Collecting, Preserving, Researching: A look behind the scenes of the collection work of the Deutsches Historisches Museum

The following article is an introduction to a new series on the collection work of the Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), describing and expanding on various aspects of this activity. It deals with core questions such as the decision for or against the acquisition of certain objects, the different ways in which they are found and acquired, the changing research questions posed by the objects in the collection, the ways the provenance and origin of the objects can be traced, and many other aspects. Fritz Backhaus, director of the DHM department of collections since December 2017, deals with the complex reasons for deciding to take an object into the DHM collections and throws light on the various aspects that lead to such decisions as well as the fundamental premises involved in acquiring objects for a history museum in Germany and the consequences this has for a museum’s collections.