Initial Check: 100 Ethnological Objects in the Collection of the Aquazoo Löbbecke Museum in Düsseldorf

The Aquazoo Löbbecke Museum is an institution of the Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf, which fulfils a variety of scientific and cultural tasks as a zoo, aquarium and natural history museum. The origins of the institution lie in the private natural history museum of Theodor Löbbecke (1821-1901), which became the municipal Löbbecke Museum in 1904. The museum preserves a collection of 95 ethnographic objects of various origins, including sculptures, masks, jewellery, weapons, utensils and vessels, which formed the subject of this initial check.

As part of the six-month project, provenance researcher and cultural anthropologist Christoph Rippe identified the objects with regard to their regions and societies of origin and researched their provenance and acquisition circumstances.

The project was able to show that a significant part of the objects was most likely acquired during a Cameroon expedition undertaken by the director of the Löbbecke Museum, Horst Sieloff, in 1936. Although the exact circumstances of the acquisition during the expedition remain unclear, they were certainly characterised by colonial power relations. In Düsseldorf, the objects were exhibited in a colonial exhibition in the Löbbecke Museum and the Zoological Garden in 1937. Here, they were misused as a propaganda tool for the dissemination of racist and National Socialist world views.

Other objects probably came into the collection through Horst Sieloffs personal contacts until his retirement in 1967. The regions of origin could be determined for some of these objects. They include Nigeria (3 objects), Namibia (4), Oceania (4), Seychelles (1), Sri Lanka (2) and Australia (1). The project has also identified possibilities for future in-depth studies involving local archives in countries of origin, with possible research questions relating in particular to contextual research.

© Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf, Dezernat für Kultur und Integration