Colonial contexts

The Antonie and Eugen Brandeis Oceania Collection is published online

The Museum Natur und Mensch Freiburg has published an album on the Eugen and Antonie Brandeis Oceania Collection for inclusion in the online collection of the city’s municipal museums.

31. May 2023

Contact

Do you have any questions?

Do feel free to get in touch with us directly – whether at the Foundation’s headquarters in Magdeburg or at our branch office in Berlin.
See here for answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ)

German Lost Art Foundation

Humboldtstr. 12
39112 Magdeburg

Germany
Phone:  +49 (0) 391 727 763 0
E-mail:  kontakt@kulturgutverluste.de
Social:

German Lost Art Foundation Berlin Branch Office

Seydelstr. 18
10117 Berlin

Berlin
Phone: +49 (0) 391 727 763 0
E-mail: kontakt@kulturgutverluste.de

The Help Desk offers advice and assistance to victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants on questions relating to Nazi theft of cultural property. Serving as a central and initial low-threshold point of contact in Germany, it is aimed in particular at people whose place of residence is outside Germany and who are unfamiliar with German procedures, especially in connection with cultural federalism. The Help Desk seeks to provide support in taking initial steps as well as providing further contacts and information. We will also be happy to help initiate discussions with museums and other institutions.

German Lost Art Foundation, Branch Office
Dr. Susanne Meyer-Abich
Head of Help Desk

Seydelstr. 18
10117 Berlin

Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 391 727 763 0
E-mail: helpdesk@kulturgutverluste.de

Two donations by the couple dating back to 1900/1901 constitute one of the most important holdings of the museum’s ethnological Oceania collection. Provenance research was carried out into this collection and the history of the collector couple from 2020 to 2022 in a project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation.

The ethnological collection at Museum Natur und Mensch contains around 2,600 objects from Oceania, the majority of which are from former German colonial territories. A significant number of items were part of two donations made by the Imperial Governor of the Marshall Islands, Eugen Brandeis, to what was then the Museum für Natur- und Völkerkunde in 1900/1901. Although his wife Antonie Brandeis was responsible for collecting the approximately 300 objects, Eugen Brandeis went down in the city annals as the donor.

The focus of the project was not only to conduct research into the colonial-era provenance of the Brandeis collection but also to reconstruct the biography and collecting activities of Antonie Brandeis. Another stated aim was to involve representatives of the societies of origin in the research process. For this reason, the online album is also geared towards the wishes, interests and questions raised by the cooperation partners from the Marshall Islands with regard to the ethnological collection.

The collection is to be found here: https://onlinesammlung.freiburg.de/de/alben/brandeis