Paper short abstract:

The Humboldt Forum in Berlin, once called Germany's most important cultural project of the early 21st century, is going through a severe crisis. Its intention to show Germany's new cosmopolitanism has been undermined by demands to return "stolen" items from its collections to their original owners.

Paper long abstract:

In 2002 the German Bundestag decided to rebuild the Palace of the former Prussian kings in Berlin, which the communist German Democratic Republic had demolished and replaced by a "Palace of the Republic" in which its People's Chamber held its meetings. To avoid the impression of a restorative political action, and prove the country's cosmopolitan spirit, the German parliament also decided to move the collections of the Berlin Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art to the new building that should carry the name of the two famous German scholars. After many delays, construction works were launched in 2013. While the responsible curators were still working on a convincing concept, political activists demanded to stop the whole project with the argument that the museums' cultural treasures were "looted" in the former European colonies and should be returned as "stolen art" to their rightful owners. After several scholars had adopted this position, and the atrocities of German colonialism had become a popular topic in the media, German cultural politicians gave in to the pressure and expressed their willingness to respond positively to any officially submitted and substantiated demand. But actually, such demands are few. Some African intellectuals criticized restitution as neo-colonial symbolic politics, while states such as Tanzania declared to waive any title claim on restitution. In this way, the ambitious project of the Humboldt Forum triggered a debate that not only concerns all European anthropological collections but also reveals the patronizing "speaking for" attitude of its postcolonial critics.