14403
Advanced Seminar
The Middle East in German Museums
Julia Hauser
Information for students
The course begins on Oct 22!
Comments
From the seventeenth century onwards, artifacts from and relating to the MENA region were
brought together in German collections. In this class, we will focus, inter alia, on collections in
Berlin, Dresden, Gotha, Karlsruhe, and Frankfurt/Main. We will look at how these collections
came into being, and how they shaped the image of the region. Each participant will present
and analyze one collection in a presentation, with the possibility of elaborating their analysis in
a term paper. Since a reading knowledge of German may come in helpful in this class, we will
form teams to help each other with these texts. We will read secondary sources on Germany’s
political involvement in the region, colonialism and knowledge production, theoretical
approaches from the field of museology and curation, and about the collections concerned; the
latter of these texts may occasionally be in German. Our discussion of these texts and individual
collections will revolve around the following questions: Which regions in Germany feature the
most of these collections and why? Which political constellations and which motives led to the
acquisitions of these objects? Who were the collectors? Which image of the region did the
inclusion of these objects in German collections shape? Which new meanings did they acquire
in the process, and which meanings got lost? Which epochs were represented the most in the
collections, and which ones were left out? Which changes ought to be made in representations
of the region in German museums? How can it feature in present-day German museums
nonetheless, and to which end? close
Suggested reading
Bodenstein, Felicity, Damiana Otoiu, and Eva-Maria Troelenberg, eds. Contested Holdings.
Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return, Museums and
Collections; 14. New York: Berghahn, 2022.
Multaka. Treffpunkt Museum. https://multaka.de
Willert, Sebastian. "The Invention of ‘National Antiquities’ in the Late Ottoman Empire.
Archaeological Interrelations between Discourses of Appropriation, Preservation and Heritage
Construction." Diyâr. Zeitschrift für Osmanistik, Türkei- und Nahostforschung / Journal of
Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern studies 2, no. 2 (2021): 304–328. close
15 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Tue, 2024-10-22 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-10-29 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-11-05 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-11-12 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-11-19 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-11-26 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-12-03 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-12-10 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2024-12-17 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2025-01-07 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2025-01-14 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2025-01-21 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2025-01-28 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2025-02-04 10:00 - 12:00
Tue, 2025-02-11 10:00 - 12:00