Press Release No Humboldt 21! of the Campaign Alliance (Initiative Black People in Germany, glokal, BER, Africavenir, Afrotak, Berlin Postcolonial, Artefakte/Anti-Humboldt)

Campaign calls for moratorium on Humboldt Forum in Berlin Palace

Berlin, June 6, 2013. A broad alliance of 40 civil society organizations is calling for the suspension of work on the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace. “The present concept violates the dignity and property rights of people in all parts of the world, and is Eurocentric and restorative,” said Tahir Della of the Initiative Black People in Germany. In an appeal, the campaign alliance No Humboldt 21! calls not only for a moratorium but also for a broad public debate on the Humboldt Forum, whose foundation stone laying ceremony is scheduled for June 12.

The Humboldt Forum will display Berlin’s ethnological collections, most of which came to Berlin in connection with colonial conquests. “Dialogue must be sought with the descendants of the creators and rightful owners of the exhibits about the future whereabouts of looted art and colonial looted property,” says Christian Kopp of Berlin Postkolonial. Their exhibition in the reconstructed castle of the Hohenzollerns, who were mainly responsible for German colonialism and cultural theft, is rejected by the campaign alliance as disrespect towards the victims and their descendants.

With the help of objects from all over the world, many of which are centuries old, the supposedly “foreign” and “other” is staged in the Humboldt Forum and juxtaposed with the extensive collections of European art on Berlin’s Museum Island. “The Humboldt Forum is contrary to the claim of equal coexistence in the migration society,” says Michael Küppers-Adebisi of Afrotak TV cyberNomads.

The campaign alliance – consisting of cultural and developmental, migrant-diasporic as well as international non-governmental organizations – will express its fundamental criticism of the Humboldt Forum with various events starting in the fall.

The entire call can be found at:
www.no-humboldt21.de

Online support at: www.no-humboldt21.de/support

E-mail: info@no-humboldt21.de

Press contacts:

Tahir Della (Initiative Black People in Germany e.V.) Tel 015254217327

Christian Kopp (Berlin Postkolonial e.V.) Tel. 030-40059048, 01799100976

Michael Küppers Adebisi (AFROTAK TV cyberNomads) Tel. 01779357723