Amulet Robes from the Vute in Cameroon in the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim and the Linden Museum in Stuttgart

The Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum (RPM) is a multidisciplinary museum whose holdings include an ethnological collection comprising around 14,000 objects. The Linden-Museum in Stuttgart is a state ethnological museum and houses around 160,000 objects from all over the world.

The collections of both museums each include a tunic from the Wute (Vute) in Cameroon, decorated with numerous leather amulet capsules. Such garments were intended to protect their wearers from enemy bullets during armed conflicts. Both amulet robes are said to have belonged to a Vute chief with the title "Ngilla", from whom the colonial officer Hans Dominik is said to have "captured" them - the one in Stuttgart is explicitly attributed to the so-called "Wute-Adamaua campaign" (1898/99). The piece in Hildesheim is a gift (1906) from the Bremen merchant Gustav Pelizaeus. In view of the information on the two “war shirts”, it can be assumed with certainty that they were acquired in a violent colonial context.

However, there were unanswered questions about the provenance: Who did the garments belong to? After all, the Ngilla with the proper name Neyon, who was in power around 1898/99, was never subjugated by Dominik. Dominik could not have "captured" any of the war shirts from him. Were the original owners possibly completely different people? And how did Pelizaeus get hold of this extraordinary piece? The research supports Elias Aguigah’s assumption that the "war shirt" in Stuttgart may have belonged to Gimene, Neyon’s field commander. As to the garment in Hildesheim, in addition to Neyon and his successor Gane, Gong Nar, who presided over the Vute ruling centre of Linte under the title Ngrté III and submitted to Dominik in April 1906, emerged as a possible previous owner. The significance of the garment for the Vute today also had to be clarified. Dr Richard Tsogang Fossi carried out preliminary work on this in Nguila. He learned from the current chief and one of the latter’s notables that the memory of the forcible appropriation of cultural assets and the cultural significance of amulet garments is still very much alive and that there is the wish that such items return to Nguila.

©  Roemer- und Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim