Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, center, and writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, right, are guided through the exhibition by Hartmut Dorgerloh, General Director and Chairman of the Board of the Humboldt Forum Foundation, left, in the Berlin Palace, Berlin, Germany, Wednesday Sept. 22, 2021, during the ceremony marking the exhibition opening of the Ethnological Museum, the Museum of Asian Art of the National Museums

Germany's president called on Germans to face the country's cruel colonial past as he opened a new museum in the capital's center that will be home to two of Berlin’s state museums.

The Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art both contain artifacts that were looted from countries in Africa and elsewhere.

“Especially the countries in Africa have lost an immense part of their art through the raids of the Europeans,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the official opening ceremony of the Humboldt Forum.

“The injustice committed by Germany during colonial times must concern all of us, the entire society,” he added.

The Humboldt Forum — located in the heart of Berlin, next to the neoclassical Museum Island complex — features collections of African, Asian and other non-European art in a partial replica of a Prussian palace that was demolished by East Germany’s communist government after World War II.

Among the artifacts are the famous Benin Bronzes, which were looted from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria, by a British colonial expedition in 1897.

The Ethnological Museum has one of the world’s largest collections of historical objects from the kingdom, The decision was taken earlier this year that German museums should work on a restitution plan with museums and authorities in Nigeria, and the Berlin museums authority said in July that it was moving forward with plans to return the Benin Bronzes next year.

The British Museum, which also owns hundreds of artifacts from the former Kingdom of Benin, has said it doesn’t currently have plans to return parts of its collection.

Addressing Germany's colonial history more generally, Steinmeier raised the killing of tens of thousands of people in German-ruled Namibia over a century ago.

Germany has been negotiating compensation payments with Namibia in talks that opened in 2015, and are likely to come to an agreement in the near future.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/german-president-asks-country-confront-125852321.html

The evil of colonialism








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Long overdue