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The origin of ethnological collections from colonial contexts has been the focus of media attention for several years. This discussion is primarily promoted by demands from the communities of origin. The need to research and disclose the origins of colonial collections was recognized early on in Lower Saxony. The PAESE joint project was developed at the Hanover State Museum and was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation from 2018 to 2022.

As part of the project, selected holdings from six Lower Saxony collections at the Hanover State Museum, Braunschweig Municipal Museum, at the Ethnological collection of the Georg-August University of Göttingen, at Roman and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim, State Museum of Nature and People Oldenburg as well as on Ev.-Luth. Hermannsburg Mission examined. This was done in close exchange with universities in Hanover, Göttingen and Oldenburg as well as in cooperation with experts from Cameroon, Namibia, PNG, Tanzania and Australia.

In addition to basic research into the origins of colonial-era holdings in the largest ethnographic collections in Lower Saxony, the project's goals were to establish a dialogue about the future handling of the objects. The prerequisite for this is the greatest possible transparency. For this purpose, among other things, a Object database built, which went online in 2020.

Together with the German Center for Losses of Cultural Property became the workshop in 2019 Perspectives of Transnational Provenance Research in Ethnographic Collections in Germany carried out. The international final conference Provenance Research on Collections from Colonial Contexts – Principles, Approaches, Challenges took place in June 2021 as a hybrid event with over 300 participants from all over the world. The results were published open access in 2023 in the series of the Provenance Research Network in Lower Saxony.

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This article was written by Patricia Nienhues

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