How can the benefits for societies of origin be increased?
By Hansjörg Dilger/Maike Schimanowski/Thomas Fues/Andreas Mehler (23 September 2025)
Complete text in English:
Vollständiger Text auf Deutsch:
The online portal ‘Collections from Colonial Contexts (CCC)’ of the German Digital Library (DDB) aims to create, in the short term, centralised and transparent access to information already available in digital form from German museums and other institutions with ‘collections’ or holdings of cultural belongings, such as universities, libraries and missionary societies.
Who uses the portal in the societies of origin?
Experience to date suggests that the portal has so far been little used by actors from the contexts of origin and other countries of the so-called Global South and their diasporic communities. To shed more light on this issue, we sent written surveys to both the DDB as the provider and German and international academics as (potential) users.
Preliminary findings
Our non-representative survey seems to confirm the impression that the DDB portal is not yet well known among target groups from the countries of origin. Fundamentally, the question arises as to whether the model for the centralised recording of all cultural belongings from colonial contexts stored in Germany meets the needs and possibilities for action of the communities of origin. After all, this is what the attempt to publicise and repatriate colonially appropriated ancestral remains and cultural belongings is all about.
Our recommendations
The (fragmentary) findings from our survey lead us to the following recommendations for action for the further development of the DDB portal:
Governance structure: We see the establishment of a pluralistic governance structure, for example through an international advisory board with the participation of civil society and academia from countries of origin and Germany, as a decisive factor in increasing the attractiveness and use of the portal by the target groups. The experiences of the ‘Colonial Contexts’ Advisory Board at the German Foundation for Lost Cultural Property could be evaluated for this purpose. Its members include Prof. Kokou Azamede (University of Lomé, Togo), Prof. Albert Gouaffo (University of Dschang, Cameroon) and Tahir Della (Initiative of Black People in Germany).
Restitution fund: In order to strengthen the credibility of Germany’s reappraisal of its own colonial history and to support the restitution efforts of local communities and governments, the Federal Government should establish a restitution fund and provide it with adequate financial resources. The government’s draft federal budget for 2026 does not indicate any steps in this direction. On the contrary, the budget item ‘Global South/Reappraisal of Colonialism’ in the budget of the Minister of State for Culture and Media (BKM) is to be reduced from €2 million for 2025 to €500,000 for 2026.
Outreach: As suggested by users from countries of origin, but also from Germany itself, the German Digital Library should be provided with additional funds to formulate and implement a strategy for better promoting the portal among target groups, in cooperation with German and international intermediary organisations. The Goethe Institute’s offices abroad could play a central role in the implementation of this strategy. Consideration should also be given to other effective forms of outreach to spread awareness of the DDB portal – and the whereabouts of cultural belongings in Germany – among potential users, e.g. via apps, gaming platforms or targeted multiplier workshops.