On the Edge of German Colonialism? The West and East African Collections of Kirchhof and Zintgraff of the Lippisches Landesmuseum between Colonial Conquest, Administration and Science

The Lippisches Landesmuseum Detmold keeps an ethnological collection of over 4000 artefacts from all continents. Around 300 objects stem from West and East Africa, the majority of which were collected during the period of German colonial rule in Cameroon and in Menelik II's Ethiopia. They form the interlaced collections of August Kirchhoff and Eugen and Alfred Zintgraff.

The Kirchhof collection consists of approximately 200 very diverse objects, collected by the German colonial administrator and lawyer August Kirchhof between 1903 and 1918 in what was then German Cameroon.

The Zintgraff Collection consists of approximately 100 objects collected by the well-known colonialist Eugen Zintgraff in Cameroon and East Africa, and to a larger extent by his brother, the minister of state in the service of the Ethiopian emperor, Alfred Zintgraff, in the Ethiopian empire. The collections entered the Lippisches Landesmuseum in several waves between 1920 and 1950.

The aim of the project is to investigate how the collections were acquired and how the artefacts were embedded in (post-)colonial processes, as well as the antiquarian determination and placement in their original contexts. Of particular interest for the Kirchhof collection is the role played by Cameroonian politician Charles Atangana, who came to Detmold with Kirchhof in 1912. In view of the large number of weapons in the Zintgraff Collection, it stands to reason that they were the "weapons of the defeated".

The Lippisches Landesmuseum seeks to gain a better ethno-historical understanding of the collection and seeks to investigate its holdings in cooperation with partners from the societies of origin and diaspora communities in Germany. Public participation is appreciated and relevant information about the collections welcomed.

The project marks the beginning of comprehensive research into the provenances of the ethnological collection of the Lippisches Landesmuseum.

(c) Lippisches Landesmuseum