Das Album.

The grey parrot Otto was one of my grandmother’s pets. Grey parrots are among the most intelligent and talkative birds. I grew up with Otto and his calls like “Hello Nico.” He was a wild-caught parrot from Africa, bought by my grandmother in the early 1990s, and lived in a cage in the winter garden on the balcony. Theodor Schneemann also owned a wild-caught grey parrot, which he bought in Dar es Salaam. This parrot also learned to speak, for example, calling out “Bwana Schneemann” (Swahili for Mr. Schneemann). In 1910, the parrot was brought to Göttingen and later given to a zoo during World War I due to a lack of food.
The story of these two parrots exemplifies the continuity of the colonial nature relationship. On one hand, there is a genuine admiration for Africa’s natural beauty. However, this admiration is easily linked to the colonial racist image of Africa as a “primitive natural space” contrasted with Europe as a “civilized cultural space.” On the other hand, nature is subjected to control through the hunting of animals as sport and the capture of “exotic” pets for amusement and leisure. This type of nature domination is also omnipresent in Schneemann’s case. The most extensive surviving document from him is an eight-page report about a lion hunt.

Theodor Schneemann brought these stuffed mantled guereza monkeys, along with the ebony side table visible in the background, back to Germany. In the 1960s, they were kept in Göttingen. In 1998, my grandparents donated the monkeys to the Natural History Museum in Berlin. However, it appears that they were not catalogued properly, and subsequent inquiries have found them to be missing. This institutional negligence is not an isolated case and continues to contribute to the challenges of addressing colonial legacies.

This collection of wooden elephants, whose origin from the former colony remains unclear, was displayed in my grandmother’s living room for decades. The blue books visible in the background are part of the anthology „The great Germans“ from 1935, which includes a tribute to Carl Peters, a known racist and founder of the colony of German-East Africa. Additionally, there was a painting on the wall depicting a savannah scene with elephants.
These items exemplify how colonial influences persist in personal spaces, even when they are not deliberately intended or consciously recognized. Such artifacts and imagery can subtly perpetuate colonial ideologies and histories within private and domestic contexts, revealing the enduring legacies of colonialism in everyday life.