State Minister of culture Monika Grütters in favour of an active Restitution of cultural objects from the colonial period. Critics complain, however, that the museums with flimsy arguments to play on time.
For a long time, African Nations are demanding the return of cultural artifacts from the colonial period. In countries such as France or Germany, which were formerly colonial powers, came a debate, least of all by the willingness of European cultural workers was fired, and politicians, to restitute cultural treasures.
According to one presented in November, more than 100 pages long, the report of the French scientist, Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, which recommends the return of thousands of colonial objects and their exhibition in African museums, to promised the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, the corresponding artifacts in the countries of origin surrender, and in particular to Benin. Germany has positioned itself in this question, as yet, less clear. Until March, the Federation and the Länder intend to submit a joint opinion on the processing of colonial heritage, such as the Hamburg Senator for Culture Carsten Brosda announced.
Grütters: the past active cutting
In 2019, it is exactly a century since the fallen Prussian Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, its colonial possession lost. In September, the Humboldt Forum is opened in the new Berlin city castle with an exhibition that includes a number of looted colonial Culture artifacts.
Looted art: The cult God GU from the Palace of king Behanzin
During the opening draws closer, announced the state Minister for Culture Monika Grütters at the 2. January to to want to be active on the descendants of the rightful owners of art objects from the colonial time to go to the objects. “Just passively waiting until someone wants to have something back, is not the right way to our colonial past,” says grütter.
Hermann Parzinger, President of Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, replied a day later, the Humboldt Forum will contain a “room of silence”, in which people could reflect in silence about the crimes of the colonial period. Alone between 1904 and 1908, ten of thousands of indigenous Herero – and Nama-Indians were murdered in protests against the German colonial rule. Germany recognized this until 2015 as a genocide. Reparation payments rejects it. The planned memorial is the gesture of Reconciliation, an Institution that will soon be exhibiting treasures from the colonial time.
How much blood is on the objects?
Before Bénédicte Savoy has worked on behalf of Emmanuel Macrons on the report on the Repatriation of colonial art, she sat on the Advisory Board of the Humboldt forum. In July 2017 they resigned from their activities in Protest against the lack of provenance research. She wanted to know how much blood of each work of art, dripping, she said the “süddeutsche Zeitung”. Without provenance research, no ethnological Museum should be opened.
In spite of Monika Grütters, the prospect of funding and resources for provenance research and the associated active Restitution, many observers are skeptical. “The focus is to bring back the Material to the original owners on the African continent? Or is it about preserving the Status Quo, so that as many objects remain in museums in Germany?”, Tahir Della of Decolonizing the City, a Berlin-based Initiative that promotes, among other things, for the renaming of streets named after German colonial gentlemen asks.
Of the British, robbed: These are the Benin bronzes date from the today’s Nigeria
Excuses or genuine arguments?
Wiebke Ahrndt, ethnologist and Director of the Übersee-Museum in Bremen, Germany, pleads for a differentiated approach to the issue of return. “The French problems – all the countries of origin of return – have to do neither with reality nor with the interests of these countries,” she said in an interview with DW. “Special objects, culturally sensitive objects, including human Remains, the trappings of leadership and special religious artifacts – the things we need to talk.”
It is, in fact, the shared heritage, shared heritage or German Museum Directors want to conceal their rejection of a comprehensive Restitution? Tahir Della is afraid that the statements of Grütters and Parzinger play only “on time”, instead of starting a real dialogue with the original owners. As an example, Della called the Nefertiti Statue that is currently stored in the New Museum in Berlin. The Museum in search of excuses and say, the icon was “too old to travel”. The return of the object to be turned back to Egypt.
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Europe and colonialismGone with the colonialists!
These street signs will soon be removed. They are to be replaced by new street names. You should remember the resistance fighters against the German colonialists in German South West Africa. The Nachtigal place reminded so far of the colonialists Gustav Nachtigal. Such examples are many.
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Europe and colonialismExtruded Atrocities
France was caught up around 2000 of the colonial past, as the two urgent reports of torture of prisoners of war in the Algerian war (1954-1962) triggered a massive public Echo. The debates that inflame again and again, not least because of the large number of migrants from the former colonies of the highest explosive power.
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Europe and colonialismMuseums as conflict zones
So to speak, felt the discomfort in the Controversies surrounding the 2006 in Paris, the newly opened Musée du Quai Branly, the French national Museum of non-European art. Critics complain of a romantic, uncritical image of the colonial past, and that the exhibitions were still influenced by colonial perspectives.
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Europe and colonialismFighting for the colonial power
“Liberty, equality, fraternity” – the principle was hardly for countless African soldiers who fought in the First and Second world war for France and died. The history of this so-called “Tirailleurs” raises difficult questions to commitment and community in the Wake of the French colonial Empire.
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Europe and colonialism“Rhodes must fall” – Rhodes must fall
Students of the University of Cape town cheered, as at 9. April 2015, the Statue was removed by the British colonial master Cecil John Rhodes after a month of fierce protests from the University Campus. Under the Hashtag #Rhodes must case, the Initiative spread to other cities in South Africa, as well as the United States and Europe.
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Europe and colonialismImperial personalities in the visor
The Rhodes Statue at Orial College, Oxford, was also the target of a campaign that has not succeeded, however, in spite of fierce debates. The Statue remained standing. In the UK there are very many monuments to Imperial personages, which raise questions about the appropriate use and Remember.
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Europe and colonialismPast acknowledge
A answer is trying to give the International Slavery Museum, opened in 2007 in Liverpool, and “a greater awareness of the legacy of slavery”. It is part of a commemoration that was also performed by the state, such as the then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2006, his “deep Regret” over the estimated four million displaced African slaves.
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Europe and colonialismThe fear of receivables
The legal reclamation of the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya (1952-1956) damaged the in the UK like to celebrated image of a liberal colonial power in a sustainable way. Torture, executions and Mass detentions were the measures of the British colonial government against the insurgents. In 2012, Survivors of the Mau-Mau war, the British government compensated – a novelty.
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Europe and colonialismStill a lot to do
Also, the lack of employment with the Salazar and Caetano dictatorship, up until today, a Remind of the colonial past in Portugal – especially in view of the bloody decolonization in Mozambique. The colonial experience of Portugal is rather limited on the glory of the “age of discoveries”.
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Europe and colonialismResearch against Forgetting
As in many other countries, it was also in Belgium, historical research, initiated debates, or even – as in the case of the book of the sociologist Ludo De Witte, the assassination of the first Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba – the Use of a Commission of inquiry. Their conclusion in 2001: the Belgian government wearing only a moral but no direct responsibility for the murder.
The dialogue
Jonathan Fine, curator of the Africa Department at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, describes the first steps in the direction of return as follows: “We need to come into the conversation. We are trying to delay anything.” Fine belongs to a group of scientists who explore the origin of the 1200 objects of art from Namibia. In many cases, his work will lead to Restitution, he said at the request of the DW.
Hermann Parzinger, support, meanwhile, is a project modeled after the Washington Declaration of 1998, with Germany’s colonial heritage: at the Time, explained to the signatories, the owners or heirs of the Nazi era confiscated art to locate and compensate.
As a “wishy-washy” Tahir Della of this idea and the criticism that Diaspora groups such as “Decolonize the City” on the establishment of such initiatives included in the plans around the opening of the Humboldt forum.
Lend instead of give back
The Ethnological Museum in Berlin, which will be housed in the new Humboldt Forum, has the second largest collection of bronzes from Benin. These are art treasures that were looted in what is now Nigeria from the ancient Kingdom of Benin. Together with a network of European museums, the institution has decided to give some of the 500 or so objects on loan to a Museum in Benin. Critics see the reluctance, the cultural heritage of the societies of Origin to be returned.
Controversial: at The Berlin Humboldt-Forum also objects to be exhibited from the colonial period
Roxley Foley, activist for the Australian aboriginal, non-British or German museums should lend the cultural heritage of African museums – but Vice versa. “How would it be if they give us back the items and we will lend it to you?”, he asked in June 2018, at an event of No Humboldt 21. The group includes some 80 organizations, which criticise that the cost of construction of the city Palace in the amount of approximately 600 million euros can be invested in provenance research.
Binding Policy
Since the publication of Savoy and Sarrs report on the return of African cultural heritage, the is located in France, say German Museum Directors such as Marion Ackermann of the Dresden State art collections, cultural institutions now have to tackle some complex legal issues, in order to accelerate the return of cultural goods. However, it stressed the need for national political commitment before any such Remains would be conducted in countries such as Australia and Namibia.
In this sense, Monika Grütters and the Minister of state for International cultural policy, Michelle Müntefering want to create, in March, a binding policy for cultural heritage from a colonial context. Tahir Della the goes not far enough. While Grütters emphasized that both the European as well as German colonial history have for decades been a “blind spot in the culture of memory”, tells Della that he sees “political will” to change this.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingRoyal Statues
These three Totems, half human form, half animal, are in the collections of the Paris Museum for non-European art in the Quai Branly. The West African Kingdom of Dahomey, from which it is derived, was the predecessor of today’s Republic of Benin. The former French colony has declared the artifacts as spoils of art, and in 2016 a claim for return, which France refused.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingThe masks of the Dogon
Also, the masks of the Dogon are in the possession of the Musée du Quai Branly. They originate from the present-day Mali, and came as a result of an Expedition in the early 1930s to France. Their form of language was adopted by artists such as Picasso to Baselitz. Reports from the research travellers attest to the ruthlessness of the Locals were fooled.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingPower figures from the Congo
The eyes are wide open, the body is covered with nails: The Mangaaka, a power figure from the Congo, should protect in 1880, an African village in front of the colonial girl. Worldwide, only 17 figures, one of them in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin exist. Estimated 90 percent of the African cultural heritage in Europe.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingThe Cult Of The God Gu
The French General Alfred Amedee Dodds, took the lead in colonization of West Africa a leading role.In 1892, plundered his people in Abomey, the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, the Palace of king Béhanzin. Among the objects of this brass statue of the cult God Gu.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingKing Gézo
Also, thrones, and doors with bast relief handed over to General Dodds the 1878 world exposition in Paris, built the Palais du Trocadéro. Since 2016, the culture claimed goods from Benin.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingThe Confiscated Masks
The French General Louis Archinard conquered in 1890 Segou, the capital of the Kingdom of the Toucouleur. At the time, the seized cultural goods, jewelry, weapons, and manuscripts – are today exhibited in Paris and Le Havre. Since 1994, the descendants of the Empire challenge’s founder, ‘Umar Tall, the Restitution of the objects. The Region is today Mali.
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Cultural goods waiting for shippingNot only in Africa
The acquisitiveness of the Europeans did not end in Africa. The Norwegian sailors Johan Adrian Jacobsen traveled to the 1880’s in the order of the Ethnological Museum Berlin for the acquisition of objects from indigenous cultures to North America. 2018 the return of this tomb were the grave goods from Alaska – because of grave plundering. It is the first return of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz to a community of Origin.