Genealogies, Family Secrets, and a Curious Ethnologist in West Africa
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| Free Admission |
| Ground Floor, Hall 3 |
| Part of: Lecture series “Family Matters” |
Prof. Dr. Carola Lentz, Seniorforschungsprofessorin für Ethnologie an der Johannes Gutenburg-Universität Mainz, ehemalige Präsidentin des Goethe-Instituts.
Family trees, family secrets, and a curious ethnologist in West Africa. Almost four decades ago, Carola Lentz was welcomed into a large Ghanaian family. As in many African families, educational paths and professional careers, places of residence, and lifestyles have diverged greatly over time. This makes the memory of common ancestors and regular visits to the village of origin even more important for the cohesion of the extended family. However, the younger, educated generation has different expectations of a good family history than their rural relatives. The remembered family past is therefore controversial, and some things are marked as “secrets” by some. Memory practices and their media are also new. Memorial services are replacing
ancestral sacrifices. Drawn family trees, ancestral tables, and photo albums supplement oral narratives. The lecture explores these changes and the conflicts that accompany them. Family history, it concludes, can not only unite but also divide.
Carola Lentz is an anthropologist and senior research professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Her work focuses on ethnicity and nationalism, colonialism and decolonisation, state and family politics of memory, educational biographies and the middle classes in the Global South.
After initial field work in South America, Carola Lentz has conducted research in West Africa for the past forty years. In one of her current book projects, she is tracing her ancestral roots and studying family networks in Germany and Ghana. A second project studies the biographies, social affiliations and self-images of four generations of educated men and their families from North-Western Ghana. She received the Melville J. Herskovits Prize in 2014 for her book Land, Mobility and Belonging in West Africa.
Carola Lentz was president of the Goethe-Institut from 2020 to 2024. She is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
About the lecture series
Secrets hold great social value – from medical confidentiality to the defendant’s right to remain silent in court. Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, “Protection of Privacy and Honor,” grants children the right to have secrets. Behind private secrets often lie family secrets. They are far more than guarded pieces of information. They reveal the need to protect one’s own integrity and privacy, and thereby also to protect others, to preserve intimacy. Family secrets can be an expression of shame or fear of exposure, but they also testify to the desire for social integration under the pressure of social conventions and moral expectations. They are part of the biographical experience of every person and almost every family, and their impact varies greatly from one individual to another.
Telling and concealing secrets make visible how individuals shape their life stories, build emotional relationships, and negotiate social norms. At the same time, cultural and social research shows that secrets extend far beyond the private sphere: they fulfill fundamental social functions by marking boundaries, creating belonging, and stabilizing social orders.
In the opening sessions of this lecture series, we therefore turn to the diverse facets and functions of secrecy – from cultural techniques of concealment to legal questions of privacy protection, especially for children, to the negotiation and staging of family secrets in cinematic or theatrical performances.
In this way, a panorama emerges that highlights the significance of secrecy – as both a connecting and stabilizing force, and at the same time a dividing and destabilizing one – across different areas of society, making its cultural and social impact comprehensible in various contexts.
Further Dates during Summer Semester 2025/2026
11.02.2026
Dr. Michael Slepian (Columbia Business School, New York) “The Secret Life of Secrets”
18.02.2026
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Annette Schad-Seifert (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Department of Modern Japanese Studies, Düsseldorf)
“ “Solo Weddings” as a Secret to Happiness in Japan”
04.03.2026
Bert Rebhandl (Freier Filmforscher, Berlin)
“Substitute/Family – Forms of living together beyond natural descent. Aspects from popular culture”
18.03.2026
Dr. Lotte Warnsholdt (MARKK Museum am Rothenbaum, Hamburg)
“Cultural practices of silence as modes of care”
Concept:
Prof. Dr. Daniel Tyradellis (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Dr. Alia Rayyan (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Dr. Laura Goldenbaum (Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss)