Objects from Borneo in the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations Halle

The Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations was conceived and designed in the years 1736-41. It can be visited today in its original location in the lower part of the mansard roof of the Historic Orphanage. The Cabinet is important for the history of the museum as it is the only surviving cabinet of curiosities of civil origin from the early modern era, complete with its setting of objects, cabinets, historical inventories, and instructions. Following on the Pietist missionary activities in eighteenth-century South India, the Francke Foundations director Hermann Agathon Niemeyer (1802-1851) decided to send Heinrich Julius Berger (1800-1845) and Johann Michael Carl Hupe (1818-1861) to Borneo as missionaries via the Rheinische Missionswerk. Part of their mission was to acquire objects and send them back to Halle, following the practice of collecting artefacts and natural objects by Halle missionaries in South India during the eighteenth century. The intention was to exhibit these as publicly visible testimony of the continuation of missionary activities in the ensemble of the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities. For this purpose, a new display cabinet was made to hold the objects. Approximately 110 objects from Borneo were sent to Halle during the 1840s. They were (and are) displayed in the cabinet itself and on the outside walls. From the very beginning, the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities has been open to visitors and was accessible as museum.

The project, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, is part of the research field ›Knowledge and Objects from Colonial Contexts‹ from the period before 1884. It aims to contribute to the historical deep structure of the relations between colonialism, missionary activities, and collecting practices; and will focus on connections between the corresponding activities of the eighteenth century and the institutional continuity in the nineteenth century. The project will study the provenance of the objects, determine their original purposes, examine and expand information on them, and describe the use and reinterpretation of these objects in Halle. In addition, the presentation of the societies of origin will be studied as well as the question of whether the people of Borneo themselves had their say, whether their voice was heard and, if so, in what form and in what style. Cooperation with several institutions, particularly in the Sarawak region, is planned. The project will result in a digital exhibition that makes the research results transparent, understandable, and multilingual freely accessible.