More Than 100 Academics Have Signed a Letter Demanding That Germany Immediately Open Its Colonial-Era Collections to Researchers

A distinguished group of academics, artists, and museum
professionals have published a passionate open letter demanding
that German museums open up their inventories so that research into
colonial-era objects can effectively begin.

A growing list of 100 signatories, including Felwine Sarr
and Bénédicte Savoy, the authors of a groundbreaking restitution
report commissioned by French President Emmanuel
Macron, condemn what they claim to be limited access to
German museum inventories, labeling the situation “scandalous.”

The public letter was
published this morning, October 17, in the German daily Die
Zeit, the morning after the government revealed plans for a
centralized authority to handle information requests from countries
of origin about colonial-era objects in German hands. That
plan, according to the government’s announcement, will be
implemented in the first quarter of 2020.

“Creating transparency is a cornerstone and an important field
of action,” the culture minister, Monika Grütters, said in a
statement. “It will be a central task of the contact point that was
founded today.”

But the authors behind the public letter say they are tired for
waiting for action. In their plea, they demand “unrestricted”
and “unchecked” access to inventories of African artifacts in order
for independent provenance assessments to take place.

“Precisely which African art is preserved in public museums in
Germany today? From which regions? Which type of objects? We want
and need to know this if we want to work together on the colonial
past,” they write.

The public letter acknowledges strides taken by
some European governments, including Germany’s pledge of €2 million to fund
research projects into colonial-era objects, as well as Macron’s
commissioned report. But it insists that open access to
inventories, even if the information they contain is incorrect or
incomplete, is the crucial next step.

“Knowledge of the holdings is an essential prerequisite for any
dialogue,” the authors write. The signatories, including many
researchers, claim that museums have said they must first digitize
their inventories internally before opening things up completely,
which the group says is a stalling tactic. “Work on the inventories
will never be complete and will always remain a work in progress,”
they write. “There is no need to wait.”

Already the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which
oversees Berlin’s Humboldt Forum and other museums, has fired
back.

In the statement released today, the organization stressed that
it was engaged in “intensive collaboration” with countries of
origin. “The debate about object biographies of African
collections is not a new topic. On the contrary: it has been part
of the everyday life of the curators of the Ethnological Museum [in
Berlin] for years,” it states, adding that its efforts would be
improved if it had more funding and staff. (The 2019 operating
budget for the foundation is €220 million, according to its
website.)

“Anyone who deals with the work of museums in Germany without
prejudice knows that they are making great efforts to disclose
their holdings and create transparency,” the foundation added.

These most recent developments come amid growing pressure on
European museums to reckon with their colonial pasts. The
conversation, long held behind closed doors, has flooded into the
mainstream in recent years, sparked in particular by the construction of the
Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which will house Berlin’s muscular
ethnographic collection of at least 50,000 objects taken in various
ways from African territories during the colonial era. The fire was
stoked again upon the publication of Macron’s restitution report,
which laid out an urgent call for repatriation to former
colonies.

Germany had several colonies in Africa, including in
parts of modern-day Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Rwanda, and
Namibia. France operated colonies in present-day Senegal,
Mali, French Guinea, and the Ivory Coast, to name a few.

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Demanding That Germany Immediately Open Its Colonial-Era
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