About us
The Guidelines for a "3-road strategy" [PDF, 234 KB] on the documentation and digital publication of collections from colonial contexts held in Germany were agreed at the 13th Cultural Policy Summit on 14 October 2020 with the involvement of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the head of the Directorate-General for Culture and Communication at the Federal Foreign Office, the cultural ministers and senators for culture of the Länder and representatives of the municipal umbrella organisations.
The starting point for this "3-road strategy" are the "Framework Principles for Dealing with Collections from Colonial Contexts" ("Framework Principles" [PDF, 306 KB]), agreed by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Federal Foreign Office Minister of State for International Cultural Policy, the Cultural Affairs Ministers of the Länder and the municipal umbrella organisations on 13 March 2019. The "3-road strategy" includes a variety of measures for cataloguing and digitally publishing relevant collections with the goal of maximising transparency in the long term.
In addition to establishing a central access to collections from colonial contexts which have already been published digitally (Road 1), the strategy includes basic digitisation and digital publication of still unpublished collections from colonial contexts in a central data repository (the DDB) according to unified standards (Road 2), as well as the digitisation and digital publication of collections from colonial contexts based on standards devised in collaboration with countries and societies of origin as well as the diaspora in Germany (Road 3).
The following 25 institutions are participating in the pilot phase that has now begun (in alphabetical order):
- Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg – University Archives and Uniseum
- Applied Botany Collection (ABC) at the University Hamburg
- BASA Museum (Bonner Amerikas-Sammlung) at the University Bonn
- Ethnographic Collection of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
- Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum) and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin) (SPK – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation)
- Institute for African Studies at the University of Bayreuth
- Linden Museum in Stuttgart
- Medizinhistorische Museum der Charité in Berlin (Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité)
- Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) in Hamburg
- Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich
- Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (Berlin Museum of Natural History Berlin) – Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung (Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science)
- Museum Wiesbaden – Hessisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Natur
- Nordfriesland Museum. Nissenhaus
- The institutions of the PAESE joint project: Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover (Lower Saxony State Museum Hanover), Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch Oldenburg (Lower Saxony State Museum of Nature and Man Oldenburg), Roemer- und Pelizaeusmuseum Hildesheim, Municipal Museum Braunschweig, Ethnological Collection of the Georg-August University Göttingen
- Philipps University Marburg
- Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum – Kulturen der Welt in Cologne
- Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen (State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony) in association with the Staatliche Kultursammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections)
- State and University Library Bremen (SuUB)
- Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg (Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg)
- Übersee Museum in Bremen
The implementation of the “3-road strategy” is accompanied by the Federation-Länder Working Group on dealing with collections from colonial contexts. and coordinated by the German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts. The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) is funding the development of the portal.