Opening of the Marejesho Research and Information Centre

The Marejesho Research and Information Centre is building on the long-standing efforts of the communities in Kilimanjaro and Arusha to examine German colonial history and its consequences, and specifically to search for and reclaim the ancestral remains of the leaders who were hanged on March 2, 1900 in Old Moshi on the orders of German colonial officers.

A multidisciplinary team from Tanzania and Germany initiated the project as a follow-up to the ‘Marejesho’ mobile research exhibition in Tanzania (2022).

The exhibition and the project’s findings will remain on site to support the development of a planned community museum and information centre in the KDC building.

The project consists of two sub-projects:

  • a provenance research project at Justus-Liebig University Giessen, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation (DZK)
  • and a research and knowledge exchange project by the Better Nation Foundation Tanzania (BNFT), financed by the Gerda Henkel Foundation

Cooperation partners include:

  • Moshi District Council (MDC)
  • Ethnological Museum Berlin (EMB-SPK)
  • Zentralarchiv (Central Archive) of the Staatliche Museen Berlin
  • State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony (SES)
  • Linden-Museum Stuttgart
  • Leipzig Mission (Leipziger Missionswerk e.V.).