"3-road strategy on the documentation and digital publication of collections from colonial contexts held in Germany"

On 14 October 2020, the Federal Minister of State for Culture and the Media, Monika Grütters, the Federal Foreign Office Minister of State for International Cultural Policy, Andreas Görgen, the Cultural Affairs Ministers of the Länder and the municipal umbrella organisations have agreed on a strategy for the documentation and digital publication of collections from colonial contexts held in Germany.

The agreed measures include the creation of a central access to collections from colonial contexts that have already been published digitally, the basic digitisation and digital publication of still unpublished collections from colonial contexts in a central data repository, and the development of standards devised in collaboration with countries and societies of origin as well as the diaspora in Germany.

The point of departure of the "3-road strategy" are the "Areas of activity and objectives" defined in the "Framework Principles for dealing with collections from colonial contexts" (the "Framework Principles") which were agreed on 13 March 2019 by the Federal Minister of State for Culture and the Media, the Federal Foreign Office Minister of State for International Cultural Policy, the Cultural Affairs Ministers of the Länder and the municipal umbrella organisations. The "3-road strategy" is initially to be tried out in a pilot phase with selected institutions, including scientific collections. The implementation of the "3-road strategy" is to be steered by the Federation-Länder Working Group, which will be supported by German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts.

The document of the "3-road strategy" can be accessed here.

Pilot phase of the "3-road strategy"

The information about collections from colonial contexts of 25 German institutions will soon be searchable through one central website under an agreement reached by representatives of the German Federal Government, Länder governments and municipal umbrella organisations together with the institutions in question, the consortium partners of the German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek ("German Digital Library", DDB).

More information can be accessed here.