Germany Returns Artifacts Seized During Colonial Rule to Three African Nations

© ERIC HESMERGThe Ngonnso’ figure which will be returned to Cameroon
The Ngonnso’ figure which will be returned to Cameroon - Sputnik International, 1920, 28.06.2022
Subscribe
German officials said on Monday that several artifacts taken from Africa during the country’s colonial era would be returned to the peoples from whom they were taken. Last year, Berlin also signed a deal to make restitution payments to Namibia for the genocide committed there by German colonists in the early 20th century.
The announcement was handed down by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which approved 24 objects for return, including jewelry, tools, and fashion items.
“The decision makes clear that the issue of the return of items collected in a colonial context does not always come down to injustice,” foundation president Hermann Parzinger said in a statement. “The special significance – in particular spiritual – of an artifact for the community it originated from may also justify return.”
Included on the list is the shell-studded statue of Ngonnso’, the mother goddess of the Nso’ people of northwestern Cameroon, which was “donated” to Berlin’s Ethnological Museum in 1903 by a German military officer.
Also included were objects seized during the Maji Maji Rebellion, an anti-colonial upheaval that rocked German East Africa, a territory including modern-day Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, from 1905 to 1907. As many as 300,000 Africans were killed in Germany’s suppression of the uprising.
In May, the museum announced it was sending 23 stolen artifacts to Namibia on long-term loan, but was not returning them outright. Berlin reached a deal last year to admit it committed genocide against Namibia’s Herero and Nama peoples from 1904 to 1908, when they rose up against German colonization and were driven off their land and into the desert as punishment. The deal includes a $1.4 billion payment to Namibia, but the descendants of those who survived have called it insufficient to right the wrongs committed.
A skull from Germany on display in the city of Windhoek, Namibia, Tuesday, Oct 4, 2011. Hundreds of Namibians welcomed home the skulls of ancestors taken to Germany for racist experiments more than a century ago. The skulls are testimony to the horrors of colonialism and German cruelty against our people, Prime Minister Nahas Angula said at an airport ceremony, The Namibian nation accepts these mortal remains as a symbolic closure of a tragic chapter. - Sputnik International, 1920, 28.05.2021
Africa
Germany to Pay Namibia $1.3Bln in Recognition of 20th Century Genocide
Germany has also pledged to send other artifacts back to Africa, including the famous Benin Bronzes, intricate sculptures taken from the Kingdom of Benin, which is today part of Nigeria, despite the existence of the country of Benin, which was a German colony.
A study commissioned by the French government in 2018, another former major colonial power in Africa, found that more than 90% of African art is housed in museums outside the continent. However, even in Europe, much of the art pillaged by the Nazis in their continent-spanning wars in the 1930s and 1940s also has not been returned and continues to be traded.
The news also comes as the remains of Patrice Lumumba, the architect of Congo-Kinshasa’s independence and the country’s first leader, were returned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Belgium, the former colonial ruler. Lumumba was assassinated by the US and Belgian governments in 1961 for his left-wing politics. His remains have been prepared for burial in Haut-Katanga for June 30, which is DR Congo’s independence day.
Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала