Germany’s Ethnological Museum of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation on Monday said it will return a goddess statue that was stolen from Cameroon 120 years ago, reported Africa News. The decision to return the artefact is part of a growing trend to give back artefacts taken during the colonial era.
The Berlin-based foundation said it had entered into negotiations on the returns of artefacts to Cameroon, Namibia, and Tanzania.
It said that it is returning a shell-studded statue of the mother goddess Ngonnso’, which holds great spiritual significance for the Nso’ people of northwest Cameroon. The statue has been part of the collection of Berlin’s Ethnological Museum since 1903, after it was donated by one of Germany’s colonial officers who had taken it by force from the Nso’ community.
The heritage foundation also approved the permanent return of 23 artefacts, including jewellery, tools and fashion items, to Namibia. Stolen during the colonial period from 1884 to 1919 from different Namibian communities, the artefacts were sent to Namibia for research purposes last month and will now remain there.
The foundation said its president had also been authorised to sign an agreement on the return of objects Germany’s officials looted from Tanzania during the Maji Maji Rebellion and other conflicts during its early 20th-century colonial rule.
The foundation’s president, Hermann Parzinger, welcomed the move to return the artefacts.
“The decision makes clear that the issue of the return of items collected in a colonial context does not always come down to injustice,” he said. “The special significance – in particular spiritual – of an artefact for the community it originated from may also justify return.”
The return of the artefacts is the latest move in response to mounting calls in Africa for Western countries to hand back colonial spoils from their museums. Hundreds of other objects stolen from Africa still remain in Germany.
