Controversy over the return of the Benin bronzes – culture

It was an unprecedented event: 1130 of the most important and valuable works of art in Africa, the Benin bronzes, changed hands last year after more than a century. 20 of them were personally handed over by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, while ownership of the rest was transferred to the country. For the time being, they remain on loan in the five German museums with the largest Benin collections. It was probably the largest restitution of African art that has ever taken place.

It was surprising how calm it was on the German side at the time. Less surprisingly, things are now crunching in Nigeria. Outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari issued a statement dated March 23 published in the Official Gazette Federal Republic of Nigeria Official Gazette was published, the Oba of Benin, the descendant of the king, was given all the bronzes that had already been restituted by Europe and that were to be restituted in the near future. This means that the previously painstakingly constructed construction, according to which the bronzes are to go to a trust managed by the Nigerian Museums and Monuments Authority NCMM, is now obsolete.

This construction was the basis for the agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany and Nigeria on restitution. And it was the basis for Germany contributing several million euros to the construction of a planned museum for them. An exchange program for Nigerian curators is also planned. The bronzes should go back, but in a museum according to European standards and under German sponsorship. That was the idea with which Andreas Görgen, former Head of Culture at the Federal Foreign Office and now the right-hand man of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth, engineered the restitution and sold it in Germany.

The oba also wants to show the bronzes publicly, just in his private museum

All of this could now have collapsed if, instead of the NCMM, the Oba, a private citizen without official office, has his hand on the bronzes. In a guest article published in the FAZ on Saturday, the emeritus ethnologist and bitter opponent of restitution, Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, presented this as fait accompli “The Benin bronzes will become private property,” says the subtitle. The return of the bronzes to “‘the Nigerian people'” ends “in a fiasco”.

The people who were involved in negotiating the returns see things less dramatically. One of them is Barbara Plankensteiner, the director of the Hamburg Museum am Rothenbaum, who, as head of the international Benin Dialogue Group, worked for 15 years on a solution for the bronzes. She stressed that it was by no means clear what importance should be attached to the President’s statement. In any case, it is not a decree. A law from 1990 still applies, according to which tangible cultural heritage is the property of the state and is managed by its agency NCMM. In addition, the new president, who will take office in May, and the NCMM itself have a say.

Claudia Roth’s spokesman said something similar: “Together with the Federal Foreign Office, we will clarify what this measure by the outgoing president means. We want to talk to the new Nigerian government as soon as it takes office.” The former legal advisor to the UN in Vienna, Kwame Opoku, who regularly campaigns for restitution as a journalist, is amazed in an interview with the SZ about the “confusion” of the Europeans. He speaks of a “decree” whose validity is beyond question. Would the transfer of ownership then also be completed, since it was concluded with the NCMM, which may no longer be responsible at all? Plankensteiner sees it differently: “It’s clear to us: the return was unconditional.”

A monarch descendant who wants his art back? We know that

Plankensteiner does not find the development surprising or even alarming: “When it comes to returns of this importance, it naturally sets movements and discussions in motion. I am very confident that a good solution will be found.” She is also certain that the Oba will also make the pieces publicly available should he actually receive them. Just not in the Emowaa state museum, which is funded by Germany, but in the Benin Royal Museum, Oba’s competing project.

The question of who is the legally, historically, and morally legitimate recipient of works of art restituted from Europe will arise more and more frequently in the future. Is it the governments whose states, as successor institutions to the colonies, often still have a legitimacy problem, or is it the current members of individual peoples and the successors of their former heads, whose works were usually stolen by the colonialists? This was already evident in 2019, when a Bible and a whip from the Linden Museum in Stuttgart were returned to Namibia. Elders of the Nama people protested because the things had belonged to the Nama “captain” Hendrik Witbooi, but the negotiations with Germany were mainly conducted with representatives of the Ovambo people, who dominated the government.

Roth’s spokesman defended the government’s previous line, which the other European countries are also following: “It remains correct to return looted art to the states that today represent the people and culture from which this art was once stolen.” But Opoku wants to separate things more sharply: “It was right that Germany negotiated the returns with the government. But it is very clear that the things belong to the Oba. I’m not a monarchist, quite the opposite. But the people at the NCMM are not interested in the further development of African culture. When it comes to culture, people feel much more represented by the Oba, even if he doesn’t play a major role anymore. The central government, as the successor to the colonial regime, only wants to benefit from the situation.”

What the Africans do with things, they ultimately decide for themselves

In Germany it will not be easy to accept this view. When our own oba, Georg Friedrich von Prussia, reclaimed large parts of the former Hohenzollern family property from the state, there was great outrage. Only recently, after years of arguments, did he give up. And now we are supposed to hand over 1000 precious works of art, of which – albeit only a small proportion – are accessible to everyone in our museums to a would-be king?

Opoku can understand the question, but the comparison is limping: “The Hohenzollerns lost their power through a revolution. Our kings lost it through colonialism.” And contrary to what many in Europe think, the Oba would be much more careful with the restituted cultural heritage than the government, says Opoku: “If the government had the right, they would sell a lot – to Europeans. Some of the people in the NCMM come from ethnic backgrounds Groups who do not value these works, such as the Muslims.”

The returns unleash power struggles and open old wounds, not to mention the spiritual power these objects hold for Africans. All of this is part of decolonization. Rarely will it be as quiet as one had hoped for in Berlin. In the USA, for example, some descendants of slaves are protesting against the Smithsonian Institution, which also wants to return its Benin bronzes: they are made from the brass for which the Benin people sold their ancestors to European slave owners.

It took decades for European countries to bring themselves together to return the first pieces from their collections stolen from Africa. Now comes the inevitable second step: you must resign yourself to giving up control over the continued existence of these objects. Germany should not simply push the restituted objects out of the cargo planes. Restitutions should open doors, establish relationships, then these objects could be infinitely more productive than in German showcases. It was the same with Nigeria. But that cannot be forced. Whether it pleases us or hurts us: what the Africans do with these objects is up to them. They do not belong to us.