We say goodbye to Larissa Förster and wish her all the best in Frankfurt!

Holder of a doctorate in cultural and social anthropology, Förster has been responsible for the successful establishment of the Foundation’s “Cultural Goods and Collections from Colonial Contexts” department since 2019 and has been instrumental in advancing its networking activities in the areas of research, civil society and politics. It was particularly important to her to continuously adapt funding practice to the requirements of international projects and cooperation partners.

In November 2021, she and her departmental team curated the international Conference The Long History of Claims for the Return of Cultural Heritage from Colonial Contexts along with the recently issued associated publication Resist Reclaim Retrieve.

Larissa Förster succeeded in establishing the department as an international point of contact for provenance research issues, making a particularly important contribution to the critical reappraisal of German colonial rule in Namibia. She was co-initiator and scholarly advisor of the project Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures: carried out by the Museum Association of Namibia and the Berlin National Museums, the project’s accomplishments included the return of 23 objects to Namibia. Together with Gesa Grimme she published the first overview of collection items from Namibia in German-speaking countries in the working paper entitled Locating Namibian Cultural Heritage in Museums and Universities in German-Speaking Countries. A Finding Aid for Provenance Research.

In addition to her regular work, she attaches great importance to training early-career investigators. As an honorary professor at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin, she has supervised various theses over the years.

With the departure of Larissa Förster, the German Lost Art Foundation – and in particular the department “Cultural Goods and Collections from Colonial Contexts” – loses a highly committed and innovative colleague. Her distinctive gift lies in the great openness with which she reaches out to a wide range of different of stakeholders, something from which everyone who has worked with her over the past five years has benefited. While we regret her departure, we wish her all the best for the future, both personally and professionally.