WIf he strolls a little further in Weimar in the park on the Ilm, he comes all by himself to the German Bee Museum, an “establishment committed to nature and folklore”. The exhibition beautifully illustrates the life of the honey bee, the extraction of wax and honey in the past and present, the tools and chores of beekeepers. To the left of the stairs, the lesson seems to have ended, when you reach two rooms on the other side of the first floor, which show historical baskets and hives.
Then comes the shock. Here you will find figurine hives that are advertised on the homepage as “treasures of the house”. These are tree-thick wooden steles, which contain honeycombs on the inside and are colorful and decorated on the outside with rich carvings. On the one hand you can see a naked female figure, whose navel and a wide gaping orifice underneath served as entrance holes.
In the next room, the tastelessness is pushed further in a racist manner. A plaque announces “irony, reflection, exoticism”, a further explanation promises that the “natives clad in feather coats and armed with quivers with arrows” were considered an allegory of Africa. The exhibited bee dwellings in the form of non-white people would have served to ward off natural enemies such as honey thieves. “These original figures are witnesses to old folk art from Thuringia and Saxony and reflect in a humorous way … the encounter with other cultures.” This commentary on artefacts “full of wit and irony” leaves the visitor speechless.
The figure booty of a black man stands at the window, a tube leads from the navel through the window to the outside. In the summer, this exhibit would be suitable for flight operations. Can an exhibition that only opened in 2005 really present it that way?
Imagine a school class that is suddenly standing in front of a black figure that has been reduced to a wild natural object and is used to harvest honey, the deterrent effect of which is expressly emphasized in the accompanying text. That’s not acceptable.
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