Colonial contexts

German Lost Art Foundation publishes second edition of Working Paper series

The German Lost Art Foundation has published the second dossier in its new series Working Paper Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste. In it, historian Eva Künkler draws on selected examples to provide an overview of the systematic looting that occurred in connection with so-called punitive expeditions carried out in German colonial territories in Africa.

The dossier is en­ti­tled “Colo­nial vi­o­lence and the theft of cul­tur­al ob­jects and hu­man re­mains: a sys­tem­at­ic sur­vey of mil­i­tary vi­o­lence and so-called puni­tive ex­pe­di­tions in Ger­man colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries in Africa (1884-1919)” and is pub­lished in open ac­cess on the in­ter­dis­ci­plinary on­line pub­li­ca­tion plat­form www.per­spec­tivia.net run by the Max We­ber Foun­da­tion – Ger­man Hu­man­i­ties In­sti­tutes Abroad.

The se­ries Work­ing Pa­per Deutsches Zen­trum Kul­turgutver­luste com­pris­es texts on cur­rent re­search top­ics which are pub­lished on­line at ir­reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. These in­clude dossiers, guide­lines, re­search aids, re­search re­ports and overviews from all of the Foun­da­tion’s fund­ing ar­eas and fields of ac­tiv­i­ty: cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion and due to armed con­flict, cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seizures in the So­vi­et zone of oc­cu­pa­tion/GDR, and cul­tur­al goods and col­lec­tions from colo­nial con­texts.

The work­ing pa­per by Eva Kün­kler is avail­able for down­load free of charge as a pdf at www.per­spec­tivia.net un­der https://doi.org/10.25360/01-2022-00001. An­oth­er work­ing pa­per on so-called puni­tive ex­pe­di­tions in Ocea­nia is cur­rent­ly in prepa­ra­tion.