Report on the restitution of African cultural assets

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The report on the restitution of African cultural assets (French: Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain ) to the French President Emmanuel Macron is a report by the Senegalese writer and economist Felwine Sarr and the French art historian Bénédicte Savoy on the context and the modalities of the restitution of African heritage from museums and collections in France. This report was published in the French original in November 2018 and six months later in a shortened and revised version in German and has since triggered numerous statements in the relevant international discussion.

After Macron's "keynote address" in November 2017 on France's policy in relation to Sub-Saharan Africa at the University of Ouagadougou , Burkina Faso , the French President commissioned the two scientists to identify the requirements, the state of affairs and a plan for the subsequent steps for such a project To work out restitution. He expressed his motivation for a fundamental reorientation of France's Africa policy in the following words:

"I belong to a generation of French for whom the crimes of European colonization are indisputable and part of our history."

- Emmanuel Macron

For the first time, a French president and his government have recognized a moral right to restitution of cultural goods which, according to the relevant laws, were previously considered inalienable property of the French state. On the one hand, Macron and the report announce corresponding measures for the collections in France, and on the other hand, African countries have specific expectations of the restitution of their cultural heritage.

The authors and their mission

The Senegalese writer, musician and economist Felwine Sarr became internationally known primarily through his manifesto Afrotopia . In it he dedicates himself to the decolonization of Africa using post-colonial theories and advocates a reappropriation of African metaphors for the future. In developing African democracies , the aim should not be to reproduce the history of the West; rather, Africa must reinvent itself through a synthesis of traditional and contemporary forms of organization. Together with the Cameroonian political scientist Achille Mbembe , Sarr founded the Ateliers de la Pensée in October 2016 , an association of around thirty scientists and artists with the aim of creating a space for intellectual debate in Africa.

The French art historian Bénédicte Savoy teaches art history at the TU Berlin and is also a professor at the Collège de France in Paris. In 2016 she received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation . Savoy is internationally recognized as an expert in the illegal appropriation of cultural assets and art theft , especially from former colonies in European museums. Until she left in 2017, she was also a member of the Advisory Board of the Humboldt Forum .

Since she has lived and worked in Berlin for many years, she is also an expert on the situation of restitution of African cultural property in Germany and is actively involved in research and public discussions on it.

"The African heritage must not be a prisoner of European museums."

- Elysee Palace

On his official assignment, which is printed in the French version of the report, Macron had instructed the two authors to hold talks and working sessions with various interest groups in Africa and France, including the research available on the colonial history of African cultural assets. Macron also asked for specific suggestions and a schedule with actions for the return of cultural goods. With his explicit stipulation “Dialogue and participation must accompany all stages of this work.” Macron's assignment not only marked the desired working method, but also opened the door for public discussions about his new cultural policy and the resulting report. Since then, numerous public discussions have been triggered by the fundamental demands for a reorientation and the return of important cultural assets from the French initiative.

The contents of the report

The introductory chapter entitled The Long Duration of Losses describes the history of African cultural heritage in the context of European colonization . Central issues here are the appropriation of foreign cultural goods as a crime against the peoples, spoils of war and the legality of the looting, museums and science as descendants of an age of violence, cultural-political aspects and the refusal of European collections to restitute African cultural goods after this cultural heritage has been more than in some cases fifty years ago. The report finally sees the mobilization of public opinion since the beginning of the 2010s as one of the most important motivations for the overdue rethinking in Africa and Europe. The authors see their report as a cultural-political appeal for immediate restitutions and a new relationship between those responsible in the sense of a European cultural policy towards Africa on the basis of mutual recognition.

After this brief history of the colonial art theft from Africa, there are three further chapters on central aspects of the tasks associated with restitution as soon as possible: restitution, restitution and collection history as well as accompanying restitutions. Finally, the appendix to the report describes the methods and steps used by the authors, followed by relevant documents, charts and figures on the holdings and the history of the collections in France, as well as information on museums in Africa. - Due to its extensive holdings of around 70,000 objects, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris has a special position. It concludes with photos and detailed information on 30 outstanding objects in this museum that are considered to be of priority for future restitution.

Regardless of the announcement by the French President of an imminent restitution, the legal requirements are by no means clear. Because in France all public goods , including the holdings of state collections, museums or other cultural institutions, are considered inalienable state assets . - Contrary to what some reactions to the report fear, it is by no means proposing the return of all African cultural goods from France. Rather, he recommends that on the restitution of important pieces based on suggestions from African experts, bilateral, diplomatic agreements should first be made. Basically, however, the authors advocate permanent restitution of illegally acquired cultural assets. You are thus explicitly rejecting the temporary return mentioned by Macron and suggested by some museum curators . The nature of the future restitutions also depends not least on a corresponding revision of the legal basis, as proposed in the report.

In addition, the report names the following important measures for a comprehensive reorientation of cultural relations: According to Sarr and Savoy, the historical The gap between knowledge of the individual collections and research into African culture on both sides will be reduced. This includes, in particular, joint research and advanced training by the museums involved, the exchange of temporary exhibitions - also between African countries - as well as material support for corresponding networks or infrastructures for the museums in Africa and the specialists working for them. In order for the cultural heritage of Africa to reach younger generations in its museums, the authors also recommend effective educational initiatives.

background

The requirements for the restitution of African cultural goods

The cultural goods in the foreground of the report relate primarily to material cultural goods, i.e. items in the collections outside of Africa. However, since information about the holdings of these collections and their scientific research is the first step in cooperation between Africa and these collections, the demand for comprehensive and freely accessible information also includes intangible cultural heritage such as B. the description of the original context of use of cultural objects in social, religious or literary contexts. This comprehensive information about the objects and the question of under what circumstances and by whom they were brought to Europe also includes provenance research . This task of cultural studies, which is relatively new in relation to Africa, includes historical, ethnological and legal aspects. Because, as some persons responsible for collections of African art emphasize, apart from in the predominant cases of looted colonial art, cultural assets were also acquired through purchase contracts, donations or other legally and morally unobjectionable ways.

However, as soon as representatives of African countries make official applications and diplomatic agreements between the African governments concerned and France can be concluded, Macron wants the cultural goods in question to be returned immediately to the descendants of the people who created them. In order for these steps not to depend solely on information and diplomatic efforts by African countries, the report recommends that French (and implicitly other) professionals take an active role and approach their colleagues in Africa.

The historical, cultural-political and geopolitical context

Even if the report by Sarr and Savoy and the accompanying debates refer to the restitution of cultural heritage from Africa, Macron's announcement as part of his first trip to Africa as French President is in the broader context of the history, present and future of French and European Africa policy. In view of the increasing political emancipation of some African countries from France, such as Rwanda, as well as the growing influence of China in Africa, French foreign policy is primarily concerned with maintaining or strengthening the ties between African countries and France and the francophone world develop.

Finally, the discussion and, above all, the moral justification of the planned restitutions relate, for example, to dealing with the history of European colonialism in Africa. Due to the specific differences in France, Great Britain or Belgium, this historical reappraisal is partly different than in Germany. However, since, in the opinion of the report, it is about colonial art theft and the cultural relationship between European societies and Africa, the restitution debate represents a key contribution to the decolonization of these relationships, which is far from over.

"Behind the mask of the beautiful, however, the question of restitution invites you to penetrate into the heart of an appropriation and alienation system, the colonial system, the public archives of which certain European museums today unwittingly function."

- Bénédicte Savoy

Discussions and controversies

France

Even before the report was published, Macron's announcement in France aroused both positive, critical or even negative comments. For example, Stéphane Martin, the then President of the Musée du quai Branly , who was involved in Sarr and Savoy's research , spoke out against permanent returns. Instead, in the opinion of other curators, more temporary exhibitions of African cultural heritage should take place in the future at changing locations in cooperation with European and African museums.

On July 15, 2020, the French government announced a draft law that allows cultural goods from French collections to be permanently returned to Senegal and Benin . As early as November 2019, the then French Prime Minister presented the Musée des Civilizations Noires in Dakar with a historical saber that is said to have belonged to Hadj Omar Saïdou Tall, who fought against French colonialists in the 1850s. This symbolic item, as well as 26 African statues, looted by French troops when they took the Abomey Palace in 1892 and donated by Colonel Alfred Dodds to a predecessor of the Musée du Quai Branly, will be the first permanent restitutions under the new law.

Germany

Despite its relatively short colonial history, which was limited to a few African countries, Germany has a very large number of African cultural assets in state, municipal or private collections. Since 2015 at the latest, the announcement that the holdings of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin will be transferred to the future Humboldt Forum has led to public and academic discussions about the reassessment of colonial history and the colonial collections. With reference to the demographic developments in Europe towards multicultural societies , advocates of the social participation of migrants continue to demand a reassessment of ethnological science and practice in the sense of a decolonization of the view of non-European societies.

In response to the report by Sarr and Savoy, the art historian and former founding director of the Humboldt Forum Horst Bredekamp spoke out against their assessment of the colonial character of the collections in Germany. Rather, he assessed the German tradition of ethnology as having " emerged in the spirit of the Enlightenment that rejected colonial aspirations."

Even before its opening, the Humboldt Forum has come under fire. Among other things, the accusation was raised of trying to evade the demand for permanent restitutions by referring to thorough provenance research. The following assessment by the cultural critic Hanno Rauterberg in the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT can serve as an example of this criticism :

“If you start to ask carefully about the origin of the objects and their acquisition history, you will quickly notice that the makers of the Humboldt Forum are deceiving themselves. They want to praise the castle as a place of tolerance and circumspection, show 'respect for other cultures' (Hermann Parzinger) - and yet the collections are not based solely on curiosity and the spirit of discovery. They are also owed to great violence and lust for power. "

Also in ZEIT, the cultural critic Thomas E. Schmidt summarized the practical and political course of the discussion about restitution as follows:

"Not everything will return - and 'everything' would not be decolonization either, because it signaled a kind of end to the intellectual exchange between Europe and Africa, a last colonialist gesture by the West, a monstrous fantasy of debt relief."

The discussion about restitutions z. B. the applications of countries like Namibia for the restitution of objects. After years of diplomatic advances, a Bible and a whip from the possession of the Namibian national hero Hendrik Witbooi from what was then German South West Africa were restituted by the state of Baden-Württemberg in early 2019 . In May 2019 it was decided that Namibia would get back a historically important stone column that was brought to Berlin in 1893. Human remains with cultural value were also returned to the societies of origin from several collections.

From 2016 to 2018, the Linden Museum Stuttgart, in cooperation with the University of Tübingen, researched the museological and scientific handling of colonial objects in ethnological museums. The final report presented in November 2018 focused primarily on the circumstances of the acquisitions by the museum management at the time, colonial officials and other patrons and came to recommendations similar to those of Sarr and Savoy's report.

The fossils of dinosaurs in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin represent a special case of natural history cultural assets, which were recovered before the First World War in the course of large-scale excavations in what was then German East Africa . Even if it is not denied that these fossils and their history also belong to the common cultural heritage of Germany and today's Tanzania, the Tanzanian government does not demand the return of the fossils, but merely a partnership in their further research and communication of knowledge, not only in Germany, but also in Tanzania.

At the beginning of 2019, the Department for International Cultural Policy in the Federal Foreign Office, the culture ministers of the federal states and the central municipal associations presented a joint declaration on how to deal with collections from colonial contexts. The collections in Germany set new foundations for processing, collaboration and returns:

“This gives us a clear framework for planning further concrete steps and measures to deal with collection items from colonial contexts in the following six fields of action: transparency and documentation; Provenance research; Presentation and mediation; Repatriations; Cultural exchange and international cooperation and contribution from science and research. "

- Minister of State Müntefering, Federal Foreign Office

On the occasion of the 2019 annual conference of the directors of the ethnological museums in German-speaking countries, the so-called “Heidelberg Statement” was published as an obligation for future reorientation of these museums. In January 2019, a new department “Cultural and Collection Goods from Colonial Contexts” was created at the “ German Center for Cultural Property Losses ” for the transfer of knowledge and the networking of collections.

In July 2019, the German Museum Association published the second version of a “Guide to dealing with collections from colonial contexts”. From an explicitly international perspective and based on a workshop with experts from several continents, this guideline offers approx. 200 pages “German museums and collections a practical tool for dealing with objects from colonial contexts and working with societies of origin - be it the exchange of knowledge or joint projects or returns. ” As in the first version, translations into English and French have been announced to enable the international exchange of this information.

On April 3, 2019, a public hearing of the Committee on Culture and Media of the Bundestag took place on this topic with the involvement of experts, including Bénédicte Savoy. The arguments put forward and the statements of the MPs were published as recordings on the Internet.

Austria

In Austria, the problem is particularly affecting the Weltmuseum Wien (formerly the Museum für Völkerkunde), which, with around 44,000 ethnographic objects from Africa, is one of the world's most important museums in this regard. The initiative and the report were welcomed at the Weltmuseum. They have been aware of the problem for a long time; The return of Moctezuma's feather crown to Mexico has been discussed in detail with the country of origin since the 1990s.

Unlike other countries, Austria has no direct colonial past; the holdings are mainly based on the collections built up by scientifically interested Habsburgs , which consist of acquisitions during expeditions and trips and material purchased in Europe. Their history could, however, be illegitimate. The museum management emphasized "that there are large gaps in provenance research." After all, the exhibits in the World Museum, which has been redesigned since 2018, are no longer presented in the sense of exotic objects, but in the context of documentation and examination of colonial history.

The model favored in Austria over a permanent return is called Shared Heritage . This means shared ownership instead of reimbursement or loans to the countries of origin, by means of which resources and interests of both sides (disposal of their own cultural heritage; safe storage, conservation and research; high-profile presence in the other country) could be bundled. To this end, there has been an international dialogue group initiated at the Weltmuseum since 2002. Although a "Lex Colonial Art" was discussed in Parliament in early 2020 following the Sarr / Savoy report, the situation of provenance research or restitution has not changed.

Belgium

In Belgium, the Royal Museum for Central Africa , or Africa Museum for short, houses the largest collections with more than 180,000 objects of cultural history and natural history, mainly from the former Belgian colony of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo .

In the course of the first fundamental renewal in the more than 100-year history of this museum, a decolonization of the collections and demands for restitutions from the former Belgian colonies of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi were taken up. The large group of African migrants also took part in this. The influence of the discussion in France also led to announcements to change the relevant laws and to more intensive cooperation with representatives of these countries. The publicly accessible collections of the Afrika Museum were also supplemented by elements of contemporary life in the Congo. The colonial film archives for these three countries were digitized as early as 2010 and made available to the authorities in the countries of origin.

Great Britain

Since the independence of former colonies, the museums in Great Britain had also received applications for restitutions not only from Africa. In the course of the intensified international discussion, a new willingness to cooperate with African experts can be observed. This resulted e.g. For example, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford invited experts from Africa to give British scientists their perspective on the cultural assets of their countries. On the other hand, the management of the British Museum as well as the incumbent Minister for Culture spoke out against a permanent restitution.

Digitization and Open Access

In a statement on the report's call for all information about the collections of African cultural assets in France to be digitized and made available worldwide through free access, the authors and more than 100 international experts point out the special aspects of such a digital representation. In particular, they demand that African societies or states of origin determine these digital data and receive copyrights , since in their opinion digital cultural goods or data about them are just as important for the future as the restitution of material cultural goods.

The Situation of Art History Collections in Africa

After African states such as Nigeria, Benin or Namibia had applied for restitution to France, Great Britain or Germany for several decades, positive statements and high expectations can be observed from Africa. New applications for restitution, for example from Mali and Nigeria, have already been prepared by binational commissions. However, concrete results are also available after several months of the announcement of a rapid repayment by Macron, e.g. B. of 26 pieces from the royal palaces in Abomey in the south of the state of Benin . However, since the existing museum does not meet modern museum requirements for the announced restitution of works of art, France promised a loan for the construction costs of such a museum in July 2019.

From 5.-7. July 2019, another meeting of the "Benin Dialogue Group" took place in Benin City , Nigeria , at which museums from Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden work together with Nigerian partners and representatives of the royal court of Benin. In addition to regular professional exchange, the establishment of a future museum for the famous reliefs and sculptures from the royal palace in what was then Benin, which was destroyed by the British army in 1897, is planned.

On the other hand, some African curators also reacted critically to the European initiatives relating to returns. A curator at the National Museum in Dar es Salaam said that the African experts must first be interviewed. Because given the large number of cultural assets and the inadequate equipment of local museums, restitutions are not always a priority. Other African cultural scholars pointed to the ethnocentric character of the institution of museums, which explains why these usually arouse little interest among local visitors in Africa. Another argument concerns the view of cultural heritage in modern, globalized societies, including in Africa. After all, the objects from the museums came from historical cultures with spiritual functions that no longer exist today.

“It's time to fix our stolen identity. (...) But the masks and fetishes that are now stored in European museums - it would be of no use to return them because these pieces are no longer of any value to the Africans. They are empty, dead, lifeless - they have lost their original meaning because they are torn out of their context and thus become objects devoid of meaning. Because they weren't art objects, but religious, ritual and magical objects. That was the only reason why they were so important to African societies back then. "

- Charles Kayuka, Tanzania

However, Sarr and Savoy had foreseen such differences in the self-image and national cultural policy in the individual states and societies of Africa in their report, which mainly referred to the francophone countries of West Africa:

“We would advise the African participants (in restitution efforts) to steer the discussion in their countries. There is already a stage for this at the Museum of Black Civilization in Dakar. The infrastructures are different in the countries, but the museums as institutions are similar. "

- Felwine Sarr

Publications

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ French Embassy in Germany: President Macron in Ouagadougou: Construction in Africa is a project between two continents. April 27, 2018, accessed May 15, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Ouagadougou, November 2017
  3. ↑ a b As a comment see: Laurent Carpentier: French museums face a cultural change over restitution of colonial objects. November 3, 2014, accessed May 13, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Felwine Sarr: Afrotopia. Matthes & Seitz Verlag, Berlin, 2019, accessed on May 27, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Afrotopia - presentation. Philippe Rey, March 10, 2016, accessed on May 28, 2019 (French).
  6. ↑ Les Ateliers de la Pensée | Afrique | Senegal. Retrieved May 28, 2019 .
  7. ^ Christiane Peitz: Art historian Savoy: "There is total sclerosis". Der Tagesspiegel, July 21, 2017, accessed on May 31, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b Interview with Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr: "Europe is turning a blind eye". Der Tagesspiegel, January 18, 2019, accessed on May 29, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Nicola Kuhn: The track of the suppliers. Der Tagesspiegel, January 12, 2019, accessed on May 29, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Paris, November 2017. Quoted from Sarr and Savoy 2018, p. 13
  11. ↑ Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy: Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle. Paris 2018 pp. 103–106
  12. ↑ In the original: “Le dialogue et la participation devront accompagner toutes les étappes de ces travaux.” Sarr and Savoy, 2018, p.104
  13. ↑ With regard to the inalienability of the collections in France, compare Sarr and Savoy, p. 63: “(...) we decided to use the following meaning for the term“ temporary restitutions ”as it appears in the text of the commission to give: Temporary solution for the time until legal forms are found to carry out the final and unconditional return of objects from the cultural heritage to the African continent. "
  14. ↑ For some years now, Germany has had its own research units such as B. the chairs for provenance research at the universities of Hamburg, Bonn or Munich. See University of Bonn, Philosophical Faculty: First endowed chairs for provenance research in Germany. December 16, 2015, accessed May 29, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Heike Hartmann, Sarah Fründt, Iris Edenheiser, Larissa Förster: Provenance research on ethnographic collections from the colonial era. Positions in the current debate . Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86004-332-5 ( hu-berlin.de [accessed on May 27, 2019]).
  16. ↑ For example, the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, inaugurated at the end of 2018, was built at the expense of the government in Beijing and by companies from China.
  17. ↑ “The Francophonie is a living entity that goes beyond our borders and whose heart beats in a place not far from here. And I want you to realize (…) that the language in which I grew up is (…) your language too. ” French Embassy in Germany: President Macron in Ouagadougou: Reconstruction in Africa is a project between two continents. April 27, 2018, accessed May 15, 2019 .
  18. ^ Adrian Ellis: Museums in the changing world order: Restitution to Africa reaches tipping point. April 5, 2019, accessed May 23, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Georg Blume: Macron's ethics of collecting. DIE ZEIT, November 28, 2018, accessed on May 23, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Didier Rykner: Emmanuel Macron met fin à l'inaliénabilité des collections publiques. November 23, 2018, accessed May 23, 2019 (French).
  21. ^ La France acte la restitution définitive d'objets d'art au Sénégal et au Bénin . In: Le Monde.fr . July 16, 2020 ( lemonde.fr [accessed July 17, 2020]).
  22. ↑ Jonathan Fine in conversation with Michael Köhler: Humboldt Forum - "Objects link to colonial history". August 2, 2015, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  23. ↑ Kurt Hirschler: Decolonization of Thought . In: The daily newspaper: taz . October 4, 2014, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 44 ( taz.de [accessed on May 31, 2019]).
  24. ↑ Bredekamp contradicts Savoy's recommendations - "I reject this argumentation of equating". Retrieved June 2, 2019 .
  25. ↑ Hanno Rauterberg: Looted Art: No more false peace! In: The time . March 12, 2018, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed June 5, 2019]).
  26. ↑ Thomas E. Schmidt: Colonial art: A game for power . In: The time . February 13, 2019, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed June 2, 2019]).
  27. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Namibia: Dispute over the return of the Witbooi Bible | DW | February 26, 2019. Accessed May 31, 2019 .
  28. ↑ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Namibia receives Cape Cross column back | DW | May 17, 2019. Retrieved May 28, 2019 .
  29. ↑ Provenance research on human remains . In: Wikipedia . April 9, 2019 ( Special: Permanent Link / 187401506 [accessed May 31, 2019]).
  30. ↑ Linden Museum Stuttgart, Ed .: Linden Museum - Schwieriges Erbe. Retrieved May 23, 2019 .
  31. ^ Museum für Naturkunde Berlin: Cultural and social sciences of nature. April 9, 2019, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  32. ^ Ina Heumann, Holger Stoecker, Marco Tamborini and Mareike Vennen: Dinosaur fragments . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, July 26, 2018, accessed on May 30, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Key points for dealing with collection items from colonial contexts. Retrieved May 30, 2019 .
  34. ↑ Foreign Office: Foreign Office - Minister of State Müntefering on the key points for dealing with collections from colonial contexts. Retrieved May 27, 2019 .
  35. ↑ HEIDELBERG OPINION | World Cultures Museum. Accessed May 31, 2019 .
  36. ^ German Loss of Cultural Property Center - funding in the field of “Cultural Property of Colonial Contexts”. Accessed May 31, 2019 .
  37. ↑ Guide to dealing with collection items from colonial contexts. In: Deutscher Museumsbund eV Retrieved on July 2, 2019 .
  38. ↑ Claudia Heine: German Bundestag - Experts: Return of colonial cultural goods only with everyone ... Accessed on September 13, 2019 .
  39. ↑ a b c d Art return: #MeToo in the museum depot. In: Der Kurier online, May 22, 2018 (accessed June 7, 2019) - Statements by Sabine Haag , General Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, to which the Weltmuseum belongs.
  40. ↑ a b Weltmuseum curator on colonialism: “There are very large gaps”. In: Der Standard online, November 27, 2018 (accessed June 7, 2019) - statements by Nadja Humberger, curator of the Africa department of the Weltmuseum.
  41. ^ Debate about the return of colonial art treasures. In: science.ORF.at, September 6, 2018 (accessed June 7, 2019) - Statements by Claudia Augustat, curator of the South America department of the Weltmuseum.
  42. ↑ Christoph Irrgeher: Giving is more difficult than receiving . Retrieved March 2, 2020 .
  43. ↑ Belgique: la restitution du patrimoine africain en débat - RFI. Retrieved May 31, 2019 (French).
  44. ↑ A group of sculptures with a clearly colonial character were removed from the museum halls and given critical comments in a separate room.
  45. ^ David Sanderson: Minister rules out return of treasures. The Times, April 19, 2019, accessed May 31, 2019 .
  46. ↑ Andrea Wallace, Mathilde Pavis: Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access Relevant to the Digitization and Restitution of African Cultural Heritage and Associated Materials . ID 3378200. Social Science Research Network, Rochester, NY March 25, 2019 ( ssrn.com [accessed June 20, 2019]).
  47. ^ Anna Codrea-Rado: African Officials Respond to France's Restitution Report. November 30, 2018, accessed May 10, 2019 .
  48. ^ Kwame Opoku: Coordination of African Positions on Restitution Matters. May 21, 2019, accessed on May 23, 2019 .
  49. ↑ Benin gets € 20m loan for new museum to show restituted heritage. Retrieved July 23, 2019 .
  50. ^ National Museums in Berlin: Benin Dialogue Group concretizes plans for museums in Nigeria. Retrieved August 2, 2019 .
  51. ↑ Werner Bloch: Colonial looted art: "We don't want alms" . In: The time . December 31, 2018, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed June 2, 2019]).
  52. ↑ Quoted from Werner Bloch: Tanzania and the colonial era - The African view. Retrieved June 2, 2019 .