The Green Party politicians Baerbock and Roth want to set a special example: The two of them personally hand over art from what is now Nigeria that was looted during the colonial period. It is the prelude to an unprecedented action to right historical injustice.
A historically unprecedented act of coming to terms with the colonial past has reached a new level. With the return of valuable Benin bronzes in Nigeria, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth want to send an international signal. The Greens politicians are traveling to the West African country from Sunday to Tuesday to personally hand over the first copies of the valuable pieces of art to the Nigerian side.
More than 1,100 of the works from the palace of the former Kingdom of Benin, which today belongs to Nigeria, have so far been found in around 20 German museums. The objects, which are made of ivory and other materials in addition to bronze, come largely from British looting in 1897.
The spokesman for the Federal Foreign Office announced in Berlin that Baerbock and Roth initially want to return a total of 20 Benin bronzes from German collections to the capital Abuja. The fact that the restitution flight could be realized this year is thanks to the good cooperation between the federal government, the federal states, cities and museums. It also shows how serious Germany is about coming to terms with its colonial past.
In addition to Roth, Baerbock will also be accompanied by the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Art, Petra Olschowski, and the directors of the five museums that own the largest collections of Benin bronzes in Germany. These are the Berlin Ethnological Museum, the Dresden/Leipzig Museum of Ethnology, the Rothenbaum Museum in Hamburg, the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne and the Linden Museum in Stuttgart.
Baerbock and Roth will have ten Benin pieces from Berlin, three each from Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne, and one work from Stuttgart. Among the objects that will be returned is the 18th-century royal throne stool of Oba Eresoyen. The piece, which weighs around 90 kilograms, was still on display in Berlin’s Humboldt Forum up until this week.
In the summer, the federal government signed a declaration of intent with Nigeria for the transfer of ownership of the objects from the German museums. Since then, the respective sponsors of the museums have been negotiating with the responsible authorities in Nigeria. The museums in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Stuttgart have already transferred ownership of the holdings to the Nigerian side. It’s not just about direct restitutions. The four agreements concluded so far also regulate how many and which of the art treasures can remain on loan in Germany or be exchanged again and again.
For example, of the 514 bronzes in Berlin so far, 168 will remain in the depot of the Ethnological Museum as long-term loans and will be shown alternately in the Humboldt Forum. Such regulations were also agreed for the other museums. In addition, extensive cooperation between Nigerian and German museums is planned or already in progress.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, to which the Berlin museum belongs, spoke of a “model case”. “Something new has really emerged from this transfer of ownership: a close working relationship, a new relationship with Nigeria, with the global south as a whole,” he said as the stool was removed. The first restitutions this year are also important for the Nigerian partners.
