Cultural policy – Freiburg im Breisgau – Freiburg also wants to return Benin objects – culture

Freiburg (AP) – Freiburg also wants to return valuable Benin art objects to the African country of Nigeria. So far, ten so-called Benin bronzes are kept in the ethnological collection of the local Museum Natur und Mensch. According to a template, the municipal council wants to decide on the return on March 7th.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (both Green) had already returned 20 of the valuable Benin bronzes in the Nigerian capital Abuja in December. The works of art stolen in colonial times belonged to the holdings of five German museums for a long time.

Most of the objects come from British looting in 1897. In the summer of 2022, the Federal Republic of Germany and Nigeria had agreed on a way of returning the stolen objects.

After experiences with the return from the collections of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, it is expected that around a third of the Freiburg art objects can initially remain on loan in the southern Baden city, according to the submission to the municipal council meeting. The Freiburg objects include a bust, three reliefs and several pieces of jewelry.

According to earlier information, today’s Museum of Nature and Man, formerly the Museum of Natural History and Ethnology, received a large part of its objects from the then German colonies after it was founded in 1895 – sometimes with the use of force.

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