Tobias Goebel
In 2018 the Deutscher Museumsbund (German Museum Association) published a guideline for the treatment of cultural property with colonial contexts. This guide aims to make museum staff members more aware of colonial contexts and has therefore been widely discussed. Although a (post)colonial view on (German) Colonialism is far from being entirely new in academia, it has put the topic higher on the agenda of museums in Germany and their public mediation.
As the German Maritime Museum (DSM) was only founded in 1975, it seems to be way too young to be part of the formal historic processes of colonialism during the German imperial era. However, this institution holds artifacts of colonial significance: Some of them more obvious than others as they originated from what was the so called “Schutzgebiete” in German terms. Others are genuine German crafted items that inhabit cultural references to the age of empire. In this plenary workshop I will discuss this subject using selected objects from the material collections of the DSM as samples. Therefore I will argue towards an interdisciplinary postcolonial and global history of marine knowledge with examples from the Pacific area. I will investigate the role of scientific ventures under the auspices of German entrepreneurs and enterprises that were based in Germany as well as a focus on “adjuncts” they relied on. The purpose is to debate both the opportunities and the limits of a postcolonial handling of objects of marine knowledge based in Bremerhaven.
As the German Maritime Museum (DSM) was only founded in 1975, it seems to be way too young to be part of the formal historic processes of colonialism during the German imperial era. However, this institution holds artifacts of colonial significance: Some of them more obvious than others as they originated from what was the so called “Schutzgebiete” in German terms. Others are genuine German crafted items that inhabit cultural references to the age of empire. In this plenary workshop I will discuss this subject using selected objects from the material collections of the DSM as samples. Therefore I will argue towards an interdisciplinary postcolonial and global history of marine knowledge with examples from the Pacific area. I will investigate the role of scientific ventures under the auspices of German entrepreneurs and enterprises that were based in Germany as well as a focus on “adjuncts” they relied on. The purpose is to debate both the opportunities and the limits of a postcolonial handling of objects of marine knowledge based in Bremerhaven.