The Benin Kingdom and Benin City Collections at Museum Five Continents

The Museum Fünf Kontinente is the first ethnological museum in Germany. In 1862, Moritz Wagner was appointed curator of the Ethnographic Collections. The „Royal Ethnographic Collection“ was then opened in 1868 in the gallery building in the Hofgarten arcades. In 1925/26, the museum moved to the present building in Maximilianstraße, which was originally built between 1859 and 1865 by the architect Eduard Riedel as the Bavarian National Museum.

The entire infrastructure of the museum is located in one building (total area approx. 12,500 sqm): the collection depots and the archive, the permanent and the special exhibitions, the office and administration rooms, the workshops and event spaces. There is also a library open to the public and a museum shop. The museum houses about 160,000 objects, 135,000 photos and films, and over 100,000 books and periodicals.

The Africa collection of the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich currently contains around 50 objects made of ivory, metal, wood and fur that have been assigned to the Benin Empire in the museum’s entry books or are marked „Benin” or „Benin City”. However, the more precise provenance of these objects has not been fully clarified in the vast majority of cases.

Museumf Fünf Kontinente therefore launched a four-month provenance research project on 1.12.2021, which was extended to six months as a result of Covid travel restrictions. The aim of the project was to clarify the provenances and appropriation processes of the objects from the Benin Empire and Benin City that entered the museum in Munich from 1898 onwards. The main focus was also on the extent to which the Benin objects in the Munich museum are connected to the British punitive expedition of 1897 and other violent appropriation processes and are to be seen as war booty.

The recording of the results in the museum database should facilitate future research and serve as a basis for restitution discussions and cooperation with representatives of the societies of origin.

© Museum Fünf Kontinente