Dhe largest return of non-European collection pieces that a western museum has ever made to a country of origin is perfect: ownership of 514 artefacts from the historical Kingdom of Benin is legally transferred from the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) in Berlin to the state of Nigeria. These include world-renowned bronze commemorative heads of kings and queen mothers, carved wooden dignitaries and high reliefs depicting scenes from Benin’s history.
The contract was signed on August 25 by SPK President Hermann Parzinger and the Director General of the Nigerian National Commission for Monuments and Museums (NCMM), Abba Tijani. The first smaller transport to the West African country has already been agreed by the end of 2022. A prestigious throne will probably be one of the first objects to leave Berlin. Three generations of kings have been reclaiming this almost 300-year-old chair since the 1930s.
“I also think the quantity is very important,” emphasized Parzinger. With the signing of the contract, Nigeria came into possession of the second largest Benin collection in the world – after that of the British Museum. The London institution, on the other hand, rejects Nigeria’s demand for the return of its 900-piece Benin collection. When Parzinger emphasizes the extent of his restitution, he is referring to a statement from eight weeks ago. A paper on this was already signed at bilateral government level, but it was not yet legally binding. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth almost unanimously saw the “healing of the wounds of the past” as a prerequisite for a trusting future together with the West African country.
Parzinger sees the return of these works to their place of origin – the city of Benin City in today’s Nigerian state of Edo – as a prerequisite for long-term cooperation and refers to two young guest researchers from Edo at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. Because the German museums want to get away from the European perspective. They want to combine knowledge preserved in the societies of origin with the objects in their collections in order to convey a more objective view of other communities and countries – also for foreign visitors or members of the German immigration society. The Benin exhibition in the Humboldt Forum Berlin is to be designed from multiple perspectives.
Renegotiate loans after ten years
Its opening was also postponed to September 16 because of the pending property proceedings. Then 40 historical Benin works will be shown. They will remain in Berlin on loan until 2032, as will around 130 other objects with which the exhibition is to be redesigned every three years, explained Lars-Christian Koch. The director of the Ethnological Museum is confident that after ten years there will be renegotiations about loans. Parzinger emphasized the “good spirit of the talks”, especially with NCMM boss Tijani.
But moods and positions can change quickly: In February and March 2023, elections for the president, all parliaments and the governors of all 36 states are due in Nigeria. In this context, the extensive and internationally economically influential royal family of Benin is also struggling for political influence. She may support outgoing leader Muhammadu Buhari’s APC party in return for his promise in late 2021 that returning Benin bronzes would go to the royal family. The fact remains that Germany’s negotiating partner Tijani has already fulfilled the presidential decree by forwarding two returns from British universities to the royal court. He also announced the same procedure for the German returns.
In contrast, the governor of Edo, Godwin Obaseki, caused an uproar in Benin City a month ago. The occasion was the public presentation of the plans for a museum pavilion, the first phase of the planned Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA). According to the announcement of the former German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, this building should house the German restitutions. But it is precisely against such an independent museum of a Nigerian foundation that a group allied with the royal family is attacking.
Osazee Amas-Edobor, spokesman for a “Coalition of Benin Socio-Cultural Organizations”, calls for a royal museum to be built under the aegis of the palace instead. Amas-Edobor would not shy away from violence either: “During the invasion of 1897, the entire people of Benin defended the palace, and once again we are ready to defend what concerns the palace,” he is quoted as saying by the Lagos newspaper “Vanguard”.
Detail shot of a Benin bronze from the Ethnological Museum Berlin
Quelle: picture alliance/photothek
Originally, however, restitution advocates argued that the people of Edo and the rest of Nigeria should learn their own history from the bronzes in a public museum. Now that sounds very different. “The status of the EMOWAA cannot be a condition for the return,” Parzinger answers when asked where the Berlin collection should go without any finished building.
At the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne, too, the director Nanette Snoep probably has no problem with the appointment of Prince Aghatise Erediauwa, who is responsible for culture at the court and who in the past has only spoken of the “Royal Museum”. In a video speech, he follows up – which can be seen on the homepage of the current Cologne Benin show “I Miss You”: “It is a very, very small question who these works belong to. Unfortunately, a few people are trying to cling to the old narrative of ‘world art’.”
Descendants of the slaves see themselves as co-owners
People from a completely different part of the world recently registered what they considered to be a legitimate right to co-ownership of the Benin bronzes: descendants of the slaves in the USA. One of them is Deadria Farmer-Paellmann. The lawyer founded the “Restitution Study Group” in New York in 2000. In the USA, this institute induces former profiteers of slavery to pay in several million dollars for education and social services for African Americans, for example through foundations. Among them are banking houses like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America, railway companies or tobacco companies.
“The original number of enslaved people is twelve million people. Today there are more than 40 million descendants in the USA,” says Farmer-Paellmann, referring to the shiploads recorded at that time and to genetic analyses. How many of them were shipped via the port of Ughoton, which belongs to the Kingdom of Benin, is incomprehensible. But she points out: “It is important that the Kingdom of Benin was involved in the transatlantic slave trade.”
The bronzes cast from European metals, which are admired all over the world, are proof of this. Therefore, she has already registered the co-ownership of the slave descendants in some American museums.
She also recently contacted the Horniman Museum’s Public Park Foundation in London, which is considering returns. “We ask that you do not authorize the transfer of these relics – they are the property and legacy of slave descendants, not the slave traders,” the letter reads. Your children and their families should have access to the objects. You should know that with weapons from this trade, Benin raided villages, killing and robbing people to enslave or sacrifice them in court rituals. “If people knew this story, they wouldn’t want to return a single bronze,” the initiator of the letter is certain.
Letter to Baerbock and Roth
Startled by the contract from Berlin, Farmer-Paellmann also sent a letter last Saturday to Annalena Baerbock, Claudia Roth and the sponsors of the seven German museums with the most extensive Benin collections that are owned by their federal states or municipalities. She appeals to the “real interest” in the human rights of those involved: “We ask you not to sign any new transfer agreements with Nigeria and to cancel all existing agreements.” Instead, she wants co-ownership agreements with the descendants of the enslaved people and the metal castings to be held in trust in the museums.
She also considers material studies on the works to be revealing. According to specialist literature, only the origin of copper from the Harz Mountains for the 16th and 17th centuries is certain. Because based on the composition, the origin of the material and thus also the trade connections can be traced back like human DNA. Therefore, she opposes the disappearance of the bronzes in the palace of the former slave traders and human trafficking controllers: “As long as the bronzes are on western soil, we still have a chance of justice.”
But in Germany, the wounds of the past are supposed to be healed by giving them back to the descendants of the slave traders. The descendants of the enslaved people, some of whom suffer mentally and socially from their descent, go away empty-handed. Although supporters of the once warlike, expanding royal family are once again threatening violence if their will to return them is not fulfilled, according to German government instructions, around 20 other German museums will follow the Prussian Foundation’s step and together again return the same total number of Benin objects .