The Nazi’s Mummy: The Afterlife of a Woman from Taltal

Abstract

In this article, I highlight the insights gained by tracing the biography of one single object in the museum collection: a mummified woman. Her trajectory is followed from her original resting place in present-day Taltal, Chile, to the University of Kiel in Germany, and finally to the National Museums of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden. The article discusses how the woman has been traded as a collectors’ item and research commodity, and how she has been exhibited at the museum. By mapping the afterlife of the mummified woman from Taltal, we can discuss effective methods for conducting provenance research at collection-based institutions. Additionally, we can examine the lingering remnants of controversial ideologies within these collections and how they are addressed today. Moreover, the article aims to underscore the challenging disparity between personal knowledge and documented knowledge within museums.