From where? To where?
Provenance research Take a Closer Look and Ask Questions
Provenance research involves investigating how an object came to be in the museum. And researching the background of the objects in the collection is one of a museum’s most important tasks – in part so that it can tell the stories behind the objects. This naturally includes how the object came to be in the museum and who owned it previously. In many cases, this involves specifically searching for clues that allow us to conclude that injustice and crimes led to an object’s acquisition by the museum.
Searching for Clues in the Collection
Provenance research, therefore, focuses on reconstructing the chain of ownership and ownership relationships as completely as possible – that is, on the history of the museum’s collectors and collections. To investigate the origin of the objects, all available data is analyzed. These include, for example, inscriptions directly on the object or labels attached to it; old accession records can also provide information about previous owners. Letters, collectors’ diaries, exhibition catalogs, sales documents, and archival materials can likewise provide important clues. For some objects, the provenance can be fully determined within a single workday; for other exhibits, it is a painstaking search for clues that can last for years (and, unfortunately, is sometimes unsuccessful).
If the provenance of the objects is known and the country of origin wishes to have them returned, the Übersee-Museum of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and the Federal Foreign Office recommend initiating such a return.
Contact Provenance Research:
Dr. Jan Christoph GreimHead of the trade history and provenance research
Since 2015, the Übersee-Museum has carried out two long-term projects on Nazi-looted art in its collections. The Office for Provenance Research and its successor, the German Center for Lost Cultural Property, have funded these projects. The Übersee-Museum is committed to the “Washington Principles” of 1998 and the “Joint Declaration” of 1999. The goal is to locate the rightful owners or their descendants of objects confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution in order to reach a just and fair solution with them regarding the future handling of these objects.
An Examination of Selected Approaches in Ethnology and Natural History
The study focused on natural history and ethnographic objects that were recorded in the museum’s accession register between 1933 and 1945 and whose provenance, as noted in the register, raised questions. These included, for example, Ethnographic artifacts from Peru that can be traced back to the Bremen-based entrepreneur Ludwig Roselius. It is known that he acquired objects from Jewish owners during the Nazi era. Jews who were threatened with persecution were often forced to sell their possessions, or their possessions were confiscated. Another acquisition investigated, for example, was one brokered by Franz Stapelfeldt, a leader in the military economy. According to the record, the items were purchased from a woman to help her in a situation of financial distress.
In addition to other natural history accessions, two insect collections were also examined. The research proved particularly difficult in this case. The suspected cases were reviewed, but their origin could not always be clearly determined; furthermore, it was not possible to prove that any of the accessions in question had been confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution.
In the course of her research, however, the project coordinator came across the Franzius Collection, which had not been taken into account until then. The Übersee-Museum’s acquisition of this collection is a documented case of confiscation resulting from Nazi persecution. The tragic fate of Alba Franzius, who was persecuted as a Jew, is highlighted in the exhibition “Tracking the Past —The History of a Museum”.
Interior view of the Lüderitz Museum on Böttcherstraße | Böttcherstraße Bremen Archive, Photo: Stickelmann
Lüderitz Museum of Ludwig Roselius – Review of a Collection from the Nazi Era.
The Übersee-Museum received the “Lüderitz Museum” collection in 1955. This collection of several hundred numbers of natural objects and artifacts was donated by the “Böttcherstraße GmbH”, management company of the Bremen street Böttcherstraße, which is seen as a total work of art. Its founder was the entrepreneur Ludwig Roselius (1874–1943).
Roselius also founded a museum honoring Bremen’s “colonial pioneer,” Adolf Lüderitz (1834–1886). Located on Martinistraße, which borders Böttcherstraße, and opened in 1940, this museum was destroyed during the war. It exhibited animals, ethnographic artifacts, documents, and paintings. The collection was assembled through purchases from dealers and private individuals in the 1930s and 1940s. The Böttcherstraße museums, also established by Roselius, have carried out several restitutions.
Roselius acquired art and cultural-historical objects at auctions, but was also active in the art trade himself and had connections in political circles. For this reason, it was important to examine the collection of the “Lüderitz Museum.” No confiscation linked to Nazi persecution could be substantiated, but there are a number of objects among those examined whose exact provenance could not be determined. For example, ethnographic objects purchased in German-occupied Paris require further investigation.
Furthermore, all objects related to the “Lüderitz Museum” collection originate from a colonial context. The history of the former “Lüderitz Museum” is presented in more detail in the exhibition “Tracking the Past —The History of a Museum”.
Ancestral and trophy skulls from former German New Guinea
The Übersee-Museum possesses human skulls from Melanesia that are believed to date from the German colonial era. Northeastern New Guinea and the surrounding archipelago were a German colony from 1885 to 1914/19. The museum houses ancestral and trophy skulls—which have been artistically carved and come from ancestors or enemies of the societies of origin—as well as human remains collected for anthropological research.
The ongoing provenance research project is currently focusing on 125 skulls. During the project’s first year, the various source categories and scattered pieces of information were compiled. A basic understanding of this part of the collection was established.
For the time being, four groups of consignors have been identified:
unprocessed skull brought back from a travel by a museum employee in 1912;
overmodeled Sepik skulls sold by the Neuguinea-Compagnie (New Guinea Company), collected by a captain of the company in 1910
overmodeled Sepik skulls sold by the Bremer Südsee-Gesellschaft (Bremen South Sea Company), which a company member provided around 1913
skulls traced back to employees of missions and companies.
Based on the established data, further sources will be evaluated in order to make the acquisition circumstances of the skulls transparent and to determine the persons involved. The aim is to enter into a dialogue with scientists/representatives of the Papua New Guinean societies of origin on the basis of the findings obtained, in order to initiate a repatriation of the skulls if desired.
Examinations of 18 Benin bronzes
In the collections as well as in the exhibitions of the Übersee-Museum Bremen there are 18 objects from the former Kingdom of Benin, located in today’s Nigeria. The six-month project “Research on the Provenance of 18 Objects from Benin”, funded by the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Center for the Loss of Cultural Property), aims to document chains of provenance, reveal possible contexts of injustice, and thus pave the way for potential returns to Nigeria.
The project results, which historians Dr. Jan Christoph Greim and Henrike Schmidt are working on, will be made publicly available in the central database of the “Digital Benin” initiative.
The Legba Dzoka Project – Multidisciplinary Team Catalogs Colonial Collection of Ewe Spiritual Artifacts
Since December 2023, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Ghana, Togo, Germany, and the Netherlands, along with two Vodu priests from the “Afrikan Magick Temple” (in Accra, Ghana), has been investigating the origins of a collection of Ewe artifacts. Around 500 objects – at least half of which are spiritual and sacred—were collected by Carl Spiess, a missionary with the North German Mission Society (NMG), collected between 1892 and 1914 in what was then the German colony of Togo and the British colony of the Gold Coast under circumstances that remain unclear, and donated them to the Bremen Museum. The collection offers a window into pre-colonial, pre-Christian Ewe cosmology – in particular, the ways in which the Ewe harnessed the forces of nature for protection and healing – as well as into the attitudes toward this cosmology held by the mission and the museum.
Before the Ewe converted to Christianity in the mid-19th century at the urging of NMG missionaries, they worshipped their own gods. For example, they placed legba figures at the entrances and exits of their houses and villages. These legbawo are inhabited by a god or spirit that protects people from danger. A legba acts as a messenger between humans and other gods. Dzokawo (singular: dzoka) are spiritually charged cords imbued with powerful forces. The missionaries dismissed the Ewe religion as “idolatry” and promoted the Christian faith, which many Ewe embraced toward the end of the 19th century, as German colonial power became established in the region. It was especially during this period that missionaries brought legbawo, dzokawo, and other spiritual artifacts to German ethnological museums, which flourished under German imperialism and used the display of indigenous artifacts to legitimize a colonial worldview. This was also the case with Carl Spiess, who donated at least 250 spiritual artifacts – and presumably more – to the Übersee-Museum in Bremen.
Ethnographic Collecting During the German Colonial Period in “Neumecklenburg” – A Collaborative Research Project with New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
Since December 2023, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Ghana, Togo, Germany, and the Netherlands, along with two Vodu priests from the “Afrikan Magick Temple” (in Accra, Ghana), has been investigating the origins of a collection of Ewe artifacts. Around 500 objects – at least half of which are spiritual and sacred—were collected by Carl Spiess, a missionary with the North German Mission Society (NMG), collected between 1892 and 1914 in what was then the German colony of Togo and the British colony of the Gold Coast under circumstances that remain unclear, and donated them to the Bremen Museum. The collection offers a window into pre-colonial, pre-Christian Ewe cosmology – in particular, the ways in which the Ewe harnessed the forces of nature for protection and healing – as well as into the attitudes toward this cosmology held by the mission and the museum.
Before the Ewe converted to Christianity in the mid-19th century at the urging of NMG missionaries, they worshipped their own gods. For example, they placed legba figures at the entrances and exits of their houses and villages. These legbawo are inhabited by a god or spirit that protects people from danger. A legba acts as a messenger between humans and other gods. Dzokawo (singular: dzoka) are spiritually charged cords imbued with powerful forces. The missionaries dismissed the Ewe religion as “idolatry” and promoted the Christian faith, which many Ewe embraced toward the end of the 19th century, as German colonial power became established in the region. It was especially during this period that missionaries brought legbawo, dzokawo, and other spiritual artifacts to German ethnological museums, which flourished under German imperialism and used the display of indigenous artifacts to legitimize a colonial worldview. This was also the case with Carl Spiess, who donated at least 250 spiritual artifacts – and presumably more – to the Übersee-Museum in Bremen.
Return of Human Remains to Hawai’i
Die Provenienz-Forschung hat in diesem Fall ergeben, dass die menschlichen Überreste aus unterschiedlichen Quellen dem Übersee-Museum zugeführt wurden. According to this, two of the human remains were given to the museum in 1934 by Kurt-Felix (also Kurd-Felix) Franke and in 1865 by Hermann von Eelking, respectively. Für zwei weitere menschliche Überreste wird Prof. Hugo Schauinsland, Gründungsdirektor des Übersee Museums, als Einlieferer angegeben und das Einlieferungsdatum auf 1897 geschätzt.
For the remaining four, this information is completely missing. The inscriptions of at least five of the skulls provide clues for a more precise geographic assignment. According to this, four of the iwi kūpuna are said to be from Kaua’i and one from Moloka’i. Auf welchen Quellen diese Herkunftsangaben beruhen, ließ sich im Rahmen der Recherche allerdings nicht nachvollziehen.
In the case of two other human remains, an origin from the island of Hawai’i (Big Island) can possibly be considered on the basis of the sources. The OHA (Office of Hawaiian Affairs) approached the Übersee-Museum Bremen in 2019 with a request for return. The latter then joined forces with the Senator for Culture and the OHA, sponsored by the Deutsche Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (German Center for the Loss of Cultural Property), to research and process the matter within the framework of accessible sources and on the basis of ethical standards.
After careful examination, the Übersee-Museum recommended the return of the human remains to the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. The latter approved the request in February 2022, and the formal return ceremony to representatives from Hawai’i took place on February 8, 2022.
Return of human remains to the Moriori and Māori people
The human remains of the Māori and Moriori came mostly from a collecting and research trip of the founding director of the Übersee-Museum Bremen, Prof. Hugo Schauinsland, to New Zealand in 1896/1897. The ancestors’ bones of the Moriori were excavated by him on the Chatham Islands without explicit permission from the descendants. Vermutlich gab es auch keine Genehmigung der damaligen britischen Kolonialregierung.
A request for return was made by New Zealand in July 2013. The Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen agreed to this in May 2016 for ethical reasons. It was returned to the State of New Zealand in May 2017, represented by a delegation from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Ambassador of New Zealand, Peter Rodney Harris, in a handover ceremony at the Übersee-Museum Bremen. You can watch excerpts of the ceremony on YouTube:
Two Toi moko were deaccessioned by the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen in 1999 and offered for return to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. After the Übersee-Museum received an official request for return in 2006, the two heads were transferred to New Zealand, where the restitution ceremony took place.
Return of human remains to Tanzania
The return of the skull of the “Sultan Makaua” was demanded in §246 of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Various attempts by the British government to get it during the interwar years failed. Governor Edward Twining made another attempt in 1953, apparently with the motivation of British colonial power to secure the loyalty of the Wahehe. The Übersee-Museum, represented by its director Helmuth O. Wagner, was open to an investigation in the museum’s magazine. The authenticity of the skull had already been uncertain when it was handed over in 1954. However, Adam Sapi, representing the community of origin, officially accepted it as the skull of the ruler Mkwawa. The skull was returned to East Africa and presented to Chief Adam Sapi in a solemn ceremony on June 19, 1954. Today it is exhibited in the Historical Museum (Mkwawa Museum) in Kalenga (Tanzania), a town near Iringa.
Return of letter copy books and documents Hendrik Witboois
In 1935, August Wulff (1878–1952) sold two letter-copy books and other documents belonging to the Nama chief Hendrik Witbooi (1830–1905) to the “German Colonial and Overseas Museum.” According to the receipt book, the purchase price was 425 RM.
When the Witbooi uprising broke out in 1904, the Witboois left Gibeon, where I was living at the time, to gather in Riedmond/Mariental, where I was also living at the time. The population of Gibeon – about 40 white people – was left entirely to fend for itself for months. For safety reasons, we burned down all the native huts at that time. Before doing so, however, we briefly searched the huts, and in the process, the two indigenous books and letters came into my possession. This is how Wulff described the seizure of the Witbooi documents in a letter dated November 1940.
Dr. Henning Scherf, Mayor and President of the Bremen Senate formulated in the context of restitution in 1996:
The return of these documents is an expression of our deep respect for the uncompromising struggle for the freedom of the people of Namibia and for their leaders. May these documents contribute to the study of Namibian history.
In 1994, a history student discovered the historical Witbooi documents in the archives of the Übersee Museum. The Bremen State Archives restored the documents. On the initiative of Dr. Viola König, director of the museum, and Dr. Peter Junge, head of the Africa collection department, the documents were returned to Namibia.
The handover was made by Dr. Henning Scherf, Mayor and President of the Bremen Senate during a banquet at Bremen City Hall on June 20, 1996, on the occasion of President Dr. Sam Nujoma’s first state visit to Bremen. The documents are now in the Namibian National Archives.
On the German Museum Association’s website, you will find examples of best practices for handling collection items from a colonial context.
An article on the role of provenance research was published in February 2020 in the journal of the German Museum Association: Wiebke Ahrndt, Bettina von Briskorn, Patrick Hege: Colonial Provenance as a Challenge. Approaches to Sensitive Collection Items, in: Museumskunde 2, 2020 (Topic: Current Expectations for Collection Management. Provenance Research. Transparency and Participation), pp. 14–21.
