Locations

The MARKK (Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt) is one of the largest ethnographic museums in Europe, housed in a Jugendstil building in Hamburg's Rotherbaum district. The museum's origins go back to 1842, when a small ethnographic collection was kept in Hamburg's city library. It was formally established as the Kulturgeschichtliches Museum in 1871 and renamed the Museum für Völkerkunde in 1879.

From the beginning, Hamburg's position as a major trading port placed the museum at the center of colonial networks, its growth becoming inseparable from Hamburg's role as a colonial trading hub. Objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas were seized or acquired through colonial expeditions, and trade relationships built on occupation and extraction.

Since 2017, under new leadership, the MARKK has been actively confronting this history, researching provenance, working with communities of origin, and pursuing restitution. It understands its collection not as a neutral archive of world cultures, but as a material record of colonial history