“A Feast!”, call Anna-Maria Brandstetter and pulls, laughing, the green party hats from the display Cabinet. Brandstetter is in the basement of the Institute for Ethnology and African studies, Mainz Johannes-Gutenberg-University, whose ethnographic study of the collection she curates. After partying it looks down here in the basement of the Institute, at first glance, however.

Anna Vollmer

volunteer.

F. A. Z.

First, if you look closer is to see what is stored here. In boxes, and nondescript wooden cabinets are, a little disordered, objects and documents from twelve African countries, which were distributed on the occasion of the annual independence celebrations, and sold-Teepäckchen, bottle caps, cups, for example, the Fifty-year anniversary of the Ghanaian independence was not committed.

guess online should be well-known

This was in 2007. On this occasion, Carola Lentz, Professor began at the Institute, closer to the independence celebrations to deal with various African countries. In 2010, she went with a group of students and graduate students to field research in nine African countries. The objects, photographs and documents, which the group collected on this trip, form the Basis of the archive which is expanded at the Moment, although systematically, according to Brandstetter but still not completed needs to be: “If a colleague or a colleague, or students travel in one of the countries, and national celebrations would be, we will ask you to enter something for the archive to bring.”

Approximately ten years of Work and research projects dealt with the archive, the last run in the past year.

The Institute is keen to make his treasure in the cellar known, therefore, there is also a comprehensive presentation of the collection in the Internet. “An archive that nobody knows, has no Benefit,” says Marie-Christin Gabriel. She was already at the first excursion of 2010, and until last year, employee of the Institute.

her master’s thesis she wrote about the independence celebrations in Benin; for her doctorate she worked for many years in Burkina Faso. There you be surprised, says Gabriel, that one was studying in Germany, with the theme, am very about it. “The Interesting thing about the archive is that it is to our Knowledge the only one of its kind,” says Brandstetter. Also in Ghana, or Benin, something non-existent so. Just as in Germany, to your knowledge, there is no archive to the celebrations of the German national holiday on 3. October give. The exhibits she liked particularly well, because they are so true to life, says Brandstetter. “This is the culture of everyday life! Who collects such things? But this is just Exciting!“

Also on a cardboard cone you can finally tell much. “So commonplace these things are, they are also very special, because they contribute to the Constitution of Nation and state,” says Gabriel. The party hat was one of her favorite pieces: “it comes from Madagascar, and there is the special that the national celebration is always a big family celebration. It is cooked and baked, visited friends. A symbol is the party hat.“