Projektbeschreibung:
»Archives of Salvation: West Germany and Communist Ethiopia Plan for Life After Catastrophe« follows the history of West Germany's efforts in the 1970s and 80s to build a seed bank in communist Ethiopia. Initiated by the West German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, the seed bank was envisioned as a repository for the "raw materials for the insurance of future nourishment." A devastating famine beginning in 1973 drove the project's development as did a resolution that same year at the UN's International Technical Conference on Plant Genetic Resources, which awarded Ethiopia high priority for research and preservation initiatives on account of its important local crop varieties. In light of these developments, the BRD signed an agreement with the Ethiopian government to construct a gene bank in Addis Ababa designed to gather, store, and research Ethiopia's most unique and valuable crop varieties. The Federal Republic would support the initiative through funding totaling 3.5 million DM together with administrative, research, and financial advising. Conceived as a line of defense against future famine and agricultural collapse, the seed bank served as a kind of archive of sustainability. This article explores the history of the seed bank's origins and analyzes the motivations that led West Germans to support this decades-long transnational effort in a socialist state. Those impulses included the pursuit of a sustainable solution to global agricultural crises but also a reaction to the aesthetics of starvation deeply influenced by Holocaust discourse of the late twentieth century as well as an attempt to position the Federal Republic as a post-fascist global power.
During her stay Jennifer Allen's project is affiliated to the directorate of the ZZF.