15.05.2024
Ethnologisches Museum
In 2018, a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) allowed for the digitisation of all the collection inventories, files, and other associated documentation currently held by the Ethnologisches Museum, dating from the year 1830 up until 1947. In early 2024, the process of digitising this material as completed, and they were published online, with some 1,600 historical documents being made available, comprising a total of 588,000 pages.
The documents that are now accessible to the public online include important written material and inventories that shed light on the often complicated context in which the collection was acquired. With this digitisation project, the Ethnologisches Museum is providing researchers with direct and independent access, regardless of their location, to the museum’s historical collection documentation. A near-complete reconstruction of the historical holdings of the collection is now available to all interested parties.
These digitised materials constitute one of the most completely preserved archival holdings within the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin network. As such, they are of use not only for research on topics relating to the history of the museum and its collection, but also for bettering understanding broader administrative procedures within the museum network and its predecessor, the Königliche Museen zu Berlin. In addition, due to a resolution from the German parliament in 1899, the collection played a central role in the history of objects from former German colonies.
The resolution named the then Museum für Völkerkunde as one of the central collection points for natural- and cultural-historical objects from the colonies, together with other museums in Berlin. The written documentation of the acquisitions, exchanges, and payments made in this regard make it possible to trace the provenance of the collections of objects that were accessioned and handed over, and to reconstruct the colonial networks that existed at the time.
The index produced through this project offers a central point of access to the digitised holdings. In addition, the digitised documents and their associated data can be accessed via the online database of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (German only).