German Lost Art Foundation awards funds for research on Benin bronzes and also grants approximately 912,000 euros for long-term research projects on colonial contexts

The so-called “Benin bronzes” are at the heart of the de­bate on the re­turn of cul­tur­al goods to for­mer­ly col­o­nized coun­tries. With the sup­port of the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, the prove­nance of around 90 Benin bronzes is to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.  The aim is to clar­i­fy whether they al­so be­long to those ob­jects that were loot­ed from the Roy­al Palace of Benin in 1897. The Reiss-En­gel­horn-Museen Mannheim, the Mu­se­um Fünf Kon­ti­nente in Mu­nich and the Übersee-Mu­se­um in Bre­men are to re­ceive fund­ing for re­search projects ap­plied for at short no­tice. From 2022, the first Benin bronzes held in Ger­man mu­se­ums and in­sti­tu­tions are to be re­turned to Nige­ria.

The Min­is­ter of State for Cul­ture and Me­dia, Moni­ka Grüt­ters: “The han­dling of the Benin bronzes in Ger­man mu­se­ums and col­lec­tions is an im­por­tant sign of the se­ri­ous­ness that so­lid­i­fies Ger­man ef­forts in com­ing to terms with its colo­nial era. I am grate­ful to the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion for the fact that, in ad­di­tion to oth­er re­search projects on colo­nial­ism, it is now fund­ing re­search in­to the prove­nances of around 90 Benin bronzes in Ger­man mu­se­ums. This is an­oth­er im­por­tant step to­wards es­tab­lish­ing a shared un­der­stand­ing with our Nige­ri­an coun­ter­parts, and for forg­ing an in­creas­ing­ly close form of co­op­er­a­tion in this cul­tur­al field be­tween the two coun­tries in the fu­ture. We con­tin­ue to ad­here to the goal set out in the State­ment on the han­dling of the Benin Bronzes in Ger­man mu­se­ums and in­sti­tu­tions of April 29, 2021, that there should be ini­tial re­turns of Benin bronzes through­out 2022. This goal is al­so served by the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing signed a few days ago dur­ing a vis­it by a Ger­man del­e­ga­tion to Abu­ja, Nige­ria.”

In ad­di­tion, and on the rec­om­men­da­tion of its Fund­ing Com­mit­tee, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has ap­proved eight ap­pli­ca­tions for long-term re­search projects in the field of colo­nial con­texts in its sec­ond fund­ing round of 2021. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 912,000 eu­ros in fund­ing will be made avail­able for this pur­pose; six of the projects have been new­ly ap­plied for and two that are al­ready un­der­way will be ex­tend­ed (see an­nex). A re­search project at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Göt­tin­gen in the In­sti­tute of Zo­ol­o­gy and An­thro­pol­o­gy is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­no­va­tive: There, meth­ods are to be de­vel­oped for ex­tract­ing hu­man DNA from bones with­out us­ing pre­vi­ous­ly known in­va­sive pro­ce­dures. This would al­low re­searchers to use DNA anal­y­sis to iden­ti­fy in­di­vid­u­als and pro­vide clues to their ori­gins – while pre­serv­ing the in­tegri­ty of hu­man re­mains, which is im­por­tant to many so­ci­eties.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg, which was found­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the states and lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions on Jan. 1, 2015, is Ger­many’s cen­tral point of con­tact on ques­tions of un­law­ful­ly seized cul­tur­al prop­er­ty. The Foun­da­tion is fund­ed at an in­sti­tu­tion­al lev­el by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia, from which it al­so re­ceives fund­ing for its project grants. The Foun­da­tion’s main fo­cus is on cul­tur­al prop­er­ty seized un­der Na­tion­al So­cial­ism, es­pe­cial­ly from Jew­ish own­ers. Since 2019, when the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion was ex­pand­ed to in­clude the De­part­ment for Colo­nial Con­texts, it has al­so been pos­si­ble to ap­ply for fund­ing for projects that deal with cul­tur­al prop­er­ty and col­lec­tions em­a­nat­ing from colo­nial con­texts. Since then, a to­tal of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.4 mil­lion eu­ros has been ap­proved for 40 projects in this area.

Ap­pli­ca­tions for longer-term projects can be sub­mit­ted on Jan­uary 1 and June 1 of each year; short-term projects can be ap­plied for at any time. All in­sti­tu­tions in Ger­many un­der pub­lic law that col­lect, pre­serve or re­search cul­tur­al as­sets from colo­nial con­texts are el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply. These in­clude mu­se­ums, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er re­search in­sti­tu­tions. Since Jan. 1, 2021, ap­pli­ca­tions can al­so be sub­mit­ted by in­sti­tu­tions that are rec­og­nized as non-prof­it and have their head­quar­ters in Ger­many.

For more in­for­ma­tion on fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, please vis­it: www.kul­turgutver­luste.de

Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion

Lena Grund­hu­ber
Stiftung bürg­er­lichen Rechts (Foun­da­tion un­der Civ­il Law)
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