Felix von Luschan (1854–1924) and the Berlin 'Völkerkundemuseum'
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| 10 EUR / 5 EUR plus exhibition ticket |
| Duration: 90 min |
| 14 years and older |
| German |
| Ethnologisches Museum, 2. OG |
| max. 25 persons |
| Belongs to: Ethnological Collections and Asian Art |
As the long-time director of the Department of Africa and Oceania at the “Museum für Völkerkunde” in Berlin and holder of the chair in physical anthropology at the University of Berlin, Felix von Luschan was responsible for the acquisition of numerous objects and human remains from colonial contexts. Without his actions, objects such as the Benin Bronzes and the Luf boat would not have found their way into the Berlin collection. For good reason, he is therefore at the center of today’s debates on restitution and the critical examination of colonial and racist scientific traditions. Felix von Luschan was, however, a contradictory figure: He was at the same time a staunch opponent of ethno-nationalist, anti-Semitic racial theories and challenged central paradigms of contemporary “racial sciences.” Using selected objects and photographs, historians Felix Wiedemann and Patrick Helber shed light in this guided tour not only on the complex figure of Felix von Luschan but also on the ambivalences of “scientific anti-racism” in the early 20th century.
Participants
Felix Wiedemann is a private lecturer in modern and contemporary history at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at Freie Universität Berlin and is currently acting director of the Braunschweig Schillstraße Concentration Camp Satellite Camp Memorial. He studied modern history, political science, and philosophy in Düsseldorf and Berlin. His research and publications focus on the history of science and ideas, historical research on racism and antisemitism, as well as the history of National Socialism and German memory politics.
Current monograph: Rassenbilder aus der Vergangenheit. Die anthropologische Lektüre antiker Bildwerke in den Wissenschaften des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Wallstein 2024).
Patrick Helber studied history and political science in Tübingen and Dublin and received his doctorate in modern and contemporary history in Heidelberg in 2014. He then worked as a trainee at the Museum Neukölln and as a research assistant for education and outreach at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. Since 2021, he has been curator for education and outreach at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin at the Humboldt Forum, where he and his colleagues are responsible for the collaborative outreach project “Intertwined Memories. Traces of the Shoah and Colonialism in Berlin Palace and the Ethnological Collections”, which develops education programs in collaboration with partners from Rwanda, Namibia, Jamaica, Israel, and other countries.