For this project, the Paderborn group is focusing on this seemingly mundane object of a soup bowl. We're trying to find out more about its history in connection to the pogroms that disenfranchised Jewish people.

A couple of things we - assume - to know so far: The bowl was stolen from a Jewish family in Bremen, presumably by neighbors, after the Jewish family fled/was removed from their home. We've contacted experts in porcellain that think the bowl was made by the company "Hutschenreuther" and dated between 1934/1935. Due to the rococo style of the bowl, we believe it was owned by a family that was financially at least a member of the middle class.

In this step, we worked with our university's 3D-Lab, that helped us to digitize the form of the bowl. Our intention was to see what technology offers for these processes of restitution. Can we, maybe, make this bowl accessible to people around the world without physically needing to ship it? What are the advantages over pictures, if any? 

We also learned that this process remains complicated unless you have the money/resources to fully reconstruct an object in a digital manner. We could get as far as capturing the shape rather easily, but the near perfect representation of the physical bowl in a digital format including its surface would take a tremendous effort. We're still working on possible avenues to continue this effort.