Nils Seethaler

Nils Seethaler (* 18th August 1981 in Berlin ) is a German cultural anthropologist who deals with historical collections of ethnological objects and human remains (human remains) concerned.

Life

Nils Seethaler was born in Berlin-Lichterfelde and spent his youth in Berlin and Morschen in North Hesse. In 1999 he was a winner of the Young Literature Forum Hesse-Thuringia . After graduating from the Elisabeth Knipping School in Kassel in 2000, Seethaler studied ethnology with Georg Pfeffer and Markus Schindlbeck , literary studies with Ulrich Profitlich and Volker Mertens and political science with Fritz Vilmar and Walter Rothholz at the Free University of Berlin . Since 2012 he has coordinated the archive of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory in the Archaeological Center of the National Museums in Berlin . Seethaler is active in university and non-university teaching. He regularly gives lectures across Germany, especially on non-European art, on the history of research and collections in museums and institutes, but also on further topics in ethnology and general cultural history.

Seethaler lives and works in Berlin. He is married and has one daughter.

Research work

Seethaler was involved in numerous projects, in particular to research historical ethnological collections. In particular, this includes provenance research on human remains . In addition to investigating possible contexts of injustice in collections from the colonial and Nazi era, he researches the history, motifs and social mechanisms of collecting, especially non-European cultural goods, up to the present day. His provenance research on the skulls of indigenous Australians in the anthropological collection of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and from Australia and Namibia in the Charité collections in the Charité human remains project marked the start of a broad study of the origins of human remains in German museums and collections . This research formed a basis for the creation of a uniform guideline for dealing with human remains in public collections in Germany. In addition to his work with historical collections, he was involved in a number of interdisciplinary research at the interface between the humanities and natural sciences. In 2010 , together with Carsten Niemitz and Benjamin P. Lange, he organized the 11th Annual Conference on Human Behavior in Evolutionary Perspective (MVE) in Berlin.

Exhibition projects

Seethaler advised, organized and directed numerous museum exhibition projects on ethnological, art-historical and scientific topics, including the discovery of the individual , objects of veneration and Riemer's world . In these exhibitions, innovative ways of exhibiting ethnological objects and conveying ethnological content in museums were presented in particular. The rediscovery and redevelopment of the lost Ethnological Museum in Rostock , as well as the preservation and redesign of the Julius Riemer Collection in Lutherstadt Wittenberg (the only ethnological museum in Saxony-Anhalt ) as a museum institution is largely due to his initiative Sponsored donations from the Rainer Greschik collection .

Collection projects

Seethaler undertook various research and collection trips to Australia, the South Seas , the Orient and Europe . During these collecting trips , but especially through contacts with collectors in Europe, the USA and Australia, such as Rainer Greschik and Günter Hepe , he brought together several thousand ethnological pieces; plus a similarly extensive collection of ethnological photographs with examples from the 19th century to the present day. Objects from the collections compiled by Seethaler were sent to various museums, including the Ethnological Museum Berlin , the Museum of European Cultures , the Museum of the Municipal Collections in the Zeughaus in Lutherstadt Wittenberg , the East Prussian State Museum in Lüneburg and the Hermann Bahner - Collection in the Museum Altes Rathaus in Langen (Hesse) . They have also been the subject of scientific research by other researchers.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthias Biskupek (Ed.): Acid test 16. Texts of the Young Literature Forum Hessen-Thuringia. Suhrkampverlag, Frankfurt 1999.
2. ↑ [1] (January 5, 2019)
3. ↑ [2] (January 5, 2019)
4. ^ Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig: Accompanying program to the exhibition: Divided Earth - Shared Ground. Indigenous Australian painting and ceramics by Lotte Reimers. Duration 11.10.2013-25.05.2014. Lecture: Nils Seethaler - Contemporary Art of the Indigenous People of Australia, February 9, 2014, 4 p.m.
5. ↑ [3] (January 5, 2019)
6. ↑ [4] (January 5, 2019)
7. ^ Announcements of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. Volume 38, 2015, p. 8
8. ↑ [5] (January 5, 2019)
9. ^ HdK Halle: Program of the annual exhibition of the Burg Giebichenstein Art College Halle from 20–21. July 2013. Lecture by Nils Seethaler: Why Art? July 20, 3 p.m.
10. ↑ Irina Steinmann: Zeughaus - Berliner shows for the first time rare wooden figures of West African people. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . July 8, 2016, accessed December 30, 2018 . 
11. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost , November 23, 2019
12. ^ Irina Steinmann: Stadt-Museum Wittenberg / Expeditions into the Riemer gray area. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , May 11, 2019
13. ↑ Irina Steinmann: Nils Seethaler did research on Julius Riemer. In: Wittenberger Sonntag from May 11, 2019
14. ^ Nils Seethaler: For Virchow on the way - skull collectors in Australia. In: Communications from the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. Volume 35, 2014, pp. 79-90.
15. ^ Hilary Howes: Provenance Report. (PDF) In: www.aga.org.au. Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory (BSAEP), November 15, 2016, accessed on December 30, 2018 . 
16. ↑ Uta Kornmeier (reviewer of): Collecting and preserving, exploring and giving back - from the colonial era in academic and museum collections. In: h-net.org. H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews, April 2013, accessed December 30, 2018 . 
17. ↑ [6] (December 30, 2018)
18. ↑ [7] (accessed December 30, 2018).
19. ^ Nils Seethaler: The Charité Human Remains Project - interdisciplinary research and restitution of human remains . In: Communications of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, Volume 33, 2012, pp. 103-108.
20. ^ Matthias Glaubrecht, Nils Seethaler, Barbara Teßmann, Katrin Koel-Abt: The potential of biohistory: Re-discovering Adelbert von Chamisso's skull of an Aleut collected during the “Rurik” Expedition 1815-1818 in Alaska . Zoosystematics and Evolution 89 (2), 2013, pp. 317-336.
21. ↑ Nils Seethaler: Discrepant explanatory approaches in ethnology and evolutionary psychology to the phenomenon of the fine arts . In: Benjamin P. Lange, Sascha Schwarz: The human psyche between nature and culture . Lengerich 2015, pp. 74–82.
22. ↑ Benjamin P. Lange, Nils Seethaler: The literary flow of storm and urge from an evolutionary perspective . In: Benjamin P. Lange (Hrsg.), Sascha Schwarz (Hrsg.): The human psyche between nature and culture . Pabst Publishers, Lengerich 2015.
23. ↑ [8] (accessed December 29, 2018).
24. ↑ [9] (accessed December 29, 2018).
25. ↑ [10]
26. ↑ Rainer Greschik, Nils Seethaler (Preface): Lobi. West African sculptures from the Greschik collection. (for the exhibition “The Discovery of the Individual”) Lutherstadt Wittenberg 2016.
27. ↑ [11] (accessed December 29, 2018).
28. ↑ [12] (accessed December 29, 2018).
29. ↑ [13] (accessed December 29, 2018).
30. ↑ Rainer Greschik, Nils Seethaler (Preface): Lobi. West African sculptures from the Greschik collection. (published on the occasion of the exhibition “The Discovery of the Individual”) Lutherstadt Wittenberg 2016.
31. ↑ [14] (accessed December 30, 2018).
32. ^ Nils Seethaler: Past, present and future of magazined ethnographic collections in Germany using the example of the former Rostock Ethnographic Museum. In: Messages from the Museum Association in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern e. V. 2010. pp. 11-15.
33. ↑ [15] (accessed December 29, 2018).
34. ↑ Karina Blüthgen: Finissage in the Zeughaus: Since people have existed, things have been venerated. In: mz-web.de , April 22, 2018 (accessed December 29, 2018).
35. ^ Shahd Wari: Palestinian Berlin: Perception and Use of Public Space (dissertation). In: Habitat – International . Writings on International Urban Development, Volume 22. Lit-Verlag 2015.