Coming to Terms with the Past

In 2022, more than 1000 Benin bronzes from around 20 German museums were returned to Nigeria. Around 5,000 of these bronzes were looted by the British colonial power from the royal palace in the Kingdom of Benin in present-day Nigeria in 1897. Over 1,000 of them were sold to German museums. Since the 1970s, Nigeria has been demanding the return of the looted cultural assets. A “step long overdue” emphasized Foreign Minister Baerbock, who traveled to Nigeria in 2022 with two of the bronzes in her luggage for this purpose. The ownership rights to the looted art, which is now part of the World Cultural Heritage and spread across more than 20 German museums, were to be transferred to Nigeria. At the same time, Germany supported the construction of the Edo Museum of West African Art in Nigeria and comitted to co-financing in the expectation that the bronzes would be made accessible to the public there. However, Nigerian President Buhari transferred ownership to the King of Benin, head of the former kingdom in present-day Nigeria. Although the king announced plans for a palace museum, the waves of indignation among some German politicians ran high. Dorothee Bär, a member of the CSU party, accused the government of failing because it had not insisted that the bronzes remain accessible to the public when they were returned and had not insisted more strongly on the promise of loans.

Coloniality mustn’t be (mis)understood as being completed: The incompleteness of colonial history, the after-effects of colonial conditions in global power constellations and forms of knowledge production, in meta-narratives on the history of the world and existing inequalities are factors that have a presence and an impact.

Sabine Mannitz

What is driving this uproar? Where does the certainty come from that African art must be protected from Africans and that even after the admission of unlawful possession, restitution can still be linked to demands? The persistence of the colonial attitude can be traced back to the fact that it has never been seriously and comprehensively addressed as such. A stroll through textbooks, literature, historical and ethnological museums or even through many cities with an inquisitive look at street names or monuments reveals the remembrance traditions of a society that has become well accustomed to the superiority narrative of the Global North. Patterns of thought that were used to legitimize the ruthlessly brutal conquest and exploitation of countries and people in the Global South do not disappear into thin air, but remain dangerous if they are not properly addressed and delegitimized.

Postcolonial perspectives that deconstruct whitewashing and legitimizing narratives have an important role to play: they can uncover the violence that has long been concealed, the thought patterns of colonial practice and also their continuities in order to stimulate a new way of thinking and ultimately a different form of interaction.

Sabine Mannitz

It is essential in terms of both domestic and foreign policy to promote the decolonization of thought. Drawing attention to the continuity of racist experiences of violence serves to recognize and include marginalized sections of society and helps to counter right-wing extremist tendencies. The patterns of interpretation that precede dehumanizing violence must be recognized in order to prevent it. In terms of foreign policy, the necessity of coming to terms with the colonial history of violence is apparent: how else can the urgently needed cooperation on security, energy and economic policy succeed on an equal basis?

Future cooperation with the resource-rich Nigeria, Africa's largest democracy with 210 million inhabitants, is politically desirable. To that end, the restitution of the Benin bronzes is an important first step. However, establishing good relations also requires the acknowledgement that colonial history needs to be comprehensively reappraised. Even if there is no direct colonial history between Germany and Nigeria, the restitution debate here demonstrates how much Eurocentric arrogance is still at work. The ideology of the supremacy of European countries, which legitimized the attitude of conquest at the time, was internalized as the self-image of European modernity and juxtaposed with the alleged incapacity of African societies. The deconstruction of this historical narrative has only recently begun in Germany, primarily as a result of increasing activist pressure.

The research project, “Evils of a Global Past: Post-colonial Genocide Memory and Glocally Entangled Reconciliation Politics”, led by Sabine Mannitz, deals with the aftereffects of colonial conditions in forms of knowledge production, narratives on the order of the world and the concrete relationships between former perpetrators and victims of the colonial history of violence. Together with Núrel Reitz and Rita Kopp, she investigates, among other things, how the culture of remembrance and legal and political steps towards the recognition of colonial crimes can be used to decolonize historical-political thinking and relationships. (kha)

A question for Sabine Mannitz

Sabine Mannitz

Dr Sabine Mannitz heads the research department “Glocal Junctions”, is a Board Member at PRIF and PI at the research center “Transformations of Political Violence” (TraCe). She conducts research on processes of change in political culture, social identity and the culture (politics) of remembrance and leads the research project “Evils of a Global Past: Postcolonial Genocide Remembrance and Glocally Entangled Politics of Reconciliation”.

1. Since the 1990s, many truth commissions have been formed to come to terms with the history of political violence and achieve reconciliation within society. A commission was also established in Canada in 2008 to address colonial crimes against the indigenous population. How useful is this, what are the benefits? And what are the pitfalls?

   Sabine Mannitz: In our project, we are trying to empirically investigate the question of what such an institution can achieve, and Canada is one of the countries we are examining more closely. Previously, truth commissions tended to be institutions set up after civil wars or regime changes in order to shape the transition - they were established in the context of “transitional justice”. Canada is the first case in which such a commission has been appointed to deal with part of the violent history of the settler colonial state. Specifically, the mandate concerned the so-called “Indian Residential School” system, i.e. boarding schools into which indigenous children were forced. When the Canadian Confederation was founded in the mid-19th century, the government commissioned various churches to run these schools. The Christianization, geographical separation and cultural alienation of children from their families and communities of origin were explicitly part of the programme, legitimized as “civilization”. Languages of origin were banned under penalty of law and declared inferior, in many institutions the children were exploited, physically and psychologically abused, there was sexual violence and a very high mortality rate.

   These conditions had been the subject of repeated state reports since the beginning of the 20th century, but the legal and power structures in the country were such that commission reports could simply be placed in the archives without anything following from them. It was not until the 1990s that the brutal assimilation system came to the attention of the wider public and the courts. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) also emerged from a class action lawsuit. Between 2008 and 2015, the TRCC interviewed thousands of survivors and presented a comprehensive report stating that the policy towards indigenous peoples constituted cultural genocide. Together with the report, around one hundred “Calls to Action” were published, recommendations for action to politicians and society. Interviews with survivors, relevant documents, research results, etc. are kept in a central national archive to enable further investigation.

   When it comes to the impact of the Truth Commission, I would say that a distinction must be made between different levels: for the survivors and subsequent generations, the public acknowledgement of injustice as such is incredibly important - in other words, the truth dimension. It should not be underestimated that the “civilizing mission” is classified as a crime. However, this does not change the fact that languages and knowledge have been lost or that generations of indigenous people have grown up with the ideology that they and their cultures are inferior - to name just two lasting consequences. Overall, this is an ambivalence that runs throughout: There have been official apologies following the TRCC report, a national Day of Reconciliation has been created, some of the recommendations for action have been taken up politically. However, the reconciliation issue comes from the perpetrator side. In order to shape relationships that are not based on the idea that you are considered reconciled as soon as an apology has been made, many very small-scale social and political processes are required. In this respect, the final report of a truth commission can achieve a lot, but not as a conclusion. Instead it should be understood as an impulse to change relationships. However, this must also be understood and taken up in many different places.