Are world museums just moral institutions? – Diepresse.com
The German author and former SPD politician Mathias Brodkorb denounces the development of ethnological museums in Europe in his new book on « Postcolonial Myths ». Today’s KHM General Director, Jonathan Fine, play a central role.
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Jonathan Fine wrote his dissertation in Princeton about the throne of Bamum in the Berlin Ethological Museum. In the museum, however, you can only learn a little about its history, complains Brodkorb. Mathias Brodkorb
The press: You have written a very pointed pamphlet about « postcolonial myths ». Actually, they are a former SPD politician and now a political columnist. Where does your interest in this topic come from?
Mathias Brodkorb: That was a coincidence. In 2022 I wanted to pick up my child from the holiday camp and therefore stayed in Leipzig. I was recommended to go to the Grassi Ethnological Museum there. What I saw was so irritated to me that I wrote an article for « Cicero » about it. He didn’t stop flowing anymore! So I decided to go on a tour through four museums and to the Biennale to Venice, and to write a book about it.
They were in Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna. Why these four museums?
Because they have the largest Benin bronze stocks in German-speaking countries.
At Germany’s return of the bronzes to Nigeria, they also make a lot of criticism: if it is about justice, because there is no legal basis for this, there are no need to return the objects to the descendants of the slaves of the Benin ruler. Is their voice heard too little?
