Research on objects of the Herero and Fang in the Ethnographic Collection of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck

This study examines the provenance of two holdings in the ethnological collection of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck in Germany.
First there are objects from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, which were collected by the ethnologist Günter Tessmann mainly as part of the Lübeck Pangwe Expedition (1907-1909). This collection of originally 1200 objects was largely destroyed in the Second World War. But even the remaining 150 objects still preserved today are considered to be one of the museum’s most important holdings. A review of the extensive source material of diaries, scientific publications, etc. showed that, in addition to purchases and donations, some of the objects were obtained through “punitive expeditions”, i.e. under the threat of armed violence, in exchange for hostages and during the looting of a village. The aim of the investigation was to determine, which of the few objects still preserved today might have been connected with the injustice documented in the written sources.
Despite the (in comparison with other colonial collections) outstanding diversity of sources material, not a single object could be clearly identified as looted property. Only four objects are suspected to have changed hands during the more violent phases of the expedition. There is also a high probability that six objects come from unproblematic transactions. For the majority of the collection that remains today, however, no acquisition circumstances can be reconstructed, so that an injustice context can neither be proven nor excluded. A special case are two objects, a reliquary figure and a horned mask, which Tessmann received as gifts from leaders of the Fang. These presents were made against the background that Tessmann posed as a colonial governor and in return issued the donors with legal confirmations of their authority.
Today’s Central African perspectives on these objects, especially the question of their origin and cultural sensitivity, will be examined by Drossilia Dikegue Igouwe from Gabon. However, her field research had to be postponed to late 2021 out due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A second critical holding of Lübeck’s Völkerkundesammlung consists of 119 objects from Namibia. They caught our attention because they came from officers and medics who were deployed in the German South West Africa during the period surrounding the genocide of the Herero and Nama (1904-1908). Unambiguous evidence of looted property was also not available in this case, as the exact circumstances of the acquisition cannot be reconstructed for any of the objects. So the research concentrated on the biographies of the collectors and the general framework of acquisitions at that time. Particularly problematic appear the human remains from the collection of Elisabeth Kulow, a midwifery sister of the Red Cross who was deployed in the Gobabis region from 1909. Among the human remains that are still in the ethnographic collection today, only one lower jaw could be reliably assigned a Namibian provenance. A complete skull, which in all probability also belonged to this collection, could be identified as a middle-aged male. He was probably not an immediate victim of the genocide, because the skull rested in the earth for a long time before it was transferred to Europe. The same applies to the lower jaw, which comes from a young individual, albeit from a different location.
As far as the chronological order is concerned, it could be shown that the collection of Dr. Berg, a leading medical officer in the Schutztruppe, was created before the genocide and that the Kulow collection dates to the years after the end of the armed conflict. The collection activities of Captain Wilhelm Drews might have already started in the final phase of the genocide, but it could be demonstrated, that most objects were acquired during his later cartographic activity in other parts of the country.
On the other hand, the collection of medical officer Dr. Jorns and the acquisition of two antique muzzle-loading rifles by Lieutenant Wilhelm Thiel clearly date to the time period of the genocide. Thiel worked in the logistics of the Schutztruppe, where he could easily have stolen these objects from an inventory of confiscated weapons. But a legal purchase cannot be ruled out either.
In all the collections examined, there are handicraft objects with no signs of use, which were probably produced specifically for sale to Europeans as a kind of curio trade. Stylistic analyzes and historical assignments of these objects to the Herero, Nama or Ovambo turn out to be contradicting. So some of these pieces may have been produced in one community and sold in another. Artisans could just as well have copied styles from neighboring communities, so that previous ethnic classifications should be critically questioned. However, even the supposedly harmless trade in handicrafts always remains shaped by the power relations of that time and can therefore never be regarded as completely unproblematic.

(c) Ethnographic Collection of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck