37213 Witzenhausen
This page was generated because the cultural heritage institution is registered with the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek and has published data in the portal. The description was written by the institution that provided the data.
The Deutsche Institut für Tropische und Subtropische Landwirtschaft (DITSL) is the successor institution to the Deutschen Kolonialschule für Landwirtschaft, Handel und Gewerbe (DKS). From 1899 to 1944, young men were trained at the DKS to work as farmers, economic and plantation officials in the German colonies and other overseas territories. The students were to be trained as “German cultural pioneers” who would bring a Christian-minded, ethnically and morally stable “German culture” to the colonies and advance the colonial project. Although the former colonies of the German Empire had been confiscated at the end of the First World War and placed under the control of the League of Nations, the DKS resumed teaching in 1919 and remained in operation until 1944.
After reopening under the name DITSL in 1957, the educational institution took on a new role in training for development cooperation with countries in the Global South. Since 2005, it has been a scientific institute focusing on development-oriented agricultural research and also offering academic teaching, professional training and extracurricular educational programmes in this field. Together with the town of Witzenhausen, DITSL is the sponsor of the Witzenhausen Museum. The museum displays and preserves a collection of approximately 2,600 objects from various countries, about half of which were collected by former DKS graduates and the other half by DITSL students and staff. In addition to natural history and geological objects, the majority of these are items made by people from the regions of origin and used in everyday life or for cultural and ceremonial purposes.
In the project “Provenienzforschung zum Ostafrika-Bestand des Museum Witzenhausen”, just over 300 objects of East African origin were scientifically catalogued and a selection of 53 objects were examined in greater depth for their provenance. For the in-depth investigation, the work at the Witzenhausen site was complemented by ethnographic field research in possible communities of origin in Tanzania, carried out by the local cooperation partner, the NGO fahari yetu Tanzania. Initially, the 53 objects researched, together with the information collected about them, will be presented here on the portal. In the future, the presentation is to be expanded to include the entire East Africa collection as well as other collections of the Museum Witzenhausen.