Paper short abstract:

Vague terminology and false assertions dominated the German restitution debate from 2017 to 2019. Specialists weren't sufficiently involved and there is still a need for research on the historical objects.

Paper long abstract:

The analysis of the few restitutions (or restitution requests) reveals the shortcomings of the public debate in Germany. The media are dominated by the opinions of politicians, journalists, art historians and artists, whereas the voices of ethnologists, restorers and historians who actually publish works on the specific objects, or their collecting history, are barely audible. Since statistical evaluations (meta-studies) of the object acquisitions are missing, asserting that the objects were unlawfully acquired ("stolen art") turns out to be an ideological interpretation and also shows the need for ethnological research.

Many hardly documented objects reached museums in the past. Studying them was left for future generations to do. Up to the present day, only a few objects have been described exhaustively: data is missing on materials and techniques, on their use, meaning, collection history and the modifications they underwent after purchase. The rare museum curators were and still are often in charge of entire continents, and academic interest started to dwindle in the 1930s which in turn had dire consequences on the education of curators. Systematic disinterest in object-centred research can easily be illustrated by the fact that all museums lack independent budgets for the work of external specialists.

The renovation of ethnological museums is limited to replacing names and logos. The museum directors haven't had the collective guts to contradict politicians' and journalists' one-sided or wrong assertions in the public debate and most academic representatives of Social and Cultural Anthropology don't have sufficient knowledge. Simultaneously, one must note that the debate is not based on a multitude of restitution demands.