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The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum holds a collection of 96 works of courtly art from the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Edo State in Nigeria. The museum had received these between 1899 and 1967 as part of 15 donations and purchases. It is considered certain that these 96 works of courtly art had been looted from the Royal Palace of Benin by the British Army in February 1897. In total, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 such works had been looted at that time, subsequently ending up in museums worldwide, including the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum.

Works of courtly art from the Kingdom of Benin

The project aims to clarify the origin of a human skull from East Africa from the Lothar von Trotha collection. As commander of the "Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Südwestafrika" Trotha bore the main responsibility for the first genocide of the 20th century. Little known is the fact that Lothar v. Trotha was also in other hotspots of the German colonial empire, for example in the 1890s in what was then "German East Africa". Under what circumstances did the skull come into the von Trotha collection? Can we perhaps even learn something about the identity of the deceased? Can we find documents mentioned in the museum archives that could shed light on this?

The project, which for the first time has access to extensive sources from the private estate of the von Trotha family, aims to contribute to further research into German colonial history and postcolonial provenance research.

The history of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (RJM) begins with Wilhelm Joest (1852-1897), who had built up an extensive ethnographic collection on several journeys in the late 19th century. After his death, his sister Adele Rautenstrauch (1850-1903) donated his private collection to the city of Cologne and financed the construction of the RJM, which opened in 1906.

More about Wilhelm Joest

Since 1991, the Rautenstrauch-JoestMuseum has been holding Max von Oppenheim's (1860-1946) collection of artefacts on permanent loan. It consists of approximately 1,600 objects that Oppenheim had collected during his travels in North Africa and West Asia as well as during a 13-year stay as a diplomat in Cairo.

more about Oppenheim

more about the Invisible Inventories Programme

The restoration project "Woven Stories" is dedicated to the extended indexing and documentation of a textile collection from Southeast Asia. In the first step, differentiated descriptions of the use of the textiles, their construction, the weaving techniques and dyeing processes used, their colourfulness and materiality are being developed. The next step is to create a keyword system and then enter it into the new museum database.

More about the project

A current restitution project was initiated in 2020 by the RJM with the support of the City of Cologne: Intensive research into the Khmer collection revealed that the head of a Vishnu sculpture was most likely taken from its country of origin illegally in the 1960s before it found its way into the RJM via the art market.

The "Khmer Collection" of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum comprises 74 objects, mainly stone sculptures/fragments and ceramics from the Wilhelm Siegel Collection (57 pieces). There are also some bronze sculptures, stone rubbings, textiles – and a known forgery that was added to the collection after the special exhibition "Crime Scene Cambodia – On the Trail of a Forgery" (2017).

In the last three decades, about 20 objects were accepted from the estates of Wilhelm Siegel and Dr Alfred Jung, mostly ceramic vessels. In 2010, a Shiva lingam (dated 8^th century CE), and in 2018, a contemporary silk brocade textile in the Khmer style were acquired.

The exhibition "Crime Scene Cambodia", which dealt with the theft and illegal trade of Khmer art, led us to taking a closer look at the "Khmer Collection". In the process, a Vishnu head (Inv. no.: RJM 51587) that had been in the collection since 1986 was identified as once having belonged to a Vishnu sculpture in the Prasat Bakong in Cambodia. Although there has been no explicit official request for restitution from the Cambodian government to date, the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum is actively seeking to return the Vishnu head to its country of origin.

After formal approval by the Cologne City Council, the clarification of protocol on both sides and as soon as Covid-related travel restrictions are over, the Vishnu head can return to Cambodia. The National Museum in Phnom Penh will be contacted respectively.

The research project "Recollecting Rapa Nui" is part of the ERC research group "Indigeneities in the 21st Century", which investigates how indigenous actors have developed from "disappearing peoples" into global actors. Based at the Institute of Ethnology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the project operates at the interdisciplinary interfaces between anthropology, art, history, philosophy and politics, aiming to contribute to the (re)emergence of indigeneities and the (re)negotiation of their (post-)colonial heritage in and with Europe.

For Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the “visual gallery” aims to collect knowledge about artefacts, reconstruct the historical networks associated with them, and share them with contemporary indigenous actors. Part of the Rapa Nui collection came to the RJM through Pedro Atan Pakomio (1906-1976), an important Rapa Nui politician and artist, who was a crucial source of information for Thor Heyerdahl. RJM is conducting this project together with the Übersee-Museum in Bremen; other German and international partner museums will be added step by step.

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On the occasion of a book presentation by Götz Aly (Das Prachtboot. Wie Deutsche die Kunstschätze der Südsee raubten. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 2021) which took place on June 11, 2021, in our museum, you will find here an overview of our collection from the Hermit Islands (in German) as well as a corresponding excerpt from the inventory catalogue Art and Culture from the South Seas (in German). The Clausmeyer Collection, Melanesia, by Waldemar Stöhr (curator of Indonesia and Oceania at the RJM from 1951 to 1987), 1987. In 1966, the museum acquired the collection of the artist Klaus Clausmeyer (1887-1968) comprising over 1,000 artefacts. Among them was a wooden figure which, according to the attached label, had been sold in 1884 by Henning von Holtzendorff – a participant in the punitive action against the inhabitants of Luf Island from December 16, 1882, to New Year's Day in 1883. Stöhr explicitly speaks of "perverse punitive action" (1987:195).

More about the project