Museum Berlin Research Articles

“Goodbye Mshatta”: Connections and Disconnections on Berlin's Museum Island

AbstractThis essay is concerned with a contemporary art intervention in Berlin's Museum of Islamic Art, in the context of the Mshatta Façade's move. Sketching out Mshatta's relocation history, the essay highlights how the dynamic of connection and disconnection plays out in a museum setting and is embedded in epistemic concepts mobilized in knowledge-making about objects. Specifically, it focuses on an installation entitled “Goodbye Mschatta. Ich bin ein Fremder. Zweifach Fremder” (“Goodbye Mshatta. I Am a Stranger: Twofold a Stranger”), by a Syrian-born German visual artist who was commissioned to bid farewell to the Façade in its most recent location before it moves to the Pergamon Museum's north wing. Entering into a dialogue with Mshatta, his sculptural intervention pivoted around the themes of incompleteness, mélange, and in-betweenness. It revealed multiple connections and disconnections with regard to the Façade’s biography, while ostensibly disengaging from the debate on historical justice and imperial legacies.

Un exemplaire inédit de menotte conservé au Musée de Berlin (ÄM 15130)

This brief communication concerns a published wooden manacle* kept at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin. The object, of unknown provenance, entered in the Museum collection in 1900 through a purchase made by L. Borchardt from the antiquities dealer Butros Abd el Melek of Qena. The manacle bears on both sides a one-line hieroglyphic inscription, giving the name and title of its possible owner: Nebamon ‘The soldier of the company of Pharaoh’. In order to better understand the function and use of the analysed artefact, a comparison with the available visual and written documentation is offered. Concerning the date, all of the information gathered points toward the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

New insights into 1918 flu pandemic from samples in a Berlin museum

New insights into 1918 flu pandemic from samples in a Berlin museum

Catastrophic Art

AbstractThis article is a transdisciplinary inquiry into catastrophic art—artworks whose worlds the empires destroyed and brutally deported to the imperial metropoles. At issue is the impossibility of seeing and speaking of catastrophic art, without at the same time speaking of both systems of knowledge and life forms and of the colonial inheritance and epistemicide. The article follows various historical events, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor's encounter with African art in Paris after World War I and the British colonial destruction of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897; turns to a conference held at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin in 2018; and disturbs Emmanuel Macron's 2017 speech at the University of Ouagadougou and the 2018 French presidential report on restitution. It shows how provenance exhibits epistemicide as it restitutes “looted” art to colonial beneficiaries, and how the incalculability of catastrophic art is to be found in hospitality.

Ferdinand Tessendorff (1879–1924) and his Hieracium collection

The Hieracium (Compositae: Cichorieae) collection of Ferdinand Tessendorff (1879–1924) was recently located in the backlog of the Botanical Museum Berlin. It comprises 565 specimens, including several types, which have now been incorporated into the general herbarium. A digest of the life and work of Tessendorff, a high school teacher and amateur botanist in Berlin, is presented. The status of the 11 type specimens present in the collection is discussed, their taxonomy is assessed, new synonymies are proposed and four names are lectotypified. Citation: Vogt R. & Gottschlich G. 2022: Ferdinand Tessendorff (1879–1924) and his Hieracium collection. – Willdenowia 52: 83–90. Version of record first published online on 21 March 2022 ahead of inclusion in April 2022 issue.

Audiface Diotallevi e Gustav Friedrich Waagen: il carteggio per l’acquisto della Madonna di Raffaello e della Natività di Luini per il museo di Berlino (1841–1842)

Abstract The archive of the Diotallevi family preserves a folder of unpublished letters concerning the purchase of the so-called Diotallevi Madonna by Raphael and a Nativity by Bernardino Luini for the Berlin Gemäldegalerie, which in the Diotallevi collection had been misattributed to Perugino and Garofalo, respectively. The correspondence between the art collector Audiface Diotallevi and Gustav Friedrich Waagen, director of the Berlin museum, documents protracted negotiations during which both buyer and seller politely bargained for advantage. Whilst Diotallevi was keen to bolster the reputation of his collection by the prestigious sale of the two paintings to the Berlin museum, Waagen did his best not to reveal his belief in Raphael’s authorship of the Diotallevi Madonna. The two paintings, reserved for Waagen since December 1841, eventually left Rimini in April 1842, and were sent to Berlin via Rome.

Altering the Meaning of Remembrance: The Influence of Resurgent Nazi Perpetrators on the Jewish Museum Berlin

Altering the Meaning of Remembrance: The Influence of Resurgent Nazi Perpetrators on the Jewish Museum Berlin

ДИПТИХ ИЗ МУРАНО – ВИЗАНТИЙСКИЙ ОКЛАД VI ВЕКА

The paper is dedicated to the ivory cover, commonly referred to in scholarship as the Murano diptych. The name, alluding to one of the Vene- tian islands, derives from an 18 th -century historic record attesting the presence of one of the sides of the cover in a Murano monastery. This part of the diptych was later brought to Ravenna and today is on display at the Ravenna National Museum. The fragments of the other side of the diptych are dispersed among various museum and library collections in Manchester, Paris, Berlin, and Saint Petersburg. Notwithstanding the scattered location of the ivory, it is possible to reconstruct its constituent elements and original decoration. Besides offering a detailed analysis of the surviving fragments, this paper focuses on the overall iconographic program and formal characteristics of the diptych, and studies its reliefs in light of late antique ivory carving and church decoration. It is argued that late antique ivories represent an important source of information concerning the use of apocryphal imagery in monumental art, enabling us to reconstruct the imagery of early Byzantine narrative cycles.

Коллекция артефактов А. Коссниерской Берлинского музея древней истории и новые материалы некрополя «Адайдон» кобанской культуры в Северной Осетии - Алании

Рецензируемые научные журналы МГОУ. Журналы МГОУ входящие в перечень ВАК: География, История, Международные отношения, Политология, Лингвистика, Педагогика, Психология, Филология, Физика-математика, Философия, Экономика, Юриспруденция

민속품과 미술품 사이에서 : 뮌헨 오대륙박물관과 노르베르트 베버의 1926년 기증품

Museum Five Continents in Munich originates from the royal ethnographic collection of non-European World established by the Wittelsbachs, the ruling house of Bavaria. The appointment of the 3rd Director Lucian Scherman in 1907 marked a turning point for the Museum of Ethnology, which is named Museum Five Continents since 2014. This caused an explosive increase in the number of collections, visitors and acclaimed exhibitions. In the expansion of its Korean collection, a gift in the spring of 1926 made by Norbert Weber, archabbot of the Missionary Benedictines in St. Ottilien, who visited Korea a second time and purchased Korean artifacts in 1925, played such a crucial role. Weber became a special adviser with his expert knowledge and experiences of Korean culture for Scherman, who evaluated his travel book, Im Lande der Morgenstille (in the Land of Morning Calm) published the first edition in 1915, as one of the most important standard works for Korea. The stereoscope pictures, which were founded at the archive of Museum Five Continents in the Summer of 2021, based on Weber’s Korean photos. They might have vividly conveyed the Korean people in ordinary clothing, everyday life, and religion, before the eyes of German visitors to the Munich Museum using a modern visual technique. The correspondence between Scherman and Weber suggests that their relationship did not remain as a personal acquaintance but also enriched the exhibitions of the Munich Ethnological Museum.<BR> Furthermore, in the early 20th century when Scherman started in his role as museum director, avant-garde artists such as Blauer Reiter (Blue Rider) began to find their artistic inspiration at the ethnological museums. As art historian Wilhelm von Bode’s Plan and the Berliner Museumskrieg (Berlin Museum War) illustrated, there was a tendency to separate the artworks from the ethnographic collections. However, Scherman, who understood one specific culture as an organic synthesis of folklore articles, arts and crafts and artworks in that region, stayed away from the rearrangement of museum exhibits in Berlin. In addition, he insisted that the role of the Museum of Ethnology in Munich was to promote the aesthetic taste of the public and guide the artists and craftsmen. Consequently, by resisting to divide high culture and the primitives Scherman deviated from the colonial ideology permeated in many ethnological museums in Germany. In this respect, the ethnographica Weber purchased his second trip to Korea and donated to the Museum, were primarily ceramics, such as celadon, responses Scherman’s ideal, collecting not only daily necessities, also the unique artworks which are able to show Korean culture in the reopening of the Museum of Ethnology in the Maximilian street. Notwithstanding, the lack of detailed explanations of the Korean collections or then contemporary criticism of Weber’s donation apparently demonstrates the German’s indifferences towards Korea. Such a phenomenon was caused by the late opening of Korea to foreign countries, in comparison with other eastern Asian neighbours, the absence of valuable antique art under the censorship of the Japanese government in Seoul, and the short stay of German art historians and researchers in Korea. It is hoped that Weber’s collection, which is still silent in the dark storage in Museum Five Continents, discovers a way out as it presents a harmonious combination of ethnology and art under Scherman’s tradition.

(118) Proposal to amend Article 41.5 and add an Example clarifying requirements for referring to a basionym or replaced synonym

“41.5. On or after 1 January 1953, a new combination, name at new rank, or replacement name is not validly published unless its basionym or replaced synonym is clearly indicated and a full and direct reference given to its author and place of valid publication, with page or plate reference and date (but see Art. 41.6 and 41.8). Valid publication is not achieved by reference to a new combination based on the actual basionym or replaced synonym (but see Art. 41.8), unless that new combination is the illegitimate name being replaced by a replacement name. On or after 1 January 2007, a new combination, name at new rank, or replacement name is not validly published unless its basionym or replaced synonym is cited.” “Ex. 16bis. The intended replacement name “Hemionitis atreyu” was not validly published by Christenhusz (in Christenhusz & al., Global Fl. 4: 10. 2018) because that author made no reference to the replaced synonym, Pteris acrostica Balb. (Elenco: 98. 1801), instead citing “Cheilanthes acrostica Tod., Giorn. Sci. Nat. Econ. Palermo 1: 215. 1866”, which is in fact a new combination, C. acrostica (Balb.) Tod., based on P. acrostica, which Todaro explicitly cited as the basionym.” The proposed amendments to Art. 41 of the Code (Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018) were initiated due to the nomenclatural case of “Hemionitis atreyu” Christenh. proposed as a replacement name (Christenhusz, l.c.). Mosyakin (in Phytotaxa 373: 164–168. 2018) initially considered it not to be a validly published name because Christenhusz did not cite the earliest replaced synonym, Pteris acrostica, and its author and place of valid publication, but cited instead a new combination, Cheilanthes acrostica, based on P. acrostica. Mosyakin (l.c.) also noted that in fact a new combination, H. acrostica (Balb.) Mosyakin (l.c. 2018: 165), not a replacement name, was required. However, in IPNI (https://www.ipni.org; accessed 30 Oct 2018 and 2 Mar 2021) the name Hemionitis atreyu was treated as an illegitimate name: “nom. illeg. nom. superfl., the epithet acrostica was available for use and should have been taken up as H. acrosticha Noronha is a nom. inval. nom. nud.” The following remark was also provided: “Although Christenh. cited a combination and not the earliest homotypic synonym, since it is a replaced synonym (not a basionym) the replacement name is nevertheless validly published” (updated nomenclatural notes made on 2018-10-26 16:25:24.0, by H.L. Lindon, as indicated in IPNI). Indeed, there seems to be no rule in the current Shenzhen Code to preclude a replaced synonym being a new combination. Accordingly, the IPNI interpretation of the situation seems to be correct and therefore Hemionitis atreyu is a validly published but illegitimate name (see a correction by Mosyakin in Phytotaxa 405: 276–277. 2019). If we accept that interpretation, a full and direct reference to any new combination based on the actual replaced synonym (i.e. without a basionym) would be sufficient for valid publication of a replacement name on or after 1 January 1953. Hemionitis atreyu could have been validated by a full and direct reference to any of the new combinations based on Pteris acrostica: Cheilanthes acrostica, Allosorus acrosticus (Balb.) Christenh., Oeosporangium acrosticum (Balb.) L. Sáez & P. Aymerich, etc. (see full synonymy in Mosyakin, l.c. 2018: 165). This interpretation, however, is against what one could presume to be the intent or meaning of Art. 41.5 requiring, for valid publication of a replacement name on or after 1 January 1953, the clear indication of the actual replaced synonym, i.e. either the earliest replaced synonym – but not new combinations based on it (but see Art. 41.8) – or the actual illegitimate name in need of replacement, and a full and direct reference to its author(s) and place of valid publication, by analogy with corresponding requirements for valid publication of a new combination or name at new rank, which requires clear indication of and reference to its basionym, which does not itself have a basionym (see Art. 6.9). It would be only logical to apply the same requirements to new combinations, names at new rank and replacement names. I am grateful to John McNeill (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. & Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and Kanchi N. Gandhi (Harvard University Herbaria and Library, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.) for their advice on nomenclatural issues and to Nicholas J. Turland (Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany) and John H. Wiersema (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) for their useful comments on the manuscript and many editorial improvements.

(127–135) Proposals to add new Provisions and Recommendations to Division III of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants related to virtual participation in the Nomenclature Section

A Special-purpose Committee on Virtual Participation in the Nomenclature Section (NS) was established at the XIX International Botanical Congress in Shenzhen, China in 2017 (Wilson in Taxon 68: 160–162. 2019). The mandate of this Special-purpose Committee is “to investigate the possibility of and mechanisms for virtual participation and voting in the Nomenclature Section of an International Botanical Congress via the internet”. After discussing the concepts of virtual participation and voting, we have arrived at various suggestions, which are discussed in the accompanying report of the Committee (Landrum & al. in Taxon 70: 1399–1401. 2021). We realize that virtual or online participation in the NS would be a significant change to the International Code of nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (Code, Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018) and can only be accepted as a change after its feasibility has been proven. Therefore, we are proposing that a trial be conducted at the NS of the next International Botanical Congress. Nevertheless, we are formally proposing additions to Div. III of the Code that can be considered near the end of the NS if the trial proves successful. “4.new1. Interested individuals or groups are to be able to observe the Nomenclature Section of an International Botanical Congress online on the World Wide Web. The Organizing Committee of the International Botanical Congress in consultation with the Bureau of Nomenclature are together responsible for ensuring that this is implemented.” “4.new2. Individuals or groups without voting rights observing the Nomenclature Section online on the World Wide Web will not be charged for this service, or a small fee will be set at the discretion of the Organizing Committee of the International Botanical Congress in consultation with the Bureau of Nomenclature.” “4.new3. Registered members of the Nomenclature Section (with voting rights) attending online on the World Wide Web (online members) will pay fees similar to those that they would pay if they attended in person.” “4.new4. Individuals desiring to be online members of the Nomenclature Section will register their intention to participate in advance of the Nomenclature Section, by a date to be determined by the Organizing Committee of the International Botanical Congress in consultation with the Bureau of Nomenclature.” “5.new1. Online members of the Nomenclature Section may accumulate and cast institutional votes just as in-person members (see Prov. 5.9(b)).” “Recommendation 1. The Nomenclature Section should take place in a country and place where broadcasting the Nomenclature Section on the web is possible and allowed.” “Recommendation 2. Local groups of non-voting observers, and members (online and in-person), of the Nomenclature Section are encouraged to meet together before and during the Section to facilitate discussion of proposals, including the results of the preliminary guiding vote (see Prov. 2.5).” “Recommendation 3. When proposals or amendments to proposals are introduced during the Nomenclature Section without having been published beforehand, voting on them should be delayed, to alert members (online and in-person) who may not be present for the whole Section.” “Recommendation 4. Written recognition for participation in the Nomenclature Section should be provided to members (online and in-person) by the Organizing Committee of the International Botanical Congress.” We thank Nicholas J. Turland (B; Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) and John H. Wiersema (US; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) for their useful comments and suggestions to improve these proposals.

(091–092) Proposals to amend Recommendation 7A on deposition of type material in institutions of countries of origin, and to add a new Recommendation 51A regarding avoiding potentially inappropriate or unacceptable names of taxa

(091–092) Proposals to amend Recommendation <scp>7A</scp> on deposition of type material in institutions of countries of origin, and to add a new Recommendation <scp>51A</scp> regarding avoiding potentially inappropriate or unacceptable names of taxa

(126) Proposal to add a new Article 61.6 to permanently and retroactively eliminate epithets with the root caf[e]r‐ or caff[e]r‐ from the nomenclature of algae, fungi and plants

(126) Proposal to add a new Article 61.6 to permanently and retroactively eliminate epithets with the root <i>caf[e]r‐</i> or <i>caff[e]r‐</i> from the nomenclature of algae, fungi and plants

Whose Museum Is It? Jewish Museums and Indigenous Theory

AbstractAre museums places about a community or for the community? This article addresses this question by bringing into conversation Jewish museums and Indigenous museum theory, with special attention paid to two major institutions: the Jewish Museum Berlin and the National Museum of the American Indian. The JMB’s exhibitions and the controversies surrounding them, I contend, allow us to see the limits of rhetorical sovereignty, namely the ability and right of a community to determine the narrative. The comparison between Indigenous and Jewish museal practices is grounded in the idea of multidirectional memory. Stories of origins in museums, foundational to a community’s self-understanding, are analyzed as expressions of rhetorical sovereignty. The last section expands the discussion to the public sphere by looking at the debates that led to the resignation of Peter Schäfer, the JMB’s former director, following a series of events that were construed as anti-Israeli and hence, so was the argument, anti-Jewish. These claims are based on two narrow conceptions: First, that of the source community that makes a claim for the museum. Second, on the equation of Jewishness with a pro-Israeli stance. Taken together, the presentation of origins and the public debate show the limits of rhetorical sovereignty by exposing the contested dynamics of community claims. Ultimately, I suggest, museums should be seen not only as a site for contestation about communal voice, but as a space for constituting the community.

Growing into epistemic knowledge through performance: Rosanna Raymond’s “Soli I Tai—Soli I Uta” at Berlin’s Ethnological Museum

AbstractThis article explores Rosanna Raymond’s performative intervention titled “Soli I Tai—Soli I Uta” (Tread on the Sea—Tread on the Land). Today, many cultural institutions try to develop progressive strategies to facilitate “intercultural dialogue.” In this endeavor, performative strategies are explored, some of which are developed in collaboration with experts from so‐called “source communities.” Such collaborations have longer histories in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, or Canada. In central Europe, and especially in Germany, this has been a more recent development. One prominent example is the one‐month artist residency of the Pacific artist Rosanna Raymond (b. 1967) at the Ethnological Museum Berlin in 2014, which culminated in her “acti.VA.tion” entitled “Soli I Tai—Soli I Uta.” My article analyzes how Raymond’s performative intervention dramaturgically put different epistemic systems and “ways of knowing” into a contrasting relationship and thus enabled spectators to gain declarative epistemic knowledge, that is to say, knowledge about knowledge and different “ways of knowing.”

Redescription and Molecular Characterization of Pachysentis canicola Meyer, 1931 (Acanthocephala: Oligacanthorhynchidae) from the Maned Wolf, Chrysocyon brachyurus (Illiger, 1815) in Texas.

The original description of Pachysentis canicola Meyer, 1931 was based on an unknown number of specimens from an undetermined species of Canis in Brazil from the Berlin Museum. It has since been reported from other carnivores in South and North America. Our specimens from the maned wolf, Chrysocyon brachyurus (Illiger, 1815), in Texas, represent a new host record, and has shed more light on morphometric characteristics missing from the original description, and expanded the range of variations in characters that remained fixed since 1931 and that have been repeated in other taxonomic accounts. We have found additional specimens in striped skunk, Mephitis mephitis Schreber, also in Texas. We have performed metal analysis on hooks using EDXA (energy dispersive X-ray analysis). Sequences for the 18S gene and ITS1-5.8-ITS2 region of rDNA were generated to molecularly characterize the species for the first time. Worms with a massive trunk and a globular proboscis with prominent dome-like apical organ and 12 irregular spiral rows of 4-5 hooks deeply embedded in cuticular folds each, totaling 48-60 hooks. We have included line drawings of the male and female reproductive systems, among other structures, also missing from the original and subsequent descriptions. We describe a new population of P. canicola from Texas and report on the metal analysis of its hooks using EDXA. We also assess the phylogenetic position of P. canicola supporting its independent status in the family Oligacanthorhynchidae, inferred from the two molecular markers. This is the foremost molecular characterization of any species of Pachysentis and will provide significant insights and reference for future molecular study of species of Pachysentis, especially from this newly described Texas population.

Zur Frage der Provenienz

Abstract The question of provenance can have very different implications in different disciplines. In the case of archaeological objects, the finding spot of an object provides us with information about the objectʼs original meaning and function. If the excavation is illegal, those involved in illicit antiquities tend to cancel any trace of their action that could be used as proof of the crime. This leads to a systematic destruction of information: when the objects appear on the market they seem to come out of nowhere; it is exactly this loss of contextual information (and not the problem of ownership) that makes illegal excavation intolerable from a scholarly perspective. My test case is a Greek archaic statue acquired by the Berlin Museum in 1925: it had been heavily damaged in order to facilitate its smuggling out of Greece and then carefully restored in order to promote its acquisition by the museum.

Topography of Violence: Considerations for Ethical and Collaborative Visualization Design

AbstractBased on a collaborative visualization design process involving sensitive historical data and historiographical expertise, we investigate the relevance of ethical principles in visualization design. While fundamental ethical norms like truthfulness and accuracy are already well‐described and common goals in visualization design, datasets that are accompanied by specific ethical concerns need to be processed and visualized with an additional level of carefulness and thought. There has been little research on adequate visualization design incorporating such considerations. To address this gap we present insights from Topography of Violence, a visualization project with the Jewish Museum Berlin that focuses on a dataset of more than 4,500 acts of violence against Jews in Germany between 1930 and 1938. Drawing from the joint project, we develop an approach to the visualization of sensitive data, which features both conceptual and procedural considerations for visualization design. Our findings provide value for both visualization researchers and practitioners by highlighting challenges and opportunities for ethical data visualization.

Unboxed: Transgender in a Gay Museum?

<i>Unboxed: Transgender in a Gay Museum?</i>