Until April 19, 2026, the Museum Wiesbaden is presenting the results of its in-house provenance research on the collections from the former German colony in Cameroon with the study exhibition "Spearheads of Memory". On the one hand, it deals with the acquisition paths of the objects and the collectors behind them, but also with the question of how colonial heritage is dealt with from the perspective of present-day Cameroon.

Tens of thousands of objects from the former colonies are stored in numerous museums in Germany. Collected by explorers, traders, soldiers and tourists, they reflect the interest in the wide world outside Europe, in foreign and exotic places in a time long before mass media and generally accessible education. On the other hand, however, many of these pieces are the result of conquest, exploitation and racist ignorance, in which the colonizers were indifferent as to whether the acquired items were rightly taken from the property of the societies of origin.

The study exhibition presents the ethnological and natural history collections that the collectors Justo Weiler and Carl Feldmann handed over to the Museum Wiesbaden in the first half of the 20th century. As members of large plantation companies, they were involved in the colonial economic structures and collected items from Cameroon for various reasons. The collections are being catalogued as part of a package of measures by the Hessian state government, which is supporting not only the relevant provenance research, but also its effective communication to the public by setting up a coordination office for the processing of collections from colonial contexts at the Hessian state institutions based at the Museum Wiesbaden.

At the same time, the Museum Wiesbaden is cooperating with Dr. Moris Samen and the association dekasa e.V. Through the link with the Cameroonian diaspora and an accompanying program with workshops and special tours, the exhibition is intended to contribute to making the museum not only a place of encounter with art and nature, but also a place of encounter between people and cultures.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Alfred Weigle Foundation. hr2 is a cultural partner.

There is an accompanying program with workshops, special tours and evening lectures.