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Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth says: "Leni Riefenstahl's estate, which the SPK took over in 2018, is both a burden and a challenge. Because in her films, Riefenstahl shaped the aesthetics of National Socialist Germany like no other. And throughout her life, she refused to come to terms with her responsibility and guilt. Nevertheless, her photographs from the Nuba Mountains are important contemporary testimonies for the Nuba communities. The images make the suppressed cultural heritage of the Nuba visible and tangible. As part of this project, we want to work together to find a way of dealing with these photographs - and how they can be made accessible and usable for the Nuba communities. Basically, the project is also an important contribution to coming to terms with colonialism and to understanding between Sudan and Germany."

"The SPK is aware that with this estate it has not only taken on a much-discussed artistic work, but that it also bears a special responsibility for the critical examination of this controversial figure of contemporary history. This is precisely what we are facing up to," says Vice President Gero Dimter. "In the context of the decolonisation of the collections, we can make an important contribution with this project, as we are working with several SPK institutions and their respective expertise on the indexing and we have placed the perspectives of the Nuba actors at the centre of the research from the outset."

The cataloguing work initially focused on Riefenstahl's Nuba photographs, which were taken in southern Sudan in the 1960s and 70s. Her photographs were controversially received worldwide at the time. How do the Nuba view these works today and how will they be dealt with in the future? According to the director of the Art Library, Moritz Wullen, the perspectives of non-European actors should be deliberately placed at the beginning of the examination of Riefenstahl's work: "Historical responsibility means that we constantly confront the stories anew. However, this special responsibility does not legitimise the privilege of our own gaze. This is exactly what our research project is about: for the first time, experts from Sudan are working together with academics in Germany to research the approximately 10,000 photographs and films that Leni Riefenstahl took in the Nuba Mountains".

The works were researched and contextualised under the title "German-Sudanese Collaborative Exploration and Presentation of Leni Riefenstahl's Nuba Work". The project was supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media with funds from the Cabinet Committee on Combating Right-Wing Extremism and Racism. An important partner of the project is the Pan-Nuba Council from Sudan. For the first time, it has been possible to focus on the views of representatives of these population groups on Riefenstahl's images. The project also aims to achieve international accessibility and to secure, archive and digitise Riefenstahl's Nuba and African holdings.

"The indigenous Nuba people have been socio-culturally oppressed, politically excluded and economically marginalised throughout the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods in Sudan. This collaborative research project recognises the Nuba as agents and owners of their history and present. The way in which the affected Nuba communities and individuals - who were passive objects in Riefenstahl's works - were consulted is an unprecedented practice. The project is a milestone in the Nuba's struggle for a collective sense of belonging and a dignified social and political future," said ShamsounKhamis Kafi Tiyah, Chairman of the Pan-Nuba Council.

Lars-Christian Koch, Director of the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, adds: "From the very beginning, we have placed the perspectives, wishes and needs of our Nuba partners at the centre of our work. We are in the middle of an exciting process of relativising European perspectives and emotional repertoires and enriching them with new approaches - a process that absolutely must be continued. All the more reason for us to hope that, especially in view of the terrible situation in Sudan, which is all too often overlooked by the European public, the digital transfer of the images can represent a small ray of hope for a different, better future for our partners and perhaps also for the Nuba communities as a whole."

The joint research concludes that Leni Riefenstahl's photographs and films of the Nuba and her collection of African cultural artefacts must be seen in a colonial and racialised context. Although Riefenstahl's trips to Sudan took place after formal independence, from the perspective of the Nuba, the understanding of colonial rule and oppression also refers to the Arab dominance in Sudan and the Islamist rule of the last 30 years, which has determined society, politics and culture.

Nuba is a collective term for more than 50 different ethnic groups, divided into ten different language groups, living in the Nuba Mountains in southern Sudan. The population of this largest non-Arab group in the country is over one million people.

The project has now localised Riefenstahl's work in the political, cultural and social environment of Sudan. How were these images created? Did Riefenstahl manipulate and exploit the Nuba? As part of the contextualisation of the photographs during the workshops, the participants developed specific themes of the image content and suitable keywords that enable a new arrangement of image groups and the archive structure and support the image research of users. The contextualisation of the material includes a critical examination of Riefenstahl's work and the aesthetics of the images, as well as the development of new narratives about the images that counteract the colonial-racist view. The focus is on local perspectives on the images and their contexts of origin in the Nuba Mountains.

On 25 and 26 October 2024, an international symposium entitled "Collaboration and Digital Handover: Discussing the Project Nuba Images by Leni Riefenstahl" at the Kulturforum in Berlin will address these and other questions. At the end of the event, Riefenstahl's digitised photographs will be handed over to the Pan-Nuba Council.

Press photos: https://www.preussischer-kulturbesitz.de/newsroom/presse/pressebilder.html