Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover

As the largest state museum in Lower Saxony, the Landesmuseum Hannover houses ethnological collections as well as art, archeological, natural history and numismatic collections. It evolved from the Museum für Kunst und Wissenschaft (Museum of Art and Science), founded by civil associations in 1856, and in 1890 transformed into the Museum of the Prussian Province Hanover (“Provinzialmuseum”).

The Department of Ethnology of the Landesmuseum Hannover houses some of the oldest collections in Germany. It includes the Cabinet of Rarities of King Ernst August (1771-1851), doublet transfers from the Academic Museum in Göttingen and ethnographic objects formerly held by the Natural History Society of Lower Saxony. These objects of the early collection (established in 1853) were mainly given as gifts to the Royal Family, the associations or were collected during expansionist research and collection trips by James Cook, Georg Forster or Hermann and Robert von Schlagintweit.

During the period of German colonial expansion, Jacobus Reimers, from 1890 to 1910 director of the then Provinzialmuseum, contacted various colonial officials to actively promote the development of the collection and to advance the “colonial idea”. As a result, there was a significant increase in the ethnographic and natural history collections from 1884 to 1919. Most of the objects inventoried in this period were brought to Hannover from the then German-colonial areas on the African continent and insular Oceania. Reimers’ successor, Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen, who pursued a colonial revisionist agenda in the 1930s, extended this focus further. From the 1960s onwards, the ethnological collection was also expanded through research and journeys by the curators. Today it comprises a total of around 24,000 objects.

A first systematic investigation and publication of collection items from colonial contexts was carried out in cooperation with the departments of ethnology, natural history, and provenance research as part of the special exhibition “A difficult legacy. Remnants of colonialism today” (Landesmuseum Hannover 2016/17). From then on, research has continued, especially since 2018, within the framework of the joint project “Provenance Research on Non-European Collections and Ethnology in Lower Saxony” (PAESE) coordinated by the Landesmuseum Hannover. Two sub-projects focus on selected objects from the museum's ethnological collection from Cameroon as well as secret-sacred objects from the Australian Aboriginals from Central Australia.