Foundation Board clears the way for returns to Namibia and Tanzania
Press release from 06/27/2022
23 objects from the Ethnological Museum to remain permanently in Namibia - agreement on repatriation to Tanzania also possible
Namibia
23 objects from the collection of the Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin can remain in Namibia permanently. The Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, chaired by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth, authorised SPK President Hermann Parzinger on Monday "to conclude an agreement with the responsible authorities in Namibia in due course regarding the whereabouts" of the objects.
As previously reported, the objects travelled to the African country at the end of May as part of the partnership research project "Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures" with the Museums Association of Namibia (MAN) and are to be researched there. These include historical everyday objects, jewellery, tools and fashion. The project, which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, is based on cooperative provenance research with experts from Namibia in Berlin.
"We know how important these objects are for Namibia. They are very early pieces of which no comparable objects have survived in Namibia itself due to the violent colonisation. By restituting these objects now, we are supporting our Namibian partners in reconstructing the history of their country," says Hermann Parzinger.
Tanzania
The Board of Trustees has also authorised the President to conclude an agreement on the repatriation of objects from Tanzania that have been identified as spoils of war from the Maji Maji War and other wars since the colonial conquest.
In recent years, these spoils of war and other artefacts from Tanzania have been the subject of cooperation projects with partners in Tanzania, including colleagues from the University of Dar-Es-Salaam and the National Museum of Tanzania. The pilot project "Tanzania/Germany: Shared Object Histories?" was dedicated to researching the provenance of colonial-era artefacts from present-day Tanzania. It concluded with a travelling exhibition, which was also shown at the Maji Maji Memorial Museum in Songea. Further research collaborations are currently underway to delve deeper into the provenance and significance of the collections from Tanzania, such as the projects "Collaborative Provenance Research on Collections from Tanzania at the National Museum and House of Culture in Dar es Salaam and the Ethnological Museum Berlin" (in collaboration with the National Museum of Tanzania, the University of Dar es Salaam and the Humboldt University, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation) and "Contested Property" in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre "Affective Societies", which focuses primarily on objects belonging to the Maasai people.
For the opening of the east wing of the Humboldt Forum in September 2022, an exhibition will be dedicated to a critical examination of the Tanzania collection and shed light on its colonial contexts. The objects from the Maji Maji War and other violent appropriation contexts are expected to be shown in 2024 as part of a presentation on the "History of Tanzania", which is currently being developed together with partners from Tanzania, in particular the National Museum of Tanzania. Both sides agree that the events of the colonisation of Tanzania and the Maji Maji War, which are largely forgotten in Germany but play a major role in the public consciousness in Tanzania, should be brought closer to the German and international public in this way. They will then be returned to Tanzania.
Hermann Parzinger: "As we agree with our partners that these objects from Tanzania, which were appropriated in a clear context of violence, should not remain permanently in Germany, I am delighted that the Foundation Board has now authorised me to conclude an agreement with the relevant authorities in Tanzania on their return."