The presentation will trace a complex story of how (post)colonial history as well as the related history of anthropology and ethnographic museums evolved differently in East and West Germany due to the different, ideologically-driven perspectives
on a common past. It will show how the Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig (now Grassi Museum), located in the East, reconstructed its Pacific exhibition in 1969/70 and, through this, rewrote (East) Germany’s (post)colonial relationship with the Pacific. Also, a particular collection, the so-called Leningrad-Sammlung, which was taken on a ‘cold odyssey’ from the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin (now Ethnologisches Museum) to Leningrad, Leipzig and back to Berlin between 1945-1992 will be traced.

Philipp Schorch is Professor of Museum Anthropology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany, where he leads an ERCfunded research project on ‘Indigeneities in the 21st Century’. He is also an Honorary Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Australia. Philipp’s research focuses on museums, material culture/history/theory, contemporary art and (post)colonial histories, the Pacific and Europe, collaborations with Indigenous artists/curators/scholars, and (post)socialist environments. He is lead co-author of Refocusing Ethnographic
Museums through Oceanic Lenses. More information here: POSTER.SCHORCH