OBITUARY ON JOSEF FRANZ THIEL

The Weltkulturen Museum mourns the loss of its former director Prof. Josef Franz Thiel, who passed away on April 8, 2024. Under his directorship (1985-1998), the Weltkulturen Museum, then still the Museum für Völkerkunde, went through a significant period of change, during which he both decisively shaped the museum's content and significantly built up the infrastructure that is available today.

As a native Danube Swabian, Thiel experienced war, expulsion and internment as a child and teenager. In 1953, he joined the Steyler Missionaries (Societas Verbi Divini), a religious order that combines Christian missionary work with ethnological research. While studying theology as a novice at the St. Gabriel Missionary House, he also received ethnological training. After completing his studies, Thiel was sent to the then Republic of Congo as a missionary in 1961. In 1964, he studied sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris and received his doctorate in ethnology. He worked for the Anthropos Institute of the St. Augustin Mission House near Bonn as editor of the major ethnological journal Anthropos and managed the associated House of Peoples and Cultures Museum. After his habilitation in 1974, he also taught at the University of Bonn. His childhood among various ethnic groups with different languages and his missionary work during drastic political changes in the Congo predestined him for ethnology and international work in a world cultures museum, as well as for interpersonal exchange with very different personalities in general.

When Thiel was appointed director of the then Museum of Ethnology by the City of Frankfurt in 1985, there was only one building, the villa at Schaumainkai 29, with the exhibition space and a few offices set up on the top floor above. The associated coach house, which was in need of complete renovation, housed the restoration workshops and most of the collections were stored in a non-air-conditioned industrial hall in the Osthafen. The scientific service consisted of two departments, the restoration department of only one. Step by step and year by year, Thiel single-mindedly expanded the spatial and personnel situation and thus the museum's scope for action. Exhibition areas and workshops were renovated and technically better equipped, permanent scientific positions were created for the curatorship of the Oceania and Southeast Asia collections, the restoration department was expanded by two positions, an extensive specialist library and a scientific image archive were established. In general, Thiel attached great importance to the scientific profile of the museum and repeatedly acquired third-party funding for projects from the German Research Foundation. Finally, the two neighboring villas on Schaumainkai were acquired and renovated and most of the collections were moved to a new, technically well-equipped storage facility in the east of Frankfurt. Even when the new museum building he was promised when he took up his post was canceled by the city of Frankfurt despite intensive planning, he continued to work on the further development of the museum with undiminished commitment.

Thiel was good at motivating the entire museum team and inspiring them with new content. Under his leadership, cultural comparison became established as a didactic method that still forms the basis of the exhibitions conceived at the Weltkulturen Museum on topics of general social importance. When Thiel declared non-European contemporary art to be a focal point of the collection in 1986, he set an important milestone for the museum's work in terms of content. Under his direction, Gallery 37 was founded in 1997, offering a platform to artists from the Global South who were not yet recognized by Western art museums at the time. This project was recognized by UNESCO as part of the World Decade for Cultural Development. Today, Gallery 37 no longer exists, as collaborations with contemporary artists and presentations of their works have become an integral part of all Weltkulturen Museum projects. However, the gallery exhibitions of the 1990s were highly regarded pioneering achievements that were rare in museum ethnology at the time and pointed the way for the further development of the Weltkulturen Museum.

There is no doubt that the museum bears the unmistakable signature of Josef Franz Thiel to this day. It is with gratitude that we not only commemorate a director who did so much for our museum, but also express our grief for a patron, colleague and friend who was always committed to humanity.

- Text by Dr. Eva Ch. Raabe (Director 2019 - 2023) and the staff of the Weltkulturen Museum