Brutish Museums

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), which maintains the Berlin Museum, has not stated why the artefacts are being loaned out and were not simply returned to Namibia. The SPK’s president, Hermann Parzinger, explained the decision came about after ‘a process of rapprochement and that’s the way that was decided for the objects to go back’ to Namibia.

The artefacts include a three-headed drinking vessel, a doll wearing traditional dress and various spears, hairpieces and other fashion accessories. Reacting to the loan, the director of the National Museum of Namibia, Esther Moombolah, said it was a new chapter in ‘the long, complex history that Namibia and Germans have’, and that Namibians should not ‘have to get on a plane to see our cultural treasures which are kept in boxes in foreign institutions’.

Analysts have said that the move by Germany to loan the artefacts to Namibia is one in a series of recent steps Germany has taken toward atoning for colonial-era crimes. Last year, Germany finally admitted that it committed genocide during its colonial occupation of Namibia (then known as German South West Africa). Germany also agreed to pay €1.1 billion in reparations. Between 1904 and 1908, German forces massacred tens of thousands of indigenous Herero, Nama and San people over disputes of land and cattle. Many of them were driven into the desert to die of dehydration, while others were imprisoned in concentration camps.