Female Scientist on Hunting Trophies: Colonial Trophies Are Symbols of Power

: Ms. Förschler, why do people hang a deer antler in the living room?

Silke Förschler: A deer antler refers to a successful hunt: one has emerged victorious from the encounter with the animal and can hang the object that reminds of the success on the wall. However, not only mastery of nature is involved, but also mastery of the social codes of hunting. By displaying the trophy, one presents themselves as part of a hunting community.

: Is this mainly important for men?

Förschler: Part of hunting practices are always notions of gender identity. In modern times hunting is closely tied to the idea of virile masculinity, a masculinity that meets nature in competitive sport and brings it under control. Currently, discourses on environmental protection and ecology also play a role in hunting.

: Antlers also recall a right-wing, conservative vision of homeland.

Förschler: This notion — embodied in the image of the roaring stag over the bed in the bedroom — particularly emerged in the 1950s through Heimat films. In these Heimat films, the hunter symbolized a new positive masculinity after National Socialism. The homeland connected to home shown here was an attempt to define homeland differently, namely through nature, through hunting. This homeland ideal has, of course, also strongly shaped living spaces. In National Socialism and, more generally, in imperialism, it was about the largest and most splendid trophies and their national charging.

: And at the same time hunting was a colonial practice.

Förschler: In the course of colonialism, the so-called Big Five were hunted in particular: elephants, rhinoceroses, buffalo, lions, and leopards. The hunting, tracking, and also the preparation of the animals always occurred with the help of the indigenous population. Indigenous knowledge, however, is not part of the memorial culture around the trophies. Colonial trophies are symbols of power: one has appropriated the foreign nature and at the same time ruled the local people. These dimensions should play a role in addressing colonialism: How do we deal with colonial trophies?

: What should I do if I inherit an elephant tusk?

Förschler: One can try to find out: What is the story of this object, where was the animal killed? Is there perhaps a way to return it? Would there be interest in that? These are the same questions that museums with colonial loot have to address. Colonial trophies have always served a naturalizing function as well. With their presence in living spaces, they served as a touchpoint to tell of successful hunts in the colonies and thus to neutralize colonial power relations in the form of family narratives.

: Is decor fabric with leopard print also colonial?

Förschler: I do think leopard-print should also be seen in the colonial context. Decorating with exotic animal materials was a colonial tradition. But cotton shirts or jeans with leopard print can, of course, also be understood as an ironically subversive quotation.

: In the collected volume Stefan Zweig is quoted: „Der Mann fortschrittlich, aggressiv. Die Frau scheu, schüchtern, defensiv. Jäger und Beute statt gleich und gleich.“ There, hunting language is transferred to a relationship context.

Förschler: Hunting metaphors can be found in many contexts. They are especially prominent when it comes to interactions between the genders. For example in the formulation “Trophy Wife,” i.e. the woman understood as an object hunted and now possessed. Historically, one should add that in the Early Modern period, before the emergence of bourgeois society, princesses and sovereign ladies also hunted. Here, gender difference was less decisive than class difference, since hunting was a noble privilege. There are portraits in which rulers were painted in hunting attire, for example Lieselotte of the Palatinate or Maria Amalia of Bavaria.