Germany and Nigeria sign agreement: Germans return 1,130 works to African country

Germany and Nigeria have signed an agreement to return 1,130 objects of Nigerian origin that are in German museums. Collections of the world-famous Benin Bronzes and other valuable objects that, during the era of German colonization in Africa, were either taken from the kingdom of Benin or brought to Germany at the end of the colonial era “through colonial trade networks,” the agreement reads. The pact also recognizes “the great artistic, historical, and current value that these works have for Nigeria, its present and future generations, and particularly for the Edo people,” emphasizes the need to initiate new cultural cooperation between Nigeria and Germany, and is taken on the basis of the memorandum the two countries signed on Oct. 13, 2021 for the return of the Benin bronzes.

The agreement also provides for the building of strong relations in the fields of cultural heritage protection and digitization, museum cooperation (the agreement also provides for training for museum managers), research, exhibition organization, and archaeology, allows Germany to henceforth exhibit the Benin bronzes that will remain in the country as works “on loan” from Nigeria, and stipulates that both sides will work toward the creation of museum facilities in Benin City, the city where a museum dedicated to the art of the Benin kingdom will be built and where objects from Germany will be displayed.

The signing of the agreement was symbolically accompanied by Germany handing over two bronzes to a Nigerian delegation led by Culture Minister Lai Mohammed and Foreign Minister Zubairu Dada last weekend in Berlin at an official ceremony also attended by German Culture Minister Claudia Roth and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. “We are on the way to a future in which Nigeria and the Edo people will own the Benin bronzes,” said Minister Roth. “This should lay the cultural foundation for a new era of cooperation. As a federal government and as a nation, we recognize the horrible atrocities of colonialism,” he said."

The two bronzes delivered last weekend to Nigeria were part of the collection of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) Ethnological Museum. They are a commemorative head of a king and a relief showing a king with four attendants. In 1898, both objects entered the inventory of what was then the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin.

“The basis of any collaboration is culture. It allows us to work on the past to enable a common future,” Roth stressed. “A future in which the present generation and all future generations in Nigeria will grow in the pride and beauty that these objects radiate. A future in which the wounds of the past can heal through justice.”

Negotiations on the repatriation of the Benin bronzes have been ongoing since March 2021, and in April 2021 a joint statement was approved on how to deal with the bronzes in German museums and institutions, and in which the basic willingness to return substantial amounts of Benin bronzes was also expressed. Many German institutions adhered to this declaration.

Pictured are the two works returned by Germany to Nigeria last weekend.

Germany and Nigeria sign agreement: Germans return 1,130 works to African country

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