albert Grünwedel, a former director at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, and organized by Albert von Le Coq. Theodor Bartus, who was a technical member of the museum staff and was in charge of extricating paintings found during the expeditions from cave walls and ruins, accompanied all four expeditions. Both expedition leaders. Grünwedel and Le Coq, returned to Berlin with thousands of paintings and other art objects, as well as more than 40,000 fragments of text. In 1902, the first research team financed largely by Friedrich Krupp, the arms manufacturer, left for Turfan and returned a year later with 46 crates full of treasures. Kaiser Wilhelm II was enthusiastic and helped finance the second expedition along with Krupp. The third was financed by means of the Ministry of Culture. The fourth expedition under Le Coq was dogged by many difficulties and was finally cut short by the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Gerd Koch was a German cultural anthropologist best known for his studies on the material culture of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific. He was associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. His field work was directed to researching and recording the use of artefacts in their indigenous context, to begin to understand these societies.
Ernst Gotthilf Sarfert was a German ethnologist.
Paul Hambruch was a German ethnologist and folklorist.
Dahlem Museums is a complex in the Berlin-Dahlem district of Berlin. Its official address is at 8 Lansstraße, though its main entrance is at 25 Arnimallee. The earliest planning for the building was between 1914 and 1923, thanks to the efforts of Wilhelm von Bode and to designs by Bruno Paul. However, it was only eventually built between 1969 and 1973 to New Objectivity plans by Fritz Bornemann and Wils Ebert.
Waseem Ahmed is a contemporary miniature painter and visual artist, living and working in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.
Nils Seethaler is a German cultural anthropologist. He researches historical collections of ethnological objects and human remains.
Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann was a German ethnologist who served as Professor of Ethnology at the University of Mainz and Chair of Ethnology at the University of Heidelberg.
Erhard Göpel was a German art historian and high level Nazi agent who acquired art, including looted art, for Hitler’s Führermuseum.
Margarete Oppenheim was a German art collector and patron. She was among the first personalities to collect works of modern art in Germany and owned one of the largest collection in Germany.