Abstract
The Humboldt Forum was opened in Berlin in the fall of 2021. The collections of the Ethnological Museum, containing mainly exhibits from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, as well as the collections of the Museum of Asian Art, were moved from Dahlem to the newly reconstructed building of the former royal palace.
Many objects on display were obtained in more or less transparent ways during the period of colonialism, in which the then German Empire also actively participated. According to the management of the museum, the curators of permanent and short-term exhibitions tried to balance the legacy of the colonial era and reflect contemporary discourse about the problematic past of the European museums.
However, the authors of the text question whether the effort to come to terms with the past and to open an intercultural dialogue can be considered successful in this case, or whether the Humboldt Forum is following in the footsteps of the ethnological museums of the 19th and a large part of the 20th century, where Europeans used to go to look at "exotic" objects and where, among other things, the construction of the European colonial imagination took place.