Maaza Mengiste. Of Interest to the General Public
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| English |
| Part of: Objects talk back |
Inspired by the history of the 1868 Napier expedition and the burning of the palace fortress at Magdala, “Of Interest to the General Public” is a narration by the Ethiopian writer and photographer Maaza Mengiste. She combines photographs and text to re-imagine the journey of the stunning and elaborately made royal mantle from Ethiopia – out of battle, through fire, over mountains to cross the waters into Berlin, Germany. The oeuvre of Maaza Mengiste, who currently lives in New York, is composed from voices and stories that have been excluded, from gaps that seem inexplicable, from images, objects and places that pulse with pasts unresolved.
The cloak is an outstanding example of 19th-century Ethiopian court art. Emperor Tewodros II had several of these magnificent cloaks made. Originally intended as a diplomatic gift for Queen Victoria, he instead gave them – after a deterioration in relations with the British Empire – to prominent ladies of his court. Two of them went to the Ethiopian wives of the missionaries Karl Saalmüller and Theophilus Waldmeier. Waldmeier died in Beirut; the whereabouts of his wife’s cloak are unknown. Saalmüller left the cloak to his brother, J. Heinrich Saalmüller in Heldenburg, who sold it in 1874 to what was then the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin.
Ceremonial Cloak
Cloak made of silk, gold, silver, and cotton
Ethiopia
Mid-19th century
Ethnologisches Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Inventory number: III A 566
Maaza Mengiste is a novelist, essayist, and photographer. Her debut, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by The Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books. Her novel, The Shadow King, was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize. Mengiste is founder of Project3541, a collective memory endeavour about the 1935-41 Italo-Ethiopian War, that seeks to transcend the static nature of an archive.