The university reform of 1969 was an attempt by the GDR leadership to use ethnology as a political tool. University curricula for ethnology were primarily to cover countries that had emerged from former colonies in Africa and Asia, and to critically reappraise colonialism and imperialism from a socialist perspective.
The critical view on colonialism was also part of the curators’ personal research interests. As early as the 1970s, they conducted research on issues such as cultural self-determination, economic development, and land rights of Indigenous communities and documented their research with contemporary objects.