Colonial Ekphrasis: The Hidden Links between Texts, Images, and Buildings

From around 1880 to 1920, the German Empire was one of the colonial powers of Europe. Its colonial territory comprised regions on three continents: in Africa (German Southwest Africa, Cameroon, Togo, German East Africa), East Asia/China (Kiautschou/Tsingtau), and Oceania (German New Guinea, Micronesia to Samoa). It can be argued, that architecture, urban planning, and infrastructural projects were then – and still are until today – the most powerful visible and physical evidence of this period of violent impact on local societies around the globe.

However, there is still no critical history of the German colonial building cultures on three continents. This presentation takes the first steps in this direction by offering a critical evaluation of links between circulating texts, images, and building cultures in German colonial media. Based on a recent exhibition and catalogue project, the talk will analyze the relations between various forms of colonial-era print media (scientific journals, biographies, guide books, travel literature, exhibition catalogues, and postcards) and visual depictions such as plans, drawings, maps, detailed sketches, photographs, artistic representations, advertising graphics, postcard images, panoramas, stereo images, and early colonial films.

Michael Falser studied architecture and art history in Vienna, Paris and Berlin, and is project leader at the Technical University of Munich for a research project on “German Colonial Architecture as a Global Building project around 1900 and as Transcultural Heritage Today”. In 2023 he curated the exhibition “German Colonial Building Cultures – A Global Architectural History in 100 Primary Sources” at the Central Institute of Art History in Munich and edited an exhibition catalogue with the same title. He is currently a Francophone Mobility Chair at the University of Ottawa.