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The Morgue Is Karbala, Mourning in Each Other’s Skin. Part III: Sideways Belonging

In the last part of her contribution, Mina Khanlarzadeh turns to the vernacular infrastructures through which grief travels sideways into regional mother tongues and vernacular repertoires, where belonging is rebuilt under pressure.

As Parts I and II have shown, inherited political idioms in Iran have become unreliable under the weight of state violence. Grief and refusal have therefore been rerouted into the body and, as Part III argues, into vernacular repertoires.

Wie Teil I und II zeigen, haben sich herkömmliche politische Redewendungen im Iran unter dem Druck staatlicher Gewalt als unzuverlässig erwiesen. Trauer und Verweigerung werden stattdessen durch den Körper kanalisiert und, wie in Teil III dargelegt wird, durch neue umgangssprachliche Redewendungen.


When protesters were killed on January 8 and 9, 2026, the public pointedly refused the state’s lexicon and did not call them shaheed (martyr). That displacement became even clearer in late February, when the Supreme Leader was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike and officially declared a shaheed by state media, confirming what the earlier refusal had already announced: that the word had become the establishment’s property. In many recent commemorations, those killed by the state are called jāvid-nām (everlasting name), farzand-e mihan (child of the homeland), or jān-fadā-ye mihan (one who gave their life for the homeland) instead of shaheed—a word many now feel has been captured by the state and by the founding narrative through which the Islamic Republic legitimized itself. At first glance, the turn toward mihan (homeland) can look like a simple secular-national substitution. Yet one strand of this reorientation—sharpened during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement after the killing of the Kurdish woman Jina Amini—reimagines national community laterally, through vernacular voices and mother tongues.

“Az khun-e javānān-e vatan lāleh damide” by Ashakn Goodarzi, January 2026.

The auditory life of this vernacular polyphony appears in the way music now travels across regional lines. Grief widens to include the pain of different ethnic and linguistic communities, and what the state’s nationalist imaginary once treated as regional becomes part of a shared soundscape. The Lori song “Dāya Dāya,” often linked in oral histories to resistance in Lorestan during World War I, is being resung and remixed across genres; Kurdish laments, Lori mourning rhythms and dance traditions long treated as peripheral now move to the center of public mourning. A Mazandarani dance song, “Dele Dige,” once danced at parties by many who would later be killed in the protests, now returns at their funerals as the sound accompanying grieving families across Iran. The archive widens beyond regional repertoires to older and once-policed popular songs. The early twentieth-century constitutional-era anthem “Az khun-e javānān-e vatan lāleh damide” (Tulips rise from the blood of the nation’s youth) resurfaces, as it has whenever young people are killed, and the songs of the exiled singer Dariush—now reworked by a new generation of hip hop and popular musicians—are taken up again. In this widened archive, classed hierarchies of taste are rearranged: repertoires once dismissed as too popular or unfancy become shared vocabularies of belonging and loss. What returns is not nostalgia but usable material—music that once lived in taxis and private spaces, kept outside political or cultivated public culture, now heard in new juxtapositions that make audible a changed vernacular soundscape of opposition.

This expanded archive includes newer forms of vernacular performance such as rap. The rapper Bacheh Lur (“Lur kid,” invoking Luri identity), in a video posted to Instagram in January 2026, covers his face with a scarf associated with Kurdish and Luri dress and situates himself in Khorramabad: “the mountains are tall and the valleys are deep; be careful not to fall, all of you together.” From within that swaggering warning to the state and its forces, he also names the pain of the city as inseparable from his own: “These are the pains of my city, as wide as my heart.” He recasts gharbzadegi (West-struckness) as ghamzadegi (grief-struckness): “bro calls me gharbzadeh [West-struck]; I myself have become ghamzadeh [grief-struck].” If gharbzadegi named, in Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s influential 1960s critique, a condition of alienated and imitative modernity, then this reformulation suggests that inherited idioms of social diagnosis have lost much of their explanatory grip and that grief now names the truer mark of the present.[1] Yet this grief is articulated from the mountainous world of Khorramabad, through a register in which local landscape, wounded attachment, swagger, masking, and vernacular visual codes make sorrow and defiance audible at once. The song closes with his certainty that one day he will be arrested for his singing. Defiance and its cost are held in the same breath, and when words give out, he ends the song with a scream.

Screenshots from Bacheh Lor’s Instagram video, January 2026.

What this widened archive reveals is a shift in how national belonging is being imagined. If a nation is, in Benedict Anderson’s sense, an “imagined community,” then what matters here is the way shared belonging is being reconstituted through vernacular forms rather than through the state’s sacralized script.[2] Within strands of opposition, grief travels sideways: a stranger killed by the state becomes someone I come to know through the particular forms in which their loss is carried, whether in a family’s ritual, a vernacular song, or a mother tongue. National belonging is thus practiced across difference, preserving distance even as relation is forged. In Bakhtin’s terms, the state’s centripetal drive toward a unitary official language is interrupted by the centrifugal force of socially distinct voices, idioms, and speech worlds within a single language.[3] Some of those voices are ones the government can neither speak nor claim as its own.

This vernacular reclaiming extends beyond melody and into the street’s own language, where rejection of the Islamic Republic is increasingly voiced through a profane lexicon. Since the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement, chants have circulated that use explicit curse words, insult the nāmus (honor) of officials—most often the former Supreme Leader and his office—or crudely desecrate state symbols. This lexicon ranges from culinary satire to explicitly sexualized insult, often mobilizing inherited traces of patriarchy against the state’s claims to sanctity. Its force is therefore double: it profanes the regime’s sacred self-presentation, but does so by drawing on codes in which the degradation of female kin becomes the medium of humiliation. In this context, profanity functions as an immediate weapon, valued for speed, force, and collective cadence; it strips the regime of the reverence on which its authority depends. Banned words return the way banned songs do, as collective public repertoire. A regime that claims sacred authority is dragged down into the dirt of the street, even as those forms of insult remain entangled with the very patriarchy many many protesters seek to undo.

The state’s reaction to this tonal rupture clarifies what is at stake for its self-presentation as sacred authority. In a widely circulated response, the pro-regime speaker Hesamuddin Haerizadeh describes Women, Life, Freedom movement as the moment when “fohsh sho’ār shod”—when obscene cursing became a protest slogan—chanted collectively and amplified online. He lingers on the fact that it surfaced at Sharif University of Technology, among students widely known as nokhbeh—the country’s top STEM talents—and treats that detail as proof that a line had been crossed in public life. He recodes this profane register as a civilizational threat, pairing fohsh (obscene cursing) with fahshā (sexual indecency) and naming both as pornocracy: the rule of base desire over sacred order. Citing Usul al-Kafi, he casts fohsh as shamelessness (bi-haya’i) and even as “partnership with Satan.” In this frame, the chant becomes evidence of corruption at the level of origin and lineage—a failure of “purity of lineage” (tahārat-e nasab)—so that profanity appears as a symptom rather than as politics. By recasting the political chant as a symptom of tainted lineage, the state attempts to move the conflict out of the realm of grievance and into that of pathology, rendering the protester not a citizen but a corruption to be purged.

Re-singing a regional song, taking up a banned popular archive, or chanting in a profane register becomes a way of reclaiming a home the state can no longer credibly narrate as its own. Families keep their children’s deaths from being absorbed into the state’s narrative by mourning in their own idioms, while strangers take up those forms as a shared claim without erasing the differences that shape them. That plurality is the force of the moment, even as it remains exposed to renewed projects of homogeneity—whether through state repression or through reactive nationalism within the opposition, which welcomes vernacular culture only when its political claims are muted. The turn to the vernacular is thus more than a cultural shift: it is a tactical evacuation of a contaminated linguistic order. What emerges from that evacuation is a home reclaimed from the ruins of a poisoned language, but one still pressed on multiple sides by violence and the costs of refusal.


1: Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Gharbzadegi (Weststruckness), trans. John Green and Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1982).

2: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006), 6–7.

3: M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 270–272.


Mina Khanlarzadeh is a historian and visiting faculty member at Deep Springs College in California. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and has held postdoctoral positions at Northwestern University and the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. Her research focuses on modern intellectual and cultural history and the history of science, with a particular focus on the Middle East. In 2025 she was a Value of the Past Fellow at ZfL Berlin.


Title image: “A greeting to those who have stayed close to us in our dreams for forty days, though distant when we are awake.” Calligraphy by Sina Afshar, January 2026.

All images in this contribution are shared here with consent of the creators.

The Morgue Is Karbala, Mourning in Each Other’s Skin. Part II: The Kinetic Testimony

Given the unreliability of inherited idioms, political grief migrates into embodied and vernacular forms. In this part, Mina Khanlarzadeh follows that movement into rhythm and the body.

When the state saturates inherited words with the memory of its violence, those words become unreliable as public idioms of grief and resistance. Part I traced that damage at the level of inherited idioms; Part II follows its rerouting into the body, through which grief is carried and made public.

Wenn der Staat lang überlieferten Begriffen durch seine Gewalt eine andere Erinnerung einschreibt, verlieren diese Worte ihre Eignung als öffentliche Ausdrucksformen der Trauer und des Widerstands. Teil I hat diesen Verlust auf der Ebene der Ausdrucksformen nachgezeichnet; Teil II verfolgt die Umleitung in die Körper, durch die Trauer transportiert und öffentlich gemacht wird.


At the funerals of protesters killed by the state during the January 2026 uprising, mourners gathered at gravesides and turned to bodily gesture: they danced, clapped, ululated, and played music in a space where sorrow and Qur’anic recitation were expected. The street had already made the body the primary ground of confrontation, as protesters advanced against armed forces with nothing but their bodies. At the graveside, it became the medium through which grief was carried when inherited idioms had failed and public mourning had to proceed under threat and surveillance. In March 2026, on the last Thursday of the Iranian year, mourners gathered at Sepehr Shokri’s graveside to commemorate Sepehr, who had been killed during the January 2026 protests. Facing threats of further violence from state forces, his mother cried out: “You have weapons; my son only had a chest. He came forward with his chest alone.” Her subsequent declaration—“we have nothing left to lose”—names a condition in which state violence and absolute dispossession leave the bare body as the final ground of confrontation. Arman Gorjian’s father names a related dispossession at his son’s graveside: “We have reached absolute poverty. We doubt your Islam… I had seen dance ceremonies, but I had never seen a mother dance at the grave of her dead child.” His phrasing links two shifts: the dispossession of inherited idioms, as the state’s Islam no longer functions as a credible language of resistance, and the emergence of an unprecedented bodily grammar of grief. For both parents, what remains is not joy but a condition of absolute poverty. In one scene, the poverty appears as the body stripped to exposure; in the other, as language stripped of credibility.

Taha Soleimani’s funeral shows what this “absolute poverty” sounds like when language itself gives out. Taha Soleimani had been missing for twenty days after his arrest. When his family finally received his body, it bore the marks of torture. He was dead. His uncle begins to speak—“my nephew was lost”—but as he tries to continue, to name what has happened, he runs out of words. He falls into a thick, suffocating silence. He raises his hands and asks those around him to clap. They begin at once, together, as if the cue were already familiar. The clapping breaks the silence and gives it a pulse. Grief becomes collective without a slogan. Rhythm here is not joy but kinetic testimony.

Taha Soleimani’s funeral

Several commentators have read the dancing and clapping at the funerals of protesters killed by the state as soog-e shad or joyous mourning. Nahid Siamdoust, for instance, frames them as an extension of the “affective politics of joy” she traces in Iran’s alternative public sphere. In her reading, because women’s public dancing in streets and buses previously formed “joyous counterpublics,” the funeral dances must arise from that same genealogy. But this commits a category error: it treats resemblance in gesture as proof of shared intent. A dance on a bus and a mother’s movement at her child’s grave may resemble one another in form, but they are not the same act. One is an elective claim to visibility; the other is an embodied testimony unfolding in a space saturated by loss and surveillance. The “joy” frame rests on an assumption of expressive abundance—a sudden, self-assertive break into visibility—yet these funerary gestures emerge not from surplus but from scarcity and devastation.

If Taha Soleimani’s funeral shows how rhythm fills the space where language breaks down, Arshia Barari’s shows the bodily cost of that shift. His mother dances and suddenly collapses, a gesture grief alone might produce, but one that carries more weight here. The body is being asked to bear more than grief alone: catastrophic loss, refusal of the state’s script, and the burden of making that refusal publicly legible. The collapse registers a limit, a point at which the body, made into a medium, can no longer bear all that is being asked of it.

Arshia Barari’s funeral

This embodied shift is at times strategic. At the chehelom (fortieth-day commemoration) of Sepehr Shokri, a family member asked the crowd to stop chanting political slogans. The threat was clear: if the chanting continued, security forces would return and smash the gravestone. In place of slogans, he redirected grief into sound, urging mourners to clap and perform kel zadan, the high-pitched ululation often reserved for weddings. Rhythm here is a rerouting produced under coercion, a way to keep mourning public without handing the state material it can seize and punish.

These funeral gestures do not replace older idioms of mourning. In a widely circulated clip, at the chehelom of Ilya Ojaqlou, his mother dances and then, mid-motion, breaks into matam-like self-striking, an embodied form of Shi’i mourning lament. Her body buckles and others rush to hold her up. The abrupt pivot shows that dance and matam can coexist in the same body, in the same moment, blocking any easy reading of the dance as joy. In another viral video from the chehelom commemoration of Hesam Asivand in Lali, Khuzestan, mourners perform sineh-zani, the rhythmic chest-striking associated with Shiʿi mourning for Hossein, for Hesam. As a male relative strikes his chest with increasing intensity, his body lurches and sways until he nearly collapses, and another mourner steps in to hold him. Mourning for Hossein and mourning for the present dead converge here at the level of gesture. Karbala returns here as an embodied grammar of grief: the hand no longer keeps time with a distant sacred story alone, but registers the pain of a contemporary crime. In repurposing sineh-zani for those killed by the state, mourners turn a sacred repertoire long claimed by the establishment against the establishment itself.

At Rostam Mobarakabadi’s chehelom. Screenshots by author.

At Rostam Mobarakabadi’s February 2026 chehelom, the graveside becomes a site where disparate idioms of mourning are recomposed into a vernacular ritual language. Rostam’s mother holds his portrait high, her steady posture giving the image a public bearing. Together, body and photograph testify to her son’s life ended by state violence. Beside her, a female relative keeps time with a gesture that sits in the tense middle ground between dast zadan (clapping) and matam, weighted by a downward beat that echoes sineh-zani without becoming it. She claps with a heavy, percussive force, a pulse drawn inward toward the heart rather than outward in celebration. The murdered son’s name is Rostam, invoking the hero of the Shahnameh, and the anthem sung at the graveside calls up Kaveh the Blacksmith against Zahhak, the tyrant of Persian epic. The scene does not belong to a single tradition; it is a vernacular synthesis in which Shiʿi cadence, dance, and the Shahnameh’s mythic register layer without resolving their tension. By casting the street as a “trench” and the present ruler as Zahhak, the lyrics draw on an epic vocabulary of revolt to name injustice and commemorate the dead without returning to the state’s idiom.

Taken at face value, testamentary requests for music, dancing, and joy can mislead. Mehrzad Nazari, killed during the January 2026 protests, wrote in his will that his family should abstain from crying, mourning rituals, Qur’an recitation, and prayer, and instead play music and remain joyful. Before his execution during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement, Majid Reza Rahnavard similarly asked that his funeral be marked not by sorrow but by dancing and happiness. The “joyous mourning” reading folds such requests too quickly into a narrative of affective rupture. The problem is methodological: by taking these requests at face value, Siamdoust’s reading approaches these funerals through a prior thesis—an “affective politics of joy”—so that the archive of funerary videos can only confirm what the framework has already rendered legible. The result is an erasure: by gathering these heterogeneous practices into a single story of “joyous” renewal, the framework obscures the coercion, devastation, and “absolute poverty” that pressure these bodies into motion.

What recurs across these scenes is not a single logic of rupture and refounding but a pressured recomposition. The Lur tradition of dancing at funerals is itself a mourning custom, not a joy tradition. Nor do these scenes resolve into the “authentic Persian culture” against state-imposed Islamic culture that the framework assumes: sineh-zani returns as an embodied Shiʿi repertoire, and Rostam Mobarakabadi’s chehelom layers Shiʿi cadence, Shahnameh epic, embodied gesture, and protest poetics without privileging any single tradition. Under duress, regional mourning customs, inherited sacred repertoires, and embodied improvisation are brought into proximity by loss, generating fragments of new political idioms assembled unevenly. If anything links these disparate acts, it is the condition named by Arman Gorjian’s father: “absolute poverty,” in which mourning and refusal must work with whatever remains.

But the body is not grief’s only medium. Part III turns to the vernacular infrastructures through which grief travels sideways into regional mother tongues and vernacular repertoires, where belonging is rebuilt under pressure.


Mina Khanlarzadeh is a historian and visiting faculty member at Deep Springs College in California. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and has held postdoctoral positions at Northwestern University and the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. Her research focuses on modern intellectual and cultural history and the history of science, with a particular focus on the Middle East. In 2025 she was a Value of the Past Fellow at ZfL Berlin.


Title image: Grieving figures dance, embrace the dead, cut their hair, and play music in acts of embodied mourning. Illustration by Farinaz Soleimani, January 2026.

All images in this contribution are shared here with consent of the creators.

The Morgue Is Karbala, Mourning in Each Other’s Skin. Part I: The Lexicon in Exile

In the first part of her contribution, Mina Khanlarzadeh examines the Karbala narrative— the Shiʿi story of Hossein’s martyrdom, which for decades served as a public grammar for naming injustice in Iranian political culture.

In the aftermath of the January 2026 massacres in Iran, this blog contribution asks how grief and political refusal find a voice when inherited idioms can no longer be fully trusted.

Vor dem Hintergrund der Massaker im Iran im Januar 2026 geht dieser Blogbeitrag der Frage nach, wie Trauer und politischer Widerstand Ausdruck finden können, wenn man den überlieferten Sprachgewohnheiten nicht mehr uneingeschränkt vertrauen kann.


Author’s note: This blog contribution was substantially completed before the late-February 2026 U.S.–Israeli war against Iran. Its archive focuses on the January 2026 killings and the commemorative practices that emerged in their immediate aftermath, and it does not engage with the war or what followed from it.


In the aftermath of the January 2026 massacres in Iran, I kept returning to the way people reached for words and found the old ones no longer fit. Since the 2009 Green Movement, expanding state violence and unmet demands have produced not only anger, but a deep repulsion toward the world the state has built—its rituals, imagery, and inherited idioms. As the state repeatedly captures those forms and saturates them with the memory of its violence, shared political vocabularies have become unreliable. This blog contribution asks how grief and political refusal find a voice when inherited idioms can no longer be fully trusted. To pursue that question, I turn to the Karbala narrative—the Shiʿi story of Hossein’s martyrdom, which for decades served as a public grammar for naming injustice in Iranian political culture.

For decades, the story of Hossein—the third Shiʿi Imam—served as Iranian society’s public grammar for naming injustice. Hossein refused to pledge loyalty to Yazid, the Umayyad ruler, and was surrounded and killed in Karbala; his death became the central Shiʿi story of shahādat (martyrdom). In the years leading to the 1979 Revolution, Karbala circulated as a widely legible idiom of resistance. The pre-revolutionary Iranian thinker Ali Shariati crystallized this by distinguishing between a “Red Shiʿism” of protest and a “Black Shiʿism” of state ritual, in which mourning for Hossein is absorbed into institutional order. In 1974, the Marxist poet Khosrow Golsorkhi identified himself with Hossein before a military tribunal, casting the Shah’s court as Yazid’s tyranny (see section 7). These episodes show that Karbala could function as a shared political language even for the nonreligious.

After the Revolution, the Islamic Republic claimed Karbala as official property, and after 2009 that capture made the idiom increasingly unreliable as a shared language of refusal. As former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei put it in 2013, “Military war, intellectual war, spiritual war, social war: the combination of these is called mujāhadat [struggle]. Whoever is devoted to Imam Hossein is devoted to political Islam… Islam is muqātila [combat].” In official discourse, attachment to Hossein is thereby fused to a condition of permanent struggle. In February 2026, in his final public address, Khamenei invoked Hossein’s declaration at Karbala—“someone like me does not pledge allegiance to someone like Yazid”—conscripting the sacred grammar of resistance into the state’s confrontation with the United States. After his death, state media declared him shaheed, saying he would be gathered in the hereafter with Hossein. The state’s Islam invokes familiar idioms, which is precisely what makes this capture so dispossessing.

When Karbala is invoked by those who kill, its vocabulary can no longer serve unambiguously as a grammar of resistance. In a recent video, the sister of Reza Naseri, who was killed in June 2025 by the state’s paramilitary Basiji forces, sits beside his grave and says: “My brother was killed by someone who goes on pilgrimage to Karbala every month, who constantly invokes the name of Hossein.” Under such conditions, symbolic abandonment is not always a sign of total rejection of faith; it can also be a refusal to inhabit a political vocabulary now compromised by its association with violence.

The rupture also surfaces in mourning rituals for people. In one account, as mourners stood to recite namāz-e mayyit, the traditional prayer for the dead, a veiled aunt shouted: “Don’t pray… There is no God… my son… his stature… his big colored eyes… he was 23 when they killed him… don’t pray, there is no God.” The accompanying line—Sūg-ash az īmān obūr kard-e būd—is stark: her grief had passed through faith, and faith could no longer hold it. In many such funerals, the dead were buried without Islamic prayers, their send-off carried instead by greetings and slogans. Even ritual had become unevenly inhabitable.

Portrait of Sepehr Shokri, by Aylene Fallah, from the Javidnam series, 2026.

When Sepehr Shokri’s father wanders through the morgue to find his son, he calls out, Sepehr-e bābā, kojāyi? (Daddy’s own Sepehr, where are you?) and Bābā Sepehr (Daddy Sepehr). In the emotional grammar of Persian, calling the child bābā collapses the distance between parent and child, making the father’s own sense of self inseparable from his son. His kojāyi? is both lament and protest, naming the violence that has imposed an absolute absence where a beloved should be. In the cold of the morgue, with nameless bodies stacked on the floor and labeled “rioters” or “foreign agents,” this familial language becomes an authoritative register for naming injustice and refusing the state’s final word on who his son was. Yet if Karbala has become unreliable as a vocabulary of resistance, devastation can still force its return. As Sepehr’s father passes among the bodies, he cries, “Karbala injāst, mardom” (Karbala is here, people). In that cry, sacred ground is relocated from the state’s staged rituals to the cold floor of the morgue. Unlike Shariati’s “Red Shiʿism,” this is not a political program but an unscripted reflex, a fragment of an older idiom returning under pressure.

Screenshots from Shahmir’s rap clip, provided by the author.

A rap song by Shahmir, circulating on Instagram in February 2026, invokes Sepehr’s father: “Nonstop, his voice echoes in my head, asking where Sepehr-e bābā is.” The artist then names the consequence of this grief: “Tasuʿā and Ashura”—the two peak days of ritual mourning for Hossein—“no longer have meaning.” In declaring those days meaningless, Shahmir suggests that the inherited religious frame has been overtaken by the present. He re-pins grief to the specific dates of recent state killings: “18 and 19 Dey [January 8–9, 2026] have become tāsiān and dāghiyān.” By displacing Tasuʿā and Ashura with these Gilaki terms, Shahmir reroutes grief away from a distrusted religious idiom and into vernacular speech. Tāsiān names the hollow cold of a home emptied by loss; dāghiyān names a restless, burning agitation. As Gilaki is tied to Gilan, these words, paired with the allusion to burning, gesture toward the violence and fire in Rasht’s bazaar. In this new chronology, the inherited calendar loses its authority, unable to contain the magnitude of the present. What follows is not the disappearance of the sacred, but its dispersal: the inherited idiom splinters into a plurality of vernacular names, times, and languages.

Nehayat Rahimi’s chehelom.

At the chehelom (the fortieth-day mourning commemoration) of Nehayat Rahimi in February 2026, her mother adopts the physical grammar of a taʿziyeh (a ritual play centered on Hossein’s martyrdom), pacing in circles with her daughter’s photograph. She begins by invoking the foundational treachery of Shiʿi memory—Imam Ali struck from behind by Ibn Muljam—only to subvert it. Because Nehayat, too, was attacked from behind by the state’s security forces in Gorgan’s Kaj Square, her mother declares, “Compared to Ibn Muljam, you are the coward,” recasting those forces through a foundational scene of Shiʿi betrayal. “Who is the Yazid of this era? The ones who martyred and turned forty thousand dead into everlasting ones.” She then reassigns Karbala’s coordinates: the sahrā-ye Karbala (desert of Karbala) is no longer a distant site, but the pavement of Kaj Square, just as Tasuʿā and Ashura are reattached to the dates of the 2026 killings. This is not an isolated gesture. Other bereaved mothers, such as Kamelia Sajadian, whose son, Mohammad Hassan Torkaman, was killed during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, similarly reattach Ashura and Karbala to the time and place of their children’s deaths, prying the idiom from state custody and turning it into a vernacular geography of loss.

What this archive reveals is not the disappearance of Karbala, but the damage done to it as a public idiom. Victor Klemperer’s account of poisoned language helps explain how states damage public language from within, as ideology enters everyday speech through repetition until words begin to carry the force of the state’s violence. Like the “tiny doses of arsenic” he describes, swallowed unnoticed until a toxic reaction sets in, poisoned words eventually come to feel dangerous to use.[1] In contemporary Iran, the inherited idiom of Karbala as resistance and refusal has been marked by the memory of state violence and absorbed into the state’s ritual theater. Yet damaged idioms do not simply disappear. At times, people refuse them, as when families reject the namāz-e mayyit and instead send off their dead with slogans. At other times, they displace them, as when Shahmir replaces the inherited sacred peaks of Tasuʿā and Ashura with the vernacular of tāsiān and dāghiyān. In Bakhtinian terms, these acts reconfigure Karbala’s chronotope: the fused time-space that determines, in narrative, what happens, where, and to whom. Borrowed from physics and adapted to literature, the chronotope names the way time and space are bound together in narrative form.[2] In this archive, the chronotope helps clarify how shifting these coordinates makes their suffering narratable and their dead nameable. By relocating Karbala from inherited ritual settings to the morgues, pavements, and graves of the present, and from liturgical recurrence to the dates of state killing, the bereaved pull the sacred into the immediate reality of their own lives. They decide anew when Karbala happens, where it unfolds, and who—in the face of the state’s dehumanizing labels—has the final right to name its dead. Yet given the unreliability of inherited idioms, political grief also migrates into embodied and vernacular forms—not as a retreat from language, but as its reinvention. Part II follows that movement into rhythm and the body; Part III follows it into the vernacular infrastructures through which belonging is rebuilt.


[1]: Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI, Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook, trans. Martin Brady (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 15–16.

[2]: Mikhail Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84–85.


Mina Khanlarzadeh is a historian and visiting faculty member at Deep Springs College in California. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and has held postdoctoral positions at Northwestern University and the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. Her research focuses on modern intellectual and cultural history and the history of science, with a particular focus on the Middle East. In 2025 she was a Value of the Past Fellow at ZfL Berlin.


Title image: “Sepehr-e bābā” (“Daddy’s own Sepehr”). Image courtesy of Women Life Freedom Art (@womenlifefreedom.art), Instagram.

All images in this contribution are shared here with consent of the creators.

Repurposing Infrastructure: Working with the Material Past

Izabela Paszko looks into the hidden history of infrastructures from National Socialist times and their continued use.

History of certain places often reveals itself unexpectedly. Symbols on façades, unusual road patterns, and abandoned buildings quietly reflect past violence and disruption that often go unnoticed. Many structures built under the National Socialist regime still function today, while the circumstances of their construction remain obscured.

Die Geschichte bestimmter Orte offenbart sich oft unerwartet. Symbole an Fassaden, ungewöhnliche Straßenführungen und verlassene Gebäude spiegeln still vergangene Gewalt und Umbrüche wider, die häufig unbemerkt bleiben. Viele Bauwerke aus der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus erfüllen noch heute ihren Zweck, während ihre Entstehungsumstände im Verborgenen bleiben.


Some years ago, I experienced an electricity shortage in my rented flat in the southern part of Munich. As the failure met me in the middle of my laundry, I had to move my soaking wet clothes to the shared laundry room in the cellar of the building. Despite having lived in this building for three years, I had never been in this room before. After successful handling the “laundry situation,” I curiously looked around. The interior was old, raw and rather practical then decorative. On the wall there was only one frame. Not with relaxing landscape, though. The yellowed from age document appeared to be a list of rules that users of the laundry room must obey (“Verordnung über die Einrichtung und den Betrieb von Mangelstuben und Waschküchen”). It did not surprise me – after living in Germany for some years, I was used to rules and instructions that regulated everyday life. I quickly skimmed through a page-long text and the date under the whole text struck me. “München, den 4. September 1937.“ I had many questions and so far no answers. Who had lived in this building at that time and since when? Who built it? And, last but not least, why wasn’t this document in a museum?

List of rules for the laundry room users, photos taken by the author, 2025.

These questions came to me as I wasn’t expecting to find myself, and definitely not living, in a building with very likely NS past. My neighbourhood area, located remotely from the historic city centre is one of the youngest of Munich’s districts, so the history doesn’t haunt t continuously he residents as it happens in centrally located Maxvorstadt or Schwabing. If the building was constructed after the war, the presence of the housekeeping rules from the 1930s could be explained by transfer of the “neutral” and yet still applicable document to the new postwar reality. The presence of the housekeeping rules and circumstances made me reflect on the fate of the “Nazi contaminated” buildings and infrastructural sites such as roads or pump stations in categories of double standards and utilitarian approach. Yet, this approach was not uniform across all kinds of Nazi structures.

In the postwar period, many buildings with a „brown past” were demolished or repurposed. This was the fate of rally grounds in Nuremberg and “temples of honour” in Munich, the latter were also left abandoned, deemed for forestation. The transformation of monumental structures was more difficult, but not impossible, as examples from Berlin like the Detlev Rohwedder House that housed the Third Reich’s Ministry of Aviation show. In this and many similar cases, the initial function has remained the same. Since 1999, the building once being a domain of Hermann Goering, currently is a seat of the German Finance Ministry. However, there are also examples of rather radical processes of repurposing. A case from Weimar continues to provoke debate: here a monumental “Gauforum” from the 1930s was transformed in 2005 into an “Atrium” shopping mall.

Aerial view of Detlev Rohwedder House, Wilhelmstraße, Berlin (formerly known as Reichsluftfahrtministerium, Haus der Ministerien, Treuhandanstalt), source: Hans G. Oberlack, Wikimedia Commons.

Yet, as the repurposing of empty buildings entails filling them not only with new décor, but foremost with new meanings, the infrastructural places retain their functional value, which in most cases does not involve an ideological agenda. The airfields from the First World War served their role in the next one and in postwar times under changing political systems. The airfield in Cheb, Czechia, serviced planes during both wars and today still functions as recreational airfield.

Under the NS regime, development of the transport infrastructure became a priority task as it was bonded with national politics, expansive economic plans and military manoeuvres. Thousands of kilometres of roads, railways and bridges were built by forced laborers. However, despite their gloomy origins, the transportation networks were not dismantled after the war. Their continuity relies foremost on their importance and perseverance. As material scientist Deb Chachra claims, infrastructural systems are repaired and rebuilt, but very rarely completely ripped out and constructed from scratch.1 Infrastructures are highly political constructions that represent power and dominance.2 In the case infrastructures are (re)built, developed and used in totalitarian, oppressive periods of rule – unless they were destroyed during military manoeuvres – they thrive under the new political system and accumulate new meanings and functions over time.

As a researcher, I am genuinely intrigued by such places, their transformations and “long history”. In my new project, I want to examine the postwar roles and implications of infrastructural sites in Poland, Czechia and Germany that carry a burden of totalitarian origin. Yet, in many cases the gloomy beginnings remain less known to collective memory due to the lack of “guardians of memory” and witnesses who would advocate for preservation both memory and physical remains. Over the past decades, infrastructural sites have obtained new meanings that overlay and create a fascinating assemblage of politics, micro histories and personal experiences. This is the case of motorway A4 (precisely its part in Lower Silesia), whose history presents artist Agata Ciastoń in her photographic documentary essay. This motorway was part of the “Reichsautobahn” project and was executed through tremendous work of forced labourer’s and prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps. Following Chachra’s claim, this strategic infrastructure remained in place and the major repairs occurred only in the last decade of the 20th century. Despite its utilitarian and rather neutral character, the motorway acquired some “stamps of time,” such as a Soviet inscription of one of the motorway’s pillars saying: Водрузим над Берлином знамя победы  (“We will raise the banner of victory over Berlin”) – a remnant from the end of war and the approaching Red Army.

Highway A4 Wrocław-Legnica. Russian inscription from 1945. Photo by Robert Niedźwiecki, 2010, source: Wikimedia Commons.

Another example from the same motorway are petrol stations from 1937 (designed by Friedrich Tamms). They are in constant use, yet with modern adjustments. Since 2012 they remain under conservatory protection as a historical monument. The overlapping of histories and meanings and research potential hidden behind infrastructural sites was also noticed by Ciastoń:

It seems to me that the A4 still exists somewhere in between the powerful propaganda project of the “Reichsautobahn,” Jean Baudrillard’s trance-like “freeway,” and the tamed – former and now little-used – “our motorway,” recalled with nostalgia, as it is called by the residents of the towns scattered along its route.3

Highway A4 near Katowice in 1974, source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe.

Many infrastructural sites carry a difficult history while being embedded in entirely new contexts. Yet in most cases, they are not “spectacular.” We pass them every day, sometimes even use them, without pausing to think about their stories. They blend into the routines of daily life, quietly present rather than demanding attention.

Although people often try to forget or intentionally erase the physical reminders of painful or uncomfortable histories, these places are stubborn. They linger in the landscape, refusing to disappear completely, as if the past itself is not quite ready to let go. Often, the reasons are practical rather than symbolic: continued use, economic necessity, or the sheer cost of dismantling what already exists. As a result, history lingers in concrete, asphalt, and grass growing where it was never meant to grow.

My research is driven by an interest in these overlooked sites and the contemporary conditions that allow them to persist. By looking closely at such spaces, I hope to open up questions about memory, environmental history, and social history and about how the past quietly shapes the landscapes we continue to inhabit today.


1 Chachra, Deb. How infrastructure works: inside the systems that shape our world. Penguin, London 2023, 7.

2 Larkin, Brian, Promising forms: The political aesthetics of infrastructure. In N. Anand, A. Gupta, & H. Appel (Eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure (pp. 175–202). Durham, Duke University Press 2018.

3 Ciastoń, Agata. Na środkowym pasie latem trawa była wysoka, Wydawnictwo Warstwy, Wrocław 2024, 230.


Photo: private.

Izabela Paszko is a cultural anthropologist and social historian specializing in the social history of Poland under the Nazi occupation. Currently she works as a researcher (postdoc) at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, where she investigates the structural factors shaping history exhibitions related to the Second World War and the Holocaust. In February 2026 she was a Value of the Past Fellow at Herder Institute in Marburg.


Title picture: Emergency exit of an air-raid shelter from World War II with the inscription Mannesmann-Luftschutz, Munich Ludwigstraße. Photo taken by the author, 2025.

Exploring Russia’s Response to Finland’s NATO Membership

Olena Podvorna analyses the Russian official strategic narrative towards Finland’s NATO membership.

How did Russia respond to Finland’s NATO membership at the official level, and what narrative has been built since then towards Helsinki? This blog post analyses the Russian official strategic narrative, presented by the President of Russia, and other Russian officials.

Wie hat Russland auf offizieller Ebene auf den NATO-Beitritt Finnlands reagiert, und wie hat sich seitdem die Haltung gegenüber Helsinki entwickelt? Dieser Blogbeitrag analysiert die offizielle strategische Haltung Russlands, wie sie vom russischen Präsidenten und anderen russischen Amtsträgern vertreten wird.


On 24 February 2022 Russia initiated a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine. 17 May 2022 Finland applied for NATO membership, which was followed by the official invitation on 5 July 2022, and a full membership on 4 April 2023. This decision has become a milestone in the Finnish foreign and security policy after decades of a very reserved policy called Finlandization. This policy was elaborated after the Winter War of 1939-40, when Helsinki lost part of its territory to the USSR, and the Continuation War of 1941-1944, which was fought and lost by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union and later led Finland to choose a strategy that would not be seen as provocative and threatening by Moscow. The Finlandization concept meant substantial limitation of Helsinki’s autonomy in elaborating and implementing foreign and security policymaking. And it totally excluded full membership in the NATO, unless the situation would fundamentally change. According to the numerous statements of Finnish officials, the brutal violation of the international order, including the UN Charter, has become the reason to take such a decision. It should also be noted that Finnish officials attempted to serve as a mediator, relying on their profoundly good relations with Russia, prior to the invasion trying to persuade Moscow to deescalate the situation.[1] Those attempts failed. Additional factors that conditioned the decision relate to the geostrategic position of Finland that shares a common border with Russia of 1,340 km, and dramatic historical experience.

A Finnish ski patrol, lying in the snow on the outskirts of a wood in Northern Finland, on the alert for Soviet troops, 12 January 1940. Public domain.

A broader explanation of the reasons for the decision taken was also presented in official foreign and security documents of Finland. In these documents, the whole responsibility is placed on Russia and the change in its behavior is recognized as long-standing, when Russia itself is perceived as an existential threat.[2] Particularly, the historic-political narratives are identified as one of the major instruments Moscow has applied against Ukraine since 2014.[3] As Finland was placed by Moscow on the list of “unfriendly countries”[4], the probability of hostile actions (from political pressure up to military threats) from the Russian side was acknowledged.

The Russian response to Finland’s NATO membership has been addressed predominantly to the domestic audience, but also towards Finland and the US and NATO.

The key components of the new Russian narrative towards Finland are based on the following affirmative statements:

Finland has not been viewed by Russia in the same light as Ukraine, because of the absence of such problems that Moscow has with Kyiv.[5] Even more, Vladimir Putin described them as “ideal prior to Helsinki’s decision to join NATO”.[6]

The Finnish decision to join NATO cannot be explained from the security perspective, as security threats were absent at the moment when the decision was taken. Therefore, abandoning the policy of military neutrality, which was a part of Finlandization, is defined as a mistake, though the right to join the Alliance has been recognized. Even further, military non-alignment has been defined by the Russian officials as a conscious choice following the outcome of World War II.[7] Later, during the recent Valdai Discussion Club meeting 2025, Vladimir Putin, speaking about Finland’s decision, defined it as a “stupid move”, which could have been lobbied by certain nationalist-minded forces fearing Russia’s growing presence in Finland.[8] He also denied that there were any interests of Finland that should be protected by NATO and mentioned that Russia did not have plans to invade and seize Finland. In other words, there is a shift in perception and assessment of Helsinki’s decision to join the Alliance in the direction of devaluing and openly questioning it, what has not been the case earlier.  

However, the fact of NATO membership would affect Russo-Finnish relations, also in the defense and military domain. The Finnish decision is taken as a justification of increased military build-up on the Russian side to counterbalance the threats stemming from the Finnish side due to its membership. In other words, the responsibility for further hostilities between two countries has been placed on Helsinki. However, during the Valdai Discussion Club meeting 2025, President Putin assumed that Helsinki’s decision was conditioned by the willingness to grab part of the Russian territory under the condition of Russia’s strategic defeat.[9] In other words, Vladimir Putin stresses hostile intentions, which provides Moscow with the ability to harshen its rhetoric and apply more aggressive means against Finland.

Damage of an air raid in Helsinki on the first day of the Winter War, 30 November 1939. Public domain.

Simultaneously, this narrative has been incorporated into a bigger one, about NATO-Russia confrontation. Within this narrative, Helsinki has been treated as a subordinated object, and its decision to join the Alliance is seen as an imposed one on Finland by NATO.[10] During the Biden administration, Moscow portrayed NATO as the US foreign policy instrument to control its satellites.[11] According to Russia’s narrative, it is NATO that has initiated a military build-up on the territory of a new member, and Russia has no other option but to react properly. This reaction is addressed at NATO structures, but not Finland itself. In late December 2023 President Putin spoke about increased NATO activity along Russian borders and blamed the Alliance for its aggressive nature.[12] By developing the narrative, Putin attributed the idea of global supremacy to the US, which could be achieved particularly by enlarging NATO. In order to reach the aim, according to President Putin, containment of Russia was needed and Finland would play its imposed role in the strategy. Statements about Finland’s dependency on the US and NATO authorities were reproduced by Russian officials on different occasions, not necessarily connected with the fact of accession itself. The extension of the narrative has included the following block that states the existence of an alleged confrontation between defense spending and economic and social development of Finland.[13] Further, the Russian narrative is constructing an extremely divided society, whereas most of the population was not divided on the decision of joining the NATO and supports an increased defence spending. Moscow has also tried to state that the decision has been imposed on the Finnish society, without considering public opinion.

Bombing of Helsinki in the Continuation War in 1944. Public domain.

The Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea region has seen a fundamental security change in, turning them into insecure ones after decades of stability and peaceful co-existence. The dramatic worsening of the security situation is attributed to the Finnish decision of joining NATO, but not to the Russian brutal violation of international order and the UN Charter principles. Even more, when speaking about Helsinki’s modern foreign and security policy, Russian officials have drawn dodgy historical comparisons, particularly in citing Finland’s partnering with Nazi Germany.[14] As Third Reich fought against the USSR, such reminders might refer to the alleged evil nature of Finland and its hidden negative attitude towards Russia, with prospective territorial claims. This assumption has been repeated recently by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council.[15] In the same vein, he announced that Finland has initiated preparations for war against Russia but threatened that such a war would end the Finnish statehood. As this statement has been produced recently, it might serve as a sign of a new round of escalation with Helsinki that might include an increased military build-up along the Russo-Finnish border, or other assertive moves on the ground. Medvedev’s article has been analyzed by the Institute for the Study of War, and, according to their fundings, he used lexis and narratives similar to those the Kremlin applied before invading Ukraine twice.[16]

For the last three years the Russian Federation has elaborated a strategic narrative towards Finland and its accession to the Alliance, gradually increasing the tone of statements, which are followed by practical measures. In addition, Moscow has manipulated with historical facts, making crude comparisons and analogies between the modern times and the 1930-40s, when Finland was an Ally of Nazi Germany, without providing explanations and the context. In this regard, history is used by Russian officials to strengthen its narrative about Finland and justify its growing hostile attitude towards it. The expansion of the narrative should be expected, as its incorporation into a bigger narrative of confrontation with Europe and NATO. Accordingly, such a trend is long-standing, and will affect the bilateral relations between Finland and Russia in the long run.

Finland-Russia border markers, 2018. Taken by Finnish Border Guard. Public domain.

[1] Esch, C., & Scheuermann, C. (2022, February 14). “Suddenly, He Started To Behave in a Very, Very Decisive Way”. DER SPIEGEL International. https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/finnish-president-sauli-niinistoe-on-putin-and-the-ukraine-conflict-a-bb9281d3-2cc6-49a1-87eb-199569991c79

[2] Finnish Government. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland. (2022). Government report on changes in the security environment (Publications of the Finnish Government 2022:20). https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/ffe15198-2b87-45f8-abcf-0ed3cf45de58/content; Ministry of Defence. (2024). Government Defence Report (Publications of the Ministry of Defence 2024:7). https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/277ab3c9-ebfe-40a7-89af-4a2faa60c042/content   

[3] Finnish Government. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland. (2022). Government report on changes in the security environment (Publications of the Finnish Government 2022:20). https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/ffe15198-2b87-45f8-abcf-0ed3cf45de58/content, p. 8.

[4] Ibid., p. 10; Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации. (2022, 25 июля). Двусторонние отношения со страной Финляндия.https://mid.ru/ru/detail-material-page/1102852/

[5] Официальный веб-сайт Президента России. (2022, 29 июня). Владимир Путин ответил на вопросы журналистов. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68783

[6] Официальный веб-сайт Президента России. (2024, 13 марта). Интервью Дмитрию Киселеву. Владимир Путин ответил на вопросы Дмитрия Киселева. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73648

[7] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. (2023, April 4). Foreign Ministry Statement on Finland completing the process to join NATO. https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1861613/?lang=en

[8] Официальный веб-сайт Президента России. (2025, 2 октября). Заседание дискуссионного клуба «Валдай». http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/78134

[9] Ibid.

[10] Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации. (2022, 12 мая). Заявление МИД России о членстве Финляндии в НАТО. https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1812971/

[11] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. (2023, May 24).Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks at the 11th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues, Moscow, May 24, 2023. https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1872035/?lang=en; Официальный веб-сайт Президента России. (2022, 29 июня). Владимир Путин ответил на вопросы журналистов. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68783

[12] Официальный веб-сайт Президента России. (2023, 19 декабря).Расширенное заседание коллегии Минобороны. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73035

[13] Министерство иностранных дел Российской Федерации. (2025. 8 февраля). Интервью Посла России в Финляндии П.М.Кузнецова РИА Новости по случаю Дня дипломатического работника, 8 февраля 2025 г. https://mid.ru/ru/detail-material-page/1995290/

[14] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. (2025, 7 July).On Historical and International Legal Accountability of Finland for the Occupation of Karelia During Great Patriotic War (WWII) (1941–1944) (Report by the Representative office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in Petrozavodsk). https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/istoricheskie_materialy/2034551/?lang=en

[15] Медведев, Д. (2025, 8 сентября). Новая финская доктрина: глупость, ложь, неблагодарность. ТАСС. https://tass.ru/opinions/24989035

[16] Institute for the Study of War. (2025, September 8). Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 8, 2025. https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-8-2025/


Olena Podvorna received a Leibniz-Newcastle University Fellowship in 2025. She is a displaced scholar from Ukraine. From 2023 to 2025 she was a Senior Researcher at PRIF’s Research Department International Institutions and leader of the DFG-funded project “A New Role for NATO in the High North? The European Arctic and Russia’s War Against Ukraine”.


Title picture: A Finnish Maxim M/32-33 machine gun nest 100 metres from Soviet forces during the Winter War, located approximately 5 kilometres north of Lemetti (area of the modern Pitkyarantsky District, Russia), 21 February 1940. Military Museum of Finland, CC BY 4.0.

Beyond the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration: Navigating the Past at the Polar Museum

Mohammad Abu Al Hasan reflects on Antarctic legacies in the museum landscape.

How can museums effectively mediate the human history and heritage in Antarctica? Which curatorial strategies may help to bridge the vast geographical distance and foster public connection with the Antarctic continent?

Wie können Museen die Geschichte und das Kulturerbe der Antarktis wirkungsvoll vermitteln? Welche kuratorischen Strategien können dabei helfen, die enorme geografische Entfernung zu überbrücken und eine Verbindung der Öffentlichkeit zum antarktischen Kontinent herzustellen?


The Polar Museum of Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), University of Cambridge.

As a recipient of the 2025 Cambridge-Leibniz Museum and Collection Fellowship, I arrived at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in the University of Cambridge. My main project at the German Maritime Museum (DSM) focuses on Protecting and Managing Antarctic Heritage, so my fellowship research investigates how these far-reaching heritages are communicated in the museum space.

From the moment I walked into the Polar Museum of SPRI’s main building, I understood this was no ordinary institution. The grand entrance hall’s wall bears the final, poignant words of Captain Robert Falcon Scott: ‘Had we lived, I should have had a tale… These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale…’. This is a profound act of affective curatorship. It acts as an immediate narrative plunge, utilizing the limited space of the museum to immerse the visitor in the context even before they reach the exhibition. It centers the museum’s narrative on tragic heroism, priming the visitor for a story of awe and admiration.

The Entrance and the famous quotation of Scott during his last days, providing the ground of the storytelling of the museum.

The community of the Scott Polar Research Institute truly comes to life every day at 10:30 a.m., when the original bell from Scott’s 1910 Terra Nova expedition ship is rung for tea. This ritual became a vital part of my time here, allowing me to meet other scientists and share our research. My task as a fellow was to understand how this powerful, memorial-centric narrative in the museum shapes our public understanding of Antarctica, especially in an age of urgent climate change.

Encountering the ‘Final Camp’: The Power of an Affective Past

My first week was a deep immersion. I spent days observing the museum objects and their labels, often having long discussions with Laura and Florence, two very dedicated members of the museum, who were always ready to help and discuss the exhibits.

The visitor’s path leads into the main event after the Arctic Exhibitions: the Antarctic gallery, unambiguously titled ‘Antarctic Exploration – the Heroic Age’. The title itself narrows the continent’s vast history to one mythologized period. Inside, the hierarchy is clear: the major portion of the space is for Robert Falcon Scott. A secondary focus is on Ernest Shackleton and a minor role is for Roald Amundsen, who appears mainly as the champion in the race to the pole, but Scott tragically became the ‘Second’.

The exhibition is a masterclass in narrative tension. The Scott display builds to the heartbreaking discovery of Amundsen’s tent, captured by Scott’s own despairing words: ‘Great God! This is an awful place…’.

The Display of Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.

The story culminates in the most affectively charged section, ‘The Final Camp’. This showcase functions as a secular shrine, displaying the intimate relics of the deceased men: a journal wallet, prayer books, and, in some pull-out drawers, their original, handwritten farewell letters. Opening those drawers is a transformative, private, and profoundly emotional encounter. This is a powerful storytelling tool: tangible relics of great men shaping a powerful national story.

The Present on the Periphery: The ‘Ice and Climate’ Gallery

After this immersive journey, the path concludes in the third and final gallery: ‘Ice and Climate: Exploration into Science’. This final, smallest gallery is positioned as a coda or epilogue to the main performance, tucked away by the exit. The atmosphere shifts from the dramatic and affective to the modern and moralistic. Clean, white blocks and digital screens feel more like a contemporary science center, signaling a move from storytelling to information.

This section highlights a core challenge of curating our current era, the Anthropocene. The contemporary story of climate change is abstract and lacks the narrative power of Scott’s letters. So how does the museum lend its authority? It powers the authenticity and historical weight of its most prized collections. To explain the Ozone Hole, the museum displays a telescope from the 1901 Discovery expedition. This is a deliberate strategy to leverage the museum collection by linking the historic era scientific observation with the present crisis. The implication is that the Heroic era objects are called upon as witnesses. The exhibition uses historic tools to ground climate data in a tangible lineage of polar observation.

A View from Bremerhaven: A Tale of Two Polar Narratives

My time at Cambridge went beyond just observing the objects; it involved engaging in critical dialogues with the scholars about the politics of Antarctic Heritage preservation. A dedicated discussion with the curator, Dr. David Waterhouse, offered essential insights into collection strategies, while Dr. Bryan Lintott’s guidance through the institutional archives reshaped my perspective on Antarctic Heritage Politics. These exchanges were crucial for my own research focus on how the value of the distant Antarctic Historic Sites and Monuments (HSM) can be mediated to the museum space to raise awareness and bridge the gap between the public and preservation efforts on that barren Antarctic landscape.    

Being from DSM and observing the museum exhibits of the Polar Museum gave the opportunity to do comparative analysis, which reveals two very different modes of polar curatorship. Cambridge exemplifies the memorial approach, using the affective power of relics to narrate a story of heroic sacrifice.

The Display of Sheckleton.

The German Maritime Museum (DSM) in Bremerhaven, by contrast, pioneers an experiential-scientific approach. Free from a foundational ‘Heroic Age’ legacy, its new exhibition axes the narrative squarely onto contemporary polar science, featuring an installation modeled on the modern research vessel Polarstern and using interactive media to make polar research an experience. This comparison is not about which model is better. It is about understanding how an institution’s identity shapes its narrative possibilities.

The Value of a Frozen Past

This brings me back to the core theme of the Leibniz Research Alliance: What is the ‘Value of the Past’ in our thawing, precarious present?

My time at the Polar Museum has left me reflecting on this very question. The ‘value’ here is not simple. It is also in the tensions the past reveals: the tension between a celebrated heroic narrative and an urgent climate crisis; a tension between the emotional relic in the museum and the real, threatened heritage site on the ice; and the tension between national memory and global responsibility.

The Decolonization attempt of the museum.

Addressing this, the Polar Museum in Cambridge has attempted to develop a dual strategy. The permanent gallery, with its powerful memorial focus, is not the whole story. It is complemented by a dynamic multi-platform strategy like temporary exhibitions, digital programming and educational outreach.

This seems to be the way forward: the permanent gallery fulfills the memorial duty, while the dynamic programming fulfills the contemporary one. The frozen past is not a roadblock; it is the foundation to build upon. The challenge, it seems, is not to discard these powerful, affective legacies, but to influence their power and critically connect them to the urgent, planetary responsibilities of the present.

The Display of the North-West Passage Expedition of Franklin.

Mohammad Abu Al Hasan is a Scientific Associate at the German Maritime Museum (DSM) – Leibniz Institute for Maritime History. Since April 2025, he is pursuing a PhD at the University of Bremen titled Protecting the Cultural and Scientific Heritage of Antarctica: Managing the Diversity, Ensuring Credibility for the Future.


Title picture: The Roof Painting illustrating the Arctic and the Antarctic.

All pictures in this blog post were taken by Mohammad Abu Al Hasan, 2025.

The fascination of old collections: Histology in the Museum of Zoology

In her contribution, Lucie Helfmann takes us to the histological collection of the Museum of Zoology, University of Cambridge, and shows us what more can be found there, beyond dusty slides.

For over a century, researchers at the University of Cambridge have used histology to reveal patterns of internal and soft-tissue anatomy, which would otherwise remain invisible. Over time, an extraordinary array of many thousands of histology slides has accumulated in Cambridge.

Seit über einem Jahrhundert nutzen Forscher:innen an der Universität Cambridge Histologie, um anatomische Eigenschaften von inneren Organen und Weichteilen zu untersuchen, die sonst verborgen blieben. Im Laufe der Zeit hat sich in Cambridge eine außergewöhnliche Sammlung von vielen Tausenden histologischen Präparaten angesammelt.


What is histology?

Histological examinations study the microscopic anatomy of tissue mounted on small glass slides, revealing properties that cannot be seen with the naked eye. The origins of histology date back to the 19th century, when CT and MRI scans did not yet exist.

Cross-section through the head of a ray (size about 1.5 cm). Photo: Lucie Helfmann, 2024.
How to create a histological slide. Lucie Helfmann, 2024.

To create a histological slide, a specimen is embedded in a supporting material, such as paraffin wax, and then cut into very thin slices (usually 5–15 µm). Bones and teeth have to be softened using a variety of acids and other reagents in order to be sliced. These slices are then transferred to glass slides in sequence and dyed using various chemicals, or “stains”, that differentially bind to soft tissues such as decalcified bone, teeth, muscles, and nerves. Which dye is used depends on the type of tissue you want to highlight. After staining, a cover slip is placed over the tissue on the slide to protect it. Now the slide is ready to be investigated under the microscope. In this way, the interior of specimen can be examined and even the finest tissue structures can be identified.

When I arrived in Cambridge, I found a room full of boxes, which were in turn filled with histological slides. In many cases, the origins of a given box was uncertain. The boxes had been moved several times over the decades, and some were quite old and worn.

Old box containing histological slides of sharks and rays. Scyllium canicula (today Scyliorhinus canicula ) is the small spotted catshark; Torpedo ocellata (today Torpedo torpedo ) is the common torpedo or eyed electric ray. ‘Trans’, ‘sagittal’ and ‘coronal’ refer to the directions in which the specimen was cut. Photo: Lucie Helfmann, 2024.

I examined each box, sorted its contents, and digitized all the available information about the slides. This work is crucial in order to make the collection more accessible for scientists all over the world. In the end, our goal is to construct a database where everyone can see what kind of specimens are housed in the Cambridge Museum of Zoology, and be able to determine if a given specimen might be useful for their research. Essential information might include the species, sample size, direction of cutting (e.g., horizontal or vertical), which stain was used, number of slices, anatomical region sampled, etc.

But during my work I found more than just slides. I found history dating to the foundation of the department itself. The oldest slides I found belonged to Francis Maitland Balfour, the first holder of the Chair of Animal Morphology in Cambridge in 1882 and regarded as Darwin’s successor. Tragically, Balfour died that very same year, just 30 years old, during a mountaineering accident in the Alps.

Francis Maitland Balfour, founder of the Department of Zoology in Cambridge (From: The Works of Francis Maitland Balfour).

His main research focused on elasmobranch fishes (sharks and rays) and their development. Despite his short life he left quite a legacy, consisting of thousands of slides. Some of them I could directly connect to Balfour’s work. Hence, the oldest slides are over 150 years old, and many remain in pristine condition! It’s impressive what was already possible at that time, to create such fine objects. Remember, the typewriter and the common light bulb had yet to be invented.

Balfour’s successor was Adam Sedgwick, a relative of the man after whom the museum is named. He took over Balfour’s instruction in animal morphology. Sedgwick also continued Balfour’s work on elasmobranchs and embryology. Because of their attention to detail and careful technical work, e.g. including precise places and dates of collection on many histological slides, it is easy to trace their work. For example, most of Sedgwick’s material is from the summer of 1890.

Example for a series of a shark’s head (Scyllium canicula). Each slide contains two slices of the specimen, Photo: Lucie Helfmann, 2024.

From the 1950s, Hans W. Lissmann was in charge of the histological collection. His main research topic were electric organs in fish like Gymnarchus niloticus (or the “aba”, a predatory fish from Central Africa). Together with Lissmann’s material, I found some notes and letters which, among other things, describe the story of a Mr. M. Omarkhan, who was also working on Gymnarchus. In one letter, Lissmann asked for the material of Omarkhan, which also turned out to be in one of the boxes I had organized. Further notes hinted that these might even be the slides R. Assheton wrote about in 1903. Again, there are publications that could be connected to these slides and these letters. With this material, we could open a window into how science worked at that time, without email, online databases, or Google Scholar.

A treasure box full of histological slides. You never know what you might find in there! Photo: Lucie Helfmann, 2024.

Today the method of creating histological slides remains widespread in hospitals and research universities, and it is still one of the best means to visualize internal and cellular anatomy. Although many aspects of the technique have changed, old material can still be used. Nowadays it is even possible to digitize histological slides and put them virtually back together to rebuild the old specimen and reconstruct parts thereof in three dimensions. Given that an animal must always be ‘sacrificed’ in order to create a histological series, it is desirable to reuse as much of the existing material as possible.

All of this shows how “old” material is often priceless, and how important it is to preserve the legacy of “old” collections, not only to save the material itself, but to reduce pressures on the animals and plants in living environments, and to preserve the remarkable history of the scientists on whose shoulders we stand today.


Literature

Alexander, R. M. (1996). Hans Werner Lissmann, 30 April 1909-21 April 1995. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 42, 235-245.

Assheton, R. (1907). The development of Gymnarchus niloticus. Cambridge University Press.

Balfour, F. M. (1885). The Works of Francis Maitland Balfour. (Vol. 1 – 4). Macmillan and Company.

Hall, B. K. (2003). Francis Maitland Balfour (1851–1882): a founder of evolutionary embryology. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution299(1), 3-8.

Lissmann, H. W. (1958). On the function and evolution of electric organs in fish. Journal of experimental biology35(1), 156-191.

Omarkhan, M. (1949). The morphology of the chondrocranium of Gymnarchus niloticus. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 41(281), 452-481.


Lucie Helfmann was awarded a Leibniz-Cambridge Museum & Collection Fellowship in Autumn 2024. At the University of Cambridge she curated the histological collection of the Museum of Zoology under the supervision of Dr. Robert Asher.


Title image: Four boxes containing histological slides of lizard tails. Photo: Lucie Helfmann, 2024.

Die globale Pflanzenwelt ausstellen. Vergangenheit und Vielfalt in botanischen Gärten

Sarah Ehlers diskutiert den Umgang mit kolonialer Vergangenheit und gegenwärtigen Krisen der Biodiversität in botanischen Gärten.

Die Geschichte botanischer Gärten ist eng mit dem Kolonialismus verbunden. Gleichzeitig finden sich weltweit vom Aussterben bedrohte Pflanzenarten heute vielfach in den botanischen Gärten im Globalen Norden. Lässt sich die Krise der Biodiversität gemeinsam mit der Auseinandersetzung über koloniale Vergangenheit angehen?

The history of botanical gardens is closely intertwined with colonialism. At the same time, many plant species threatened with extinction worldwide can now be found in botanical gardens in the Global North. Can the biodiversity crisis be tackled in conjunction with the debate about the colonial past?


“It’s time to decolonise botanical collections” erklärte 2020 Alexandre Antonelli, Director of Science der Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, den berühmten botanischen Gärten im Südwesten Londons.[1] “Politicising plants” nannte dieses Vorhaben dagegen der britische konservative Think Tank Policy Exchange und forderte, Kew Gardens möge sich auf seine Kernaufgabe konzentrieren: Forschung und Beratung in der Botanik sowie die Bewahrung und Vermittlung der einzigartigen Sammlung.[2] Was sich für die britische Gesellschaft als einer der vielen Schauplätze der im Zuge der Black Lives Matter-Bewegung neu angetriebenen Auseinandersetzungen um die eigene Kolonialvergangenheit darstellte, bedeutete für die botanischen Gärten vor allem eine weitere Veränderung ihres Auftrags.

Für die Frage nach dem „Wert der Vergangenheit“ ist die Geschichte botanischer Gärten allerdings nicht nur aufgrund dieser Deutungskämpfe von Interesse: Botanische Gärten sind lebendige Sammlungen, sie gelten als lebende Speicher von Biodiversität. Vergangenheit ist in diesem Zusammenhang also nicht nur eine Ressource für gesellschaftspolitische Auseinandersetzungen, sie ist auch ein materielles Gut. Lebendsammlungen allerdings sind dynamisch und anfällig. Sie verkörpern eine vergangene Vielfalt und zugleich einen zeitgenössischen Verlust. Somit kommen botanische Gärten nicht umhin, damit verknüpfte heutige Probleme wie Klimawandel und den Verlust menschlicher Lebensgrundlagen zu thematisieren.

Botanische Gärten und ihr koloniales Erbe

Botanische Gärten gibt es seit dem 15. Jahrhundert. Ihre Geschichte ist eng mit der Geschichte der Botanik verknüpft, deren koloniale Prägung mittlerweile auch Thema einer ganzen Reihe von Studien ist.[3] Die Gründung der Gärten wurde vielfach von Universitäten betrieben, boten ihre Pflanzen, ursprünglich vor allem Heilkräuter, der Forschung und Lehre doch wichtiges Material. Mit Zunahme des Seehandels und kolonialen Eroberungen seit dem 18. Jahrhundert kam es zu einem Boom botanischer Gärten und sie wurden zum Knotenpunkt der transnationalen bzw. transkontinentalen Zirkulation von Wissen, Materialitäten und Artefakten. Nun war das Ziel, die Pflanzen der ganzen Welt zu vereinen, zu erforschen, zu klassifizieren und auszustellen. In dieser Praxis des globalen Sammelns und Repräsentierens waren sie Teil imperialer Netzwerke und vielfach in koloniale Praktiken eingebunden.

Botanische Gärten in den europäischen Metropolen schmückten sich nun mit mehr und mehr exotischen Pflanzen, für deren Gedeih im europäischen Klima man Glashäuser baute. In der Zurschaustellung tropischer Nutz- und Zierpflanzen warben die Gärten für koloniale Besitztümer, während der systematische Austausch von Samen, Setzlingen und botanischem Wissen für tropische Anbaugebiete den Kolonialismus wirtschaftlich unterstützte. Auch „Völkerschauen“, also die rassistische Zurschaustellung als „primitiv“ oder „exotisch“ stigmatisierter Menschen in Zoos und Vergnügungsparks seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert, wurden mit tropischen Pflanzen ausgestattet oder fanden teils selbst in den Gärten statt, wie etwa in Lissabon noch im Jahr 1940.

Das Biologisch-Landwirtschaftliche Institut Amani, vor 1910. Fotograf unbekannt. Wikimedia commons, gemeinfrei

Botanische Gärten gab es auch in den Kolonien selbst. In Kalkutta, Algiers, Amani (Tansania) und vielen weiteren Orten in den Kolonien legten Europäer ebenfalls Gärten an, um den Anbau von Nutzpflanzen wie Zuckerrohr, Kaffee, Kautschuk oder Sisal zu studieren und für weltweite Plantagenkulturen zu verbessern. Allein im Britischen Empire existierten im Jahr 1900 über hundert botanische Gärten in den Kolonien. Arbeit in den Gärten und in größerem Umfang noch auf Plantagen war von Gewalt und Ausbeutung der indigenen Bevölkerung geprägt und vielerorts, wie etwa in Ostafrika oder dem Amazonasgebiet, mit Systemen der Zwangsarbeit und Sklaverei verbunden. Bezogen auf die globale Vielfalt der Pflanzenwelt führte die Ausbreitung des Plantagensystems letztlich zur Ausrottung eines Großteils einheimischer Pflanzen. Ein Restbestand dieses verdrängten botanischen Artenreichtums findet sich heute wiederum in den botanischen Gärten.

Kew Herbarium, Pflanzenproben der Raphia australis, Ian Alexander, 2019: CC BY-SA 4.0, wikimedia commons

Auf zahlreichen Expeditionen sammelten Wissenschaftler neben lebenden Pflanzen auch Millionen von gepressten und getrockneten Pflanzenproben. Als „Herbarbelege“ lieferten sie der Botanik eine Fülle neuen Materials, das es zu beschreiben, klassifizieren und systematisieren galt. Diese Form der Aneignung lokaler Pflanzen und, damit verbunden, lokalen Wissens, beschreiben vor allem postkoloniale Initiativen heute als „epistemische Gewalt“, erschufen europäische Gelehrte wie Carl von Linné, Joseph Dalton Hooker oder Friedrich Welwitsch damit schließlich die Botanik als hegemoniale westliche Wissenschaft, die anderes, älteres und lokales Wissen über die Pflanzenwelt unsichtbar machte.[4] Obwohl sie vielfach auf lokale Expertise angewiesen waren, um die zu klassifizierenden Pflanzen überhaupt zu finden, ihre Merkmale zu verstehen und zu vergleichen, traten sie als „Erstentdecker“ auf und überschrieben indigenes Wissen und Traditionen in ihren Neubenennungen und Klassifizierungen.

Neupositionierungen: Biodiversität bewahren, Wissen kommunizieren

Seit Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts erfanden sich botanische Gärten neu. Angetrieben durch die Dekolonisation, geringere öffentliche Ressourcen sowie ein wachsendes Bewusstsein für den Verlust der Artenvielfalt geschah diese Transformation vor allem durch Druck von außen. Statt imperialer Repräsentation und Weltgeltung rückten Forschung, Wissenschaftskommunikation, Unterhaltung und Erziehung zum Naturschutz in den Vordergrund

Weltkarte der botanischen Gärten sowie der Biodiversitäts-Hotspots (Regionen der Erde, in denen eine große Zahl an endemischen Pflanzen- und Tierarten vorkommt und deren Natur in besonderem Maße bedroht ist) 2019, siehe: Westwood M, Cavender N, Meyer A, Smith P. Botanic garden solutions to the plant extinction crisis. Plants, People, Planet. 2021; 3: 22–32.

Auch globale Bezüge erhielten im diesem Zuge eine neue Funktion. Nachdem es jahrhundertelang vor allem darum ging, den Pflanzenreichtum der Welt nach Europa zu bringen, wogegen er im Globalen Süden den Monokulturen wich, ist heute der umgekehrte Transfer zumindest wichtiges Ziel botanischer Gärten. Aktuell sind etwa 40% der globalen Pflanzenarten vom Aussterben bedroht. [5] Die größte Biodiversität befindet sich dabei im Globalen Süden und ist folglich auch hier in größter Gefahr. Die meisten Botanischen Gärten befinden sich dagegen im Globalen Norden. Ihre Sammlungen bieten eine Chance: Im Gegensatz zu den meisten Museumsobjekten können lebende Pflanzen in fast allen Fällen vermehrt werden, sind also durch Stecklinge, Ableger oder Samen reproduzierbar. Sterben Pflanzenarten an ihren Naturstandorten aufgrund von Klimawandel, Landwirtschaft oder Verschmutzung aus, können die Gärten die bei ihnen vorhandenen Reserven für deren erneute Aussiedlungen vermehren. Pflanzenarten können so vor dem endgültigen Aussterben bewahrt werden.

Wenn es nun darum gehen soll, die koloniale Vergangenheit der Gärten mit aktuellen Herausforderungen zusammenbringen, stellt die Nutzung der Lebendsammlungen zur Förderung globaler Biodiversität eine wichtige Handlungsoption der Gärten dar, die anderen sammlungsführenden Institutionen wie Museen so nicht zur Verfügung steht. Dass Forderungen nach besserem Zugang zu den Sammlungen, mehr Information etwa durch Online-Angebote, Mitsprache und eine deutliche Verbreitung der Kooperationen mit Partnern im Globalen Süden diese Entwicklung begleiten, überrascht in diesem Zusammenhang nicht, zeigt aber, dass hier enormes Potential liegt.

Eine weitere Dimension von Handlungsmöglichkeiten betrifft die Ausstellungspraxis. Zahlreiche Botanische Gärten (wie beispielsweise Berlin, Adelaide oder Kew) versuchen, die Geschichte ihrer ausgestellten Pflanzen und Sammlungen kuratorisch zu integrieren. Schautafeln, Sonderausstellungen und künstlerische Interventionen in den Gärten selbst sowie digitale Angebote weisen auf die kolonialen Triebkräfte ebenso hin wie auf die Herkunft der Pflanzen, ihre Wege in die Gärten, ihre Verbindungen zu indigener Kultur in der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart an ihren Naturstandorten. Für diese Arbeit braucht es nicht nur Kooperationen mit den Herkunftsgesellschaften, es sind vor allem aufwändige Recherchen zur Provenienz der Bestände nötig. Diese Arbeit gleicht der mittlerweile breit etablierten Provenienzforschung zu künstlerischen, technischen und ethnologischen Kulturgütern aus kolonialen Kontexten an Museen in vielerlei Hinsicht: Die Entstehung der Sammlungen ist teilweise wenig dokumentiert, inwieweit die einzelne Inbesitznahme unter Zwang erfolgte, ist oftmals kaum einwandfrei zu belegen. Dennoch gelingt es diesen Forschungen vielfach, wichtige Kontexte der Beschaffung der Objekte und ihrer Transfers in die musealen Sammlungen herauszuarbeiten, die nicht nur für die Herkunftsgesellschaften, sondern auch für die Museumsgeschichte selbst erhellend ist.

Provenienzforschung zieht stets auch die Frage der Restitution unrechtmäßig erworbener Objekte nach sich. Hier ist die Rolle der Gärten eine Besondere: Die Reproduzierbarkeit der Pflanzen macht die Rückgabe einerseits sehr einfach. Andererseits braucht es für eine erfolgreiche Wiederansiedlung von Pflanzen in der Regel weitaus mehr als ein paar Samenkörner oder Setzlinge, müssen schließlich die umweltlichen Bedingungen für ihr Überleben wiederhergestellt werden. Statt einer Restitution ursprünglicher Pflanzenarten fördern botanische Gärten deshalb auch vielfach die Ansiedlung neuer Nutzpflanzen, die eine nachhaltige Landwirtschaft ermöglichen, wie etwa die von Kew Gardens geförderte Enset-Kultivierung in Äthiopien.[6]

Ausblick: Wert der Vergangenheit in Botanischen Gärten

Newton’s Apple Tree in den Cambridge University Botanic Gardens nach dem Sturm Eunice, 2022, credit: Sam Brockington

Im Lebendigen, so zeigen botanische Gärten, steckt stets auch die Vergänglichkeit: Nicht nur haben Pflanzen ein natürliches Lebensalter, sie lassen sich auch deutlich schlechter als unbelebte Kulturgüter schützen. Als etwa der Sturm Eunice 2022 den Isaac Newton-Baum des Botanischen Gartens Cambridge zerlegte – Spross des berühmten Baumes, dessen Apfel Newton zur Theorie der Gravität inspiriert haben soll – war für den Garten auch ein Publikumsmagnet und damit ein recht materieller Wert vernichtet. Und materiell im Sinne von monetär ist nicht nur die Unterstützung, die Re-Kultivierungsprojekte im Globalen Süden benötigen, sondern auch der aufwändige Betrieb der Gärten selbst. Dass die Kew Gardens in ihrem „Manifesto for Change, 2021-2030“ nach der Kritik ihre Sprache anpassten und nicht mehr von „decolonise“, sondern von “re-examine our collections” die Rede war, hat sicherlich auch mit der Sorge zu tun, in Zeiten knapper Kassen selbst zur bedrohten Art zu werden.


[1] https://theconversation.com/director-of-science-at-kew-its-time-to-decolonise-botanical-collections-141070 [15.10.2025].

[2] https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/politicising-plants/ [15.10.2025].

[3] Siehe stellvertretend: Banu Subramaniam: Botany of Empire. Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism, Seattle 2024; Londa Schiebinger und Claudia Swan (Hg.): Colonial Botany. Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, Philadelphia 2005.

[4] S. bspw. Regula Flury  und Nina Schneider: Botanischer Nationalismus und Pflanzendiplomatie. Interview mit dem Künstler Uriel Orlow über seinen Werkzyklus Theatrum Botanikum, in: Widerspruch: Beiträge zu sozialistischer Politik, 37 (2018), 72, 75-85, 78.

[5] Alexandre Antonelli et al.: (2020). State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2020. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

[6] https://www.kew.org/read-and-watch/ethnobotanical-insights-enset-ethiopia


Dr. Sarah Ehlers ist stellvertretende Leiterin des Forschungsinstituts für Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte des Deutschen Museums München. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind die Umwelt-, Wissenschafts-, Medizin- und Technikgeschichte in globalen und kolonialen Bezügen. 2025 erhielt sie das Leibniz-Cambridge Museum & Collection Fellowship.


Titelbild: Great Palm House, Kew Gardens (color engraving), ca. 1851-1855, Thomas H. Shepherd. Public domain, wikimedia commons

Visuelle Spuren kolonialer Vergangenheit und Stellenwert der Aufarbeitung kolonialer Bildarchive

Romuald Valentin Nkouda Sopgui beleuchtet in diesem Beitrag, wie koloniale Bildarchive visuelle Spuren vergangener Machtverhältnisse bewahren und warum ihre Aufarbeitung heute von entscheidender Bedeutung ist.

In diesem Blogbeitrag wird beleuchtet, wie koloniale Bildarchive visuelle Spuren vergangener Machtverhältnisse bewahren und warum ihre Aufarbeitung heute von entscheidender Bedeutung ist. Im Rahmen dessen werden einige Fotografien aus der Zeit der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft in Kamerun präsentiert, um die Verflechtung von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart exemplarisch zu veranschaulichen.

This blog post examines how colonial image archives preserve visual traces of past power relations and why it is crucial to address them today. In this context, several photographs from the period of German colonial rule in Cameroon are presented to illustrate the intertwining of past and present.


Kolonialbildarchive spiegeln koloniale Wissensordnungen wider. In ihnen verdichten sich koloniale Blickregime. Die Auseinandersetzung mit diesen Archiven ermöglicht nicht nur den Zugang zu visuellen Spuren kolonialer Vergangenheit, sondern macht auch deren gegenwärtige Deutung aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven beispielsweise im Hinblick auf Restitution und ethische Verantwortung sichtbar. Die Auseinandersetzung mit der kolonialen Vergangenheit hat in den letzten Jahren an Aktualität gewonnen. Der Fokus dabei liegt zunehmend auch auf Artefakten, von entwendeten Kulturgütern bis hin zu visuellen Spuren. Fotografien der Kolonialzeit zeugen von der Tatsache, dass die Geschichte kolonialer Herrschaft in vielerlei Hinsicht eine Geschichte visueller Darstellung war.[1]

Wie andere europäische Nationen nutzte auch das deutsche Kolonialreich das Medium Fotografie, um seine kolonialen Bestrebungen zu verwirklichen und das eigene imperialistische Selbstbild zu verstärken. Besonders in Kamerun, das zwischen 1884 und 1914 unter deutschem „Schutz“ stand, sind umfangreiche Bildbestände entstanden. Zahlreiche bundesdeutsche Archive und Museen bewahren Kolonialfotografien aus Kamerun auf. Diese Fotografien bilden „Kolonialbildarchive“, d.h. die Gesamtheit aller Bilder, die dieser Kategorie zuzuordnen sind und den Weg in Archive und Sammlungen gefunden haben.

Heutzutage können „Kolonialbildarchive“ als Orte begriffen werden, an denen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit ineinandergreifen, als Räume, in denen Kolonialerinnerung und -kritik zugleich stattfinden. Fragen, die man sich diesbezüglich stellen kann, lauten: Welche Bedeutungen entfalten Fotografien im Spannungsfeld von visuellem Erbe und kolonialer Aufarbeitung? Wie sieht es aus mit den kolonialen Beziehungen in der Praxis von Museen und Archiven? Welche materiellen und kuratorischen Praktiken beeinflussen weiterhin die aktuellen Überlegungen im Umgang mit kolonialen Fotografien?

Für die deutsche Kolonialmacht in Kamerun waren Bilder ein wichtiges Instrument, um Wissen zu sammeln, Territorium zu kartieren und Macht zu inszenieren. Visuelle Aufnahmen dokumentieren eine Vielzahl von Themen, die von den Forschungsexpeditionen über die ethnografischen Studien und die kolonialen Verwaltungstätigkeiten bis hin zum Bau der Infrastruktur und den Momenten kolonialer Selbstrepräsentation reichen. Die bildlichen Darstellungen sowie die Beschriftungen der Bilder stehen beispielhaft für den Vorgang des Otherings, der das Deutsche Kolonialreich als “zivilisatorisch” und “technisch fortschrittlich” seinem “rückständig” erscheinenden kolonialen Gebiet gegenüberstellt.[2]

Koloniale Expeditionen im Bild: Erkundung und Besitzergreifung

Expeditionsfotografie in Kamerun erfüllte eine klare Funktion; sie sollte das unbekannte Territorium kartieren, sichtbar machen und damit für koloniale Herrschaft verfügbar halten.

Beschriftung: Mein Expeditionspersonal. Gehilfe, Polizeisoldaten, Köche, Boys, Dolmetscher, Arbeiter. Fotograf: Guillemain, Constantin. Portraitiert. Guillemain, Constantin (1873-1914). Aufgenommen etwa 1906. Ort: Kamerun. Signatur: 081-3200-38. Quelle: Bildarchiv der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft, Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main.

Die Kameras der Forscher richteten sich auf Flüsse, Wälder, Dörfer und Wege. Bei den Expeditionen wurden nicht nur Landschaften, sondern auch Menschen und Dorfgemeinschaften dokumentiert. „Stammesführer“ oder „typische Vertreter“ bestimmter Ethnien wurden oft in inszenierten Posen abgelichtet, die den kolonialen Erwartungen entsprachen.   

Beschriftung: Mädchen der Hausa, die Tontöpfe tragen. Darstellung: Hausa. Fotograf : Rudolf Oldenburg, 1907/1913, Kamerun. Signatur: PhMAf 2100. Quelle: GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig.

Heute können diese Aufnahmen aus einer doppelten Perspektive gelesen werden: Einerseits liefern sie historische Hinweise zu Kleidung oder sozialen Konstellationen. Andererseits verdeutlichen sie, wie sehr der koloniale Blick das Bild bestimmte und dabei Stereotypen zugrunde legte. 

Ethnografische Studien: Körper im Fokus

Einen besonders heiklen Bereich der Kolonialfotografie bilden ethnografische Porträts. In vielen Sammlungen finden sich Reihen von Fotografien, auf denen Menschen frontal und im Profil abgebildet werden. Ziel war es, „wissenschaftliche“ Vergleiche zu ermöglichen, etwa zu Körper- und Gesichtszügen.

Beschriftung: Anthropometrische Aufnahmen eines Mädchens aus Bagam. Fotograf: Rudolf Oldenburg, 1907/1913, Bagam, Kamerun. Signatur: PhMAf 2553. Quelle: GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig.

Diese Praxis war Teil eines rassistischen Wissenssystems, das Menschen kategorisierte und hierarchisierte. Solche Aufnahmen sind heute belastete Quellen. Sie machen die Gewalt des kolonialen Blicks sichtbar: die abgebildeten Subjekte wurden auf ihre Körper reduziert und zu Studienobjekten degradiert.  

Infrastrukturprojekte: visueller Fortschritt und technische Errungenschaft

Neben Expeditionen und ethnografischen Aufnahmen wurden auch Infrastrukturprojekte intensiv fotografiert. Der Bau von Straßen, Eisenbahnen, Verwaltungsgebäuden oder Plantagen war für die Kolonialmacht nicht nur ein Mittel wirtschaftlicher Ausbeutung, sondern auch ein Symbol der „zivilisatorischen Mission“.

Beschriftung: Sanagabrücke, Kamerun. Ausgeführt von Gutehoffnungshütte Oberhausen, 1911, Nachlassgeber: Kühne, Ludwig. Herkunft: Schenkung Basfeld. Register-Nr.: FoA vi-KUE-GD199. Quelle: Frobenius-Institut für Kulturanthropologische Forschung Frankfurt am Main.

Kolonialfotografien von Brücken in Kamerun sind nicht nur Dokumente technischer Errungenschaften und architektonischer Leistungen, sondern inszenieren auch einen kolonialen Fortschrittsmythos. Allerdings verbergen sie oft die Ausbeutungsbedingungen, unter denen sie entstanden sind, nämlich Zwangsarbeit und damit einhergehende Gewalt.

Visuelle Selbstinszenierung und koloniales Selbstbild

Ein zentrales Motiv der Kolonialfotografie war die Selbstinszenierung der Kolonisatoren. Gruppenaufnahmen von Offizieren, Verwaltungsbeamten oder Siedlern zeigen, wie die deutschen Akteure sich selbst inszenierten: als Entdecker, als Herren über das Land, als Träger einer überlegenen Kultur.

Beschriftung: Besichtigung der Kameruner Nordbahn 1910/11. Fotograf: Herzog Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg. Afrika/Zentralafrika/Kamerun. Signatur: 2016.13:6. Quelle: MARKK Hamburg.
Beschriftung: Jagdszene mit Europäer 1911-1913. Fotografin: Marie Pauline Thorbecke. Afrika/West-Afrika/Kamerun. Signatur: FT531. Quelle: RJM, Köln.

Diese Bilder dienten sowohl privaten Zwecken – etwa als Erinnerungsfotos für die Familien in Deutschland – als auch einer breiteren Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. In Ausstellungen, illustrierten Zeitschriften oder Kolonialalben trugen sie zur Legitimation des kolonialen Projekts bei.

Aufarbeitung kolonialer Vergangenheit in Bildarchiven

Die Diskussion zur Kolonialaufarbeitung bildet seit einigen Jahren einen Bestandteil gesellschaftspolitischer Debatten. Als Kolonialaufarbeitung werden Prozesse bezeichnet, in denen Gesellschaften, Institutionen und Einzelpersonen die Kolonialvergangenheit kritisch reflektieren, ihre Folgen für Gegenwart und Zukunft untersuchen und nach Wegen für einen gerechten Umgang suchen. Ein zentraler Bezugspunkt der Kolonialaufarbeitung ist die Frage, wie mit Kulturerbe aus kolonialen Kontexten umgegangen werden soll.[3]

Archive und Museen, in denen koloniale Objekte und Sammlungen aufbewahrt werden, sind zu einem Spannungsfeld postkolonialer Debatten geworden. Denn bis heute ist die Tradition, andere auszustellen, stark kolonialistisch geprägt, sodass gerade hier Revisionen und Problematisierungen nahe liegen.[4] Der Anspruch dieser Institutionen ist es, Orte der interkulturellen Begegnung zu schaffen, an denen dem „Fremden“ mit Achtung und Respekt begegnet wird. Die postkoloniale Kritik richtet ihr Augenmerk nicht nur darauf, wie Kolonialfotografien als Trophäen des Kolonialismus fungieren, sondern auch auf die Grenzziehungen und Machtansprüche, durch die solche Exponate gekennzeichnet werden. Eine verantwortungsvolle kuratorische Praxis bedeutet, etwa am Beispiel der Abbildung „Anthropometrische Aufnahmen eines Mädchens aus Bagam“, die Instrumentalisierung der Abgebildeten zu thematisieren und Fragen nach der ethischen Zugänglichkeit sowie nach Kontextualisierung aufzuwerfen.

Die Auseinandersetzung mit Kolonialbildarchiven aus Kamerun eröffnet nicht nur Bildhistorische Perspektiven, sondern auch eine rechtlich-ethische Dimension, die auch im Rahmen historischer Gerechtigkeit verhandelt werden soll. Fotografien aus der Kolonialzeit in Kamerun entstanden in einem Kontext asymmetrischer Machtverhältnisse zwischen Kolonisierenden und Kolonisierten. Dabei wurden Menschen aus Kamerun oftmals nicht als Subjekte mit eigener Würde, Geschichte und Stimme abgebildet, sondern als Objekte kolonialer Kontrolle, als exotische „Typen“, als „Beweise“ für rassistische Ideologien oder als „Beute“ ethnografischer Sammlungen.[5] Entscheidend ist es, die historische Gewalt im Medium der Fotografie nicht zu verdecken, sondern transparent zu verhandeln und zugleich den Blick auf die abgebildeten Menschen als handelnde Subjekte ihrer Geschichte zurückzugewinnen.


[1] Jens Jäger, Fotografie und Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main 2009.  

[2] David Bate, Photography and Colonial Vision, Third Text 7 (1993) 22, 81–91.

[3] Margareta von Oswald/Jonas Tinius (Eds.), Across Anthropology: Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial, Leuven 2020.

[4] Nadine Kulbe/Theresa Jacobs u.a. (Hg.), Bildarchive. Wissensordnungen, Arbeitspraktiken, Nutzungspotenziale, Dresden 2022.

[5] Thomas Theye (Hg.), Der geraubte Schatten. Eine Weltreise im Spiegel der ethnographischen Photographie, München 1989.


Foto: Privat.

Romuald Valentin Nkouda Sopgui ist Dozent (Senior Lecturer) für deutsche Literatur und Kultur im Fachbereich Fremdsprachen an der Pädagogischen Hochschule der Universität Maroua (Kamerun). 2025 war er Value of the Past-Fellow am IEG – Leibniz Institut für Europäische Geschichte Mainz.


Titelbild: Beschriftung: Kamerun. Mongonge. Deutscher Forscher vor einem Fetisch (Holz, geschnitzt) am Dorfeingang. Foto: Unbekannter Fotograf, um 1900. Aufnahme-Nr: df-Hauptkatalog-0278656. 

The Dawn of animal life: quantifying the origination of animal mobility

In this contribution, Emily Mitchell considers how animals first started to move.

Der Fossilienbestand ist das wichtigste Archiv der Geschichte des Lebens. Er dokumentiert Prozesse der Evolution, Anpassung und Aussterben und ermöglicht uns zu verstehen, wie Revolutionen in der biotischen Komplexität zur Entstehung der Struktur und Funktion der globalen Biosphäre beigetragen haben.

The fossil record is our primary archive of the history of life, recording processes of evolution, adaptation, extinction, and allowing us to understand how revolutions in biotic complexity have helped to form the structure and function of the global biosphere.


Animals first evolved during the Ediacaran time period, around 600 million years ago. We can gain insights into their early behaviour by studying the feeding traces they left behind.

The Ediacaran and the dawn of animal life

The Ediacaran-Cambrian transition (‘ECT’) ~580-510 million years ago marks several fundamental step-changes in evolutionary history – not only is it where we first see animals appear in the fossil record, but we also see the origin of animal biomineralization (i.e., the first mineralized skeletons), the first evidence for movement, the appearance of sophisticated new animal feeding modes (including predation), and the first time that marine organisms began to burrow deeper into the sediment – a process frequently referred to as the ‘agronomic revolution’. Together, these changes form part of the evolutionary radiation of early animals, known as the Cambrian explosion, the roots of which are now known to lie in the late Ediacaran Period. 

Even within this broad context, however, the agronomic revolution has outsized importance – the mixing of sediment by animals (‘bioturbation’) in the present day is an important ecosystem engineering process that creates new habits or niches for other animals and also influences several crucial biogeochemical cycles in the oceans, thus helping to support and maintain seafloor ecosystems. Although this interval has been heavily studied in terms of the origin of new animal groups, comparatively little attention has been paid to the evolution of behavioural complexity. Not only can behavioural complexity sometimes reflect neurology – which has a poor preservation potential – but it can also capture ecology (e.g., movement vs. predation), and how animals interact both with their environment, and each other. The evolutionary history of animal behaviour is thus an invaluable window into the evolution of the biosphere, and one which can yield insights not recorded in body fossils. Fortunately, many facets of animal behaviour can be recorded as trace fossils, which are readily preserved in a large range of ancient sedimentary environments.

In this project focussed on understanding the origins of animal movement, I am working with Dr. Simon Darroch (Curator of fossil cnidarians, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum) on some key aspects of the agronomic revolution – specifically, trace fossils referred to as ‘treptichnids’. The term ‘treptichnids’ refers to a group of burrowing behaviours that appear over the ECT, and which are important for 3 reasons: 1) one specific treptichnid trace fossil – Treptichnus pedum – serves as a biostratigraphic marker for the base of the Cambrian Period worldwide; 2) treptichnids mark the first ‘complex’ behaviours known from the fossil record, and thus the very start of the agronomic revolution; and, 3) treptichnids show an increasing variety of burrow morphologies in younger and younger rocks, and thus offer a terrific opportunity to study the evolution of behavioural complexity

A trace fossil showing the foraging patterns made by an early animal looking for food in the seafloor sediment. Distance between photogrammetry targets: 4cm. 

During my research stay with Dr Darroch, we visited fossil collections housed at Senckenberg and Tubingen University, taking the first steps in a project that will develop novel quantitative metrics to quantify behavioural complexity. The insights gained during this exchange have stimulated new collaborative projects, with future graduate research planned between our groups.

Documenting early animal movement

We first focused on the collection of Dr. Darroch, who has been collecting treptichnid trace fossil specimens from Ediacaran-aged sediments in Namibia and the southwestern United States over the last ten years, and which are currently housed at the Senckenberg museum. For each specimen we took dozens of photographs from multiple angles so that we could then make 3D models of the fossil specimens, enabling us to see the subtle details of animals probing for food in the sediment. The pattern of the different probe marks are recorded, and so the different approaches to foraging for food are captured by this fossil. These 3D models can then be used to quantify the behavior captured in the resulting trace fossil dataset in two ways. First, the hundreds of specimens in the collections enable us to take a variety of different measurements that describe the morphology and movement of tracemaking organisms, including burrow diameter, depth, burrow sinuosity, probe angles (i.e., measured both laterally, and vertically), and probe density.

Prof. Dolf Seilacher’s collections at Tubingen University

After a fantastic first week in the collections of the Senckenberg Naturmuseum, we headed to Tubingen University to study material amassed by Prof. Dolf Seilacher, considered by many to be one of the founders of ‘palaeoichnology’ – the study of trace fossils. This is an exceptionally large collection (>500 specimens) of Cambrian-aged treptichnids from South Africa, Spain, Pakistan, and Arizona, curated by Dr. Ingmar Werneberg. The Seilacher collection has enabled us to characterize the different treptichnid species – including Treptichnus pedum – and so it is an ideal dataset to begin quantifying how the behavioural complexity of treptichnids evolved over the ECT. A key question in this regard is: did complexity evolve gradually over this interval, or via a series of step-wise ‘pulses’? The answer to this question has significance not only for how we identify T. pedum (and thus the base of the Cambrian) in sequences of rocks but also sheds light on the timing and character of the Cambrian explosion.

One of the many drawers in Tubingen full of a wide range of different trace fossils.

References

Cribb, A. T., C. G. Kenchington, B. Koester, B. M. Gibson, T. H. Boag, R. A. Racicot, H. Mocke, M. Laflamme, and S. A. F. Darroch. 2019: Increase in metazoan ecosystem engineering prior to the Ediacaran–Cambrian boundary in the Nama Group, Namibia. Royal Society Open Science 6:190548.

Darroch, S. A. F., A. T. Cribb, L. A. Buatois, G. J. B. Germs, C. G. Kenchington, E. F. Smith, H. Mocke, G. R. O’Neil, J. D. Schiffbauer, K. M. Maloney, R. A. Racicot, K. A. Turk, B. M. Gibson, J. Almond, B. Koester, T. H. Boag, S. M. Tweedt, and M. Laflamme. 2021: The trace fossil record of the Nama Group, Namibia: Exploring the terminal Ediacaran roots of the Cambrian explosion. Earth-Science Reviews 212:103435.

Mitchell, E. G., S. D. Evans, Z. Chen, and S. Xiao. 2022: A new approach for investigating spatial relationships of ichnofossils: a case study of Ediacaran–Cambrian animal traces. Paleobiology 48:557–575.

Mitchell, E.G. and Pates, S., 2025. From organisms to biodiversity: the ecology of the Ediacaran/Cambrian transition. Paleobiology51(1), pp.150-173.

Turk, K. A., M. A. Pulsipher, E. Bergh, M. Laflamme, and S. A. F. Darroch. 2024: Archaeichnium haughtoni: a robust burrow lining from the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition of Namibia. Papers in Palaeontology 10:e1546.


Emily Mitchell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge and the Curator of non-insect Invertebrates in the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. Her research investigates the role of ecological processes on evolution through deep-time, from the first animal communities of the Ediacaran 600 million years ago, to the present. Deep-time ecology looks at how ecosystems function and have evolved over the history of life on Earth.

@egmitchell.bsky.social


All pictures: Emily Mitchell.