The less considered part: Contextualizing immaterial heritage from German colonial contexts in the restitution debate

Abstract

Abstract Since the publication of the “restitution report” by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in November 2018, the debate around the restitution of African artifacts inherited from German colonialism in German museums has become increasingly intense. While the restitution debate in Germany is generally focused on “material cultural heritage” and human remains, this reflection attempts to contextualize the “immaterial heritage” (museum collections inventory data, photographs, movies, sound recordings, and digital archive documents) from German colonialism and plead for its consideration in this debate. It claims that the first step of restitution consists of German ethnological museums being transparent about their possessions of artifacts from colonial contexts, which means providing all available information about museum collections from colonial contexts and making them easily accessible to the people from the former German colonies.