Berge Versetzen aims at restituting the summit stone of Mount Kilimanjaro, which colonial geographer Hans Meyer took from the highest mountain range of the African continent to Germany in 1889. For this purpose, the artist group PARA invites the public to purchase replicas of the mountain peak, which will be produced at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig and sold as part of this crowdfunding campaign.
The proceeds from the sold replicas will be used to return the summit stone. To raise the stakes,
PARA has removed the top six centimeters of the Zugspitze. The Zugspitze is the hostage in the process of repatriation. Only when the summit stone of Kilimanjaro has returned to Tansania will the top of the Zugspitze also be put back in its place.
✕ Moving Mountains
In 1889, Leipzig colonial geographer Hans Meyer undertook an expedition to the Kilimanjaro-massif in present-day Tanzania, which was then part of the German East Africa colony. During the trip, Meyer removed the top of the highest African mountain and renamed it Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze (‘Kaiser Wilhelm Peak’). The summit stone was sawn into two parts. Meyer gifted one half to the German Emperor Wilhelm II, who had it mounted in the New Palace (Neues Palais) in Potsdam. These days, it is considered lost. Meyer's inheritors sold the other half to an Austrian antiquarian.
With a view to returning the summit stone, PARA, in its exhibition Berge Versetzen, invites the public to strip away the building fabric of the GRASSI Museum through performative acts and to produce replicas of the stone using the material obtained. These can be purchased at the exhibition and on this website. The proceeds of the sold replicas will help repurchase the actual summit stone from the antiquarian’s inventory at cost price. The ethnographic museum housing the looted objects of colonised societies will thus become the raw material for the restitution.
Do you have scruples? Take a weight off your conscience! Write yourselves into the history of the return of Kilimanjaro’s summit stone, be part of the participative restitution! Support the crowdfunding by buying a replica of the summit stone for 25 €.
Credits:
BERGE VERSETZEN is a collaboration between PARA (Peter Behrbohm, Lina Brion, Jonas Fischer, Josephine Hans, Amelie Neumann, Vanessa Opoku, Philipp Röding, Anselm Schenkluhn, Bastian Sistig, Kolja Vennewald and Joy Weinberger) and the artists Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani.
Narrator: Tale Al-Deen
Sound design: Philipp Waltinger
Textile design: Henrike Schmitz
Graphic design: Insa Deist & Hjördis Lyn Behncken
Website: Kolja Warnecke
Sound engineering: Jason Langheim
Voice recordings: studio lärm
Production: Julia Klinkert
Music: Philipp Waltinger
Photography / Film: Jonas Fischer & Peter Behrbohm
Funded as part of the Initiative for Ethnological Collections of the German Federal Cultural Foundation