Collecting a Continent: German Natural History and Australia

Principal Investigators: PD Dr Eva Bischoff & Prof Dr Anja Schwarz (Potsdam University)

Duration: since July 2020

This projects aims at systematically reconstructing the Australian archive in the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, in order to examine the role of colonial collections in the production, circulation and use of knowledge about the world. It focuses on the objects (from rock samples to preserved plants and animals) as well as the written material (e.g. journals and letters) sent by German-speaking explorers to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, whose anatomical, mineralogical, and zoological collections merged into the Museum für Naturkunde in 1889. Because of these naturalists’ activities, the museum (today the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research Berlin, MfN) holds one of the world’s largest historical collections of Australian flora and fauna, including important specimens of species that are now considered endangered or extinct. Commencing in October 2020, the project will systematically reconstruct the museum’s Australian archive and its role in the production of knowledge of the natural world, starting with the Blandowski papers in the MfN’s archives. The project thereby examines the role of colonial collections in the production, circulation and use of knowledge about the world. It sees the current debates on the restitution of artefacts acquired by European institutions in colonial contexts as an opportunity to inquire into the processes of knowledge production about nature and the coloniality of knowledge of the environment. In this sense, the project aims to trace an entangled, global natural history. It asks how historical collections – and the Indigenous and European knowledges stored in them – can be be analysed, made accessible to communities, cared for as shared heritage, and presented in a respectful and collaborative manner.

Since 2022, the German Lost Art Foundation (funding stream Colonial Contexts) support us in reconstructing the Indigenous knowledge and stories embodied in these collections. More information at the project website Berlin's Australian Archive. Addressing the Colonial Legacies of Natural History and our research blog.

Partners:

Prof. Dr. Anja Schwarz, British Cultural Studies (Universität Potsdam)

Museum für Naturkunde | Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Berlin

Ethnologisches Museum | Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Museums Victoria, Melbourne

Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne

The Australian Museum, Sydney

Publications (selected)

Schwarz, Anja (2018): Schomburgk’s Chook: The Entangled South Australian Collections of a German Naturalist, in: Postcolonial Studies 21:1, S. 20-34, DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2018.1434749.