Ethnological Museum of Berlin

The museum holds more than 500,000 objects and is one of the world's largest important collections of works of art and culture from outside Europe. Its highlights include 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).

History

The Ethnologisches 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. 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). A new building was erected in the suburb of Dahlem to house the museum’s store rooms and research collections. In World War II, 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 Ethnologisches Museum remained in Dahlem. Starting in 2000, concrete plans were developed to move the collections back to the center of the city. In 2021, the Ethnologisches Museum and Museum für Asiatische Kunst were reopened in the new Humboldt Forum in the reconstructed Berlin City Palace (German: Berliner Stadtschloss) immediately south of the main Museum Island complex.

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Collections

Beginning in January 2016, the Ethnologisches Museum began the process of dismantling its exhibitions in preparation for its move to the Humboldt Forum. The exhibitions in Dahlem were closed in January 2017. Until then, the permanent exhibitions displayed works from Africa, Mesoamerican archaeology, and South Asia. Highlights included the collections of painted Maya vases and drinking cups, the Lienzo Seler Coixtlahuaca II, Benin Bronzes, sculptures from Cameroon, and power figures from the Democratic Republic of the 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.

The new exhibitions of the Ethnological Museum in the Humboldt Forum were opened successively in 2021 and 2022 with a delay due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

At the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin Dahlem, many objects in the collection made of organic materials such as wood, raffia, or feathers were treated with chemicals for conservation purposes. As a result, many of these objects are now contaminated and pose a serious health risk when handled by humans.

Repatriation of stolen artifacts

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.

In 2022, a group of 23 artifacts from the collection, including precious jewelry and pottery, was returned indefinitely to Namibia. The items were taken between 1884 and 1915, when Namibia was part of the German Empire colony German South West Africa.

Architecture

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. 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 Ethnologisches 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.

Directors

The following is a verified list of directors of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. Some names do not yet have English Wikipedia entries but are available on Wikidata or in the German Wikipedia.

Leopold von Ledebur (1829–1873)
Adolf Bastian (1873–1904)
Felix von Luschan (1904–1910)
Albert Grünwedel (1904–1921)
Eduard Seler (1904–1922)
F. W. K. Müller (1906–1928)
Carl Schuchhardt (1908–1925)
Bernhard Ankermann (1921–1924)
Konrad Theodor Preuss (1921–1934)
Albert von Le Coq (1923–1925)
Walter Lehmann (1927–1934)
Otto Kümmel (1933–1945)
Walter Krickeberg (1945–1954)
Hans-Dietrich Disselhoff (1954–1970)
Kurt Krieger (1970–1985)
Klaus Helfrich (1985–2001)
Viola König (2001–2017)
Lars-Christian Koch (2017– )