Colonial Exhibition in the Museum of Ethnology

This report on the first exhibition to be mounted in the museum’s new building was published in early June 1912 in the “Hamburger Woche”. On the occasion of the German Colonial Society annual meeting, the museum displayed the collection of objects acquired on the Hamburg South Seas Expedition, the Inner-Africa Expedition of Duke Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg, and the East Africa Expedition led by Erich Obst for the Hamburg Geographical Society. In contrast to the showrooms that opened beginning in 1915, this exhibition featured numerous life-sized figures sets, individually or in groups, in embellished scenes. The intention was to present the populations encountered by the expedition members in an seemingly “lifelike” way.