Spuren des »Boxerkriegs« in Museumssammlungen

Abstract

Provenance research, especially when focussing on collections from colonial contexts, requires new collaborative ways of engaging with the communities of implication. In this section, examples of this new way of working are given with presenting two current projects: one is on collections from today’s Tansania that came to Berlin in the context of anti-colonial wars in the late 19th century and another one looks on pieces that were brought to Germany from China, where a war against the so-called Boxer-groups was fought between 1899 and 1901. Yet another example sheds light on the highly sensitive field of human remains in ethnological and anthropological collections. These projects cover new ground in many ways and thus, one goal is also to produce guidelines to assist other museums in the future.