Dr. Piehler, you are not only connected to the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum - Cultures of the World as chairman of the Museum Society of the RJM, but also very personally through both donor families?
Yes, that's right. Ludwig Theodor von Rautenstrauch, who was chairman of the museum society for 50 years and passed away in 2018, was my father-in-law. He united both donor families in his person. The foundation of the collection is formed by 3,500 objects that his great-uncle Wilhelm Joest brought back from numerous world travels. When he succumbed to blackwater fever in the South Seas in 1897, he left the objects to his sister Adele, who was married to the Cologne merchant Eugen Rautenstrauch, the grandparents of my father-in-law. They donated this collection and also the funds for the construction of the museum building on the Ubierring to the city of Cologne.
Why does a museum need friends?
Let me ask you back: Why does man need friends? For one thing, because he is a social being, a zoonpolitikon, as the Greeks said. He feels good in the company of like-minded people. For a museum, too, it is important for people to associate with it. A museum needs support in society, it needs friends to whom what the museum does is important, who accompany it and keep it in conversation, even when the public's attention is currently turned to other things. Friends ensure that the museum is firmly anchored in urban society. Friends help to raise funds that the museum needs to fulfill its tasks and that the public sector is not always able to provide. This can, but need not, be done through donations. The Friends of a Museum also have an important role to play in establishing contacts with foundations, patrons and sponsors. They are a catch-all network for the museum. But Friends also offer criticism when they feel it is necessary. The decisive point is: criticism from Friends is not destructive, but well-meaning.
What are the goals of the Museum Society?
Until 2019, the statutory objectives of the Museum Society were strictly focused on the promotion of science and research. Scientific lectures and publications, expansion and additions to the collection and the library were supported. Since 2019, we can also support other events to introduce people to the museum. We attach great importance to this educational task. We do this with offers such as the very successful series "Young Explorers" in cooperation with the Museum Service. We organize our own lectures. We have just started an online lecture series to offer our members something to do at times when the museum is closed. We also encourage volunteerism. In addition to the information booth and the Guided Tours Working Group, the Museum Society, together with the Friends of the Museum Schnütgen, runs the Museum Shop, which is run exclusively by volunteer members of the Museum Society, except for the manager. Whenever I enter the museum, I am delighted by the very individual and sophisticated concept.
The RJM is one of the most important ethnological museums in Germany. Do you see any particular challenges for the museum when it comes to globalisation and worldwide issues like the pandemic and climate change?
These challenges are the points of attack for exhibits at an ethnological museum. The world has become globalised, and we’re constantly bombarded with news from around the world on our smartphones whether we like it or not. Globalisation has become a central part of our everyday lives. Take something as simple as buying a T-shirt, for example. For the past ten years, the RJM has shown that the production of one T-shirt requires people from all around the world, each of whom has their own step in the process, and this T-shirt travels 50,000 km before it ends up in our stores. In early 2019 we had a very successful exhibit called “Fast Fashion”, in which visitors got to examine the environmental issues and dark sides of working in the fashion industry in a globalised world. It also covered topics like migration and its causes, the rise in xenophobia, as well as the main topic of the past special exhibit “RESIST! The Art of Resistance”, in which our director Nanette Snoep and curators from the communities of origin examined 500 years of anticolonial resistance in the Global South and the lasting consequences of this. The Museumsgesellschaft promotes all of this.
Are there any projects that are particularly close to your heart?
I’m always excited by the cultural comparison in the permanent exhibit. I’m a lawyer, and my studies and dissertation focused on matters of legal comparisons. This exhibit, like my studies, is concerned with the answers that various cultures have found to similar questions relating to human coexistence. For the future there are two things that are the most important to me: One is the museum being more involved in engaging with Islam. In a city where one fifth of the population has roots in countries that are primarily Islamic, it doesn’t make sense to me that our museum doesn’t have a specialist for Islam. There is the debate as to whether Islam belongs to Germany or not, but there’s no denying it belongs to Cologne. As a result, we need to engage with it, familiarise ourselves with it and listen to it and understand what Islam means to the people who were raised in the culture. We’ve gotten together with the Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation and declared that we will jointly be financing a part-time position for one year so that we can lay the groundwork for this issue. The other thing that’s very important to me is making youths more interested in the museum and the Museumsgesellschaft. We want young people to offer their firm support – their friendship – to the museum. The topics that the museum covers are, from a human and a political perspective, so diverse that young people should feel driven to take part, work with the museum to make the ever increasing diversity of our society more visible, and help on the path toward mutual acceptance.