Prof. Albert Gouaffo: Lucian Scherman Lecture, Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich, May 8, 2025
Full text of the speech in English here (11 pages, pdf format):
Original German version here (12 pages, pdf format):
Prof. Albert Gouaffo from the University of Dschang in Cameroon is one of the best experts on the colonial plundering of his country by Germany. Together with Prof. Bénédicte Savoy from the Technical University of Berlin, he heads the Cameroonian-German research project on the relocation of Cameroonian cultural assets (cultural belongings) to Germany.
Atlas of absence
The results of the first, three-year phase of the research cooperation are documented in the Atlas of Absence. According to this, there are currently more than 40,000 cultural belongings from Cameroon in German public institutions. Most of them date back to the period of German colonial rule. As the Atlas shows, the Germans often appropriated them by military force. No other country in the world has as many Cameroonian „objects“ in public ownership as the Federal Republic of Germany. The collections in some German museums individually exceed the total number of Cameroonian cultural assets in the capital Yaoundé, which, with around 6,000 cultural items, is the „typical“ size of a national museum in a region formerly colonized by France.
Next phase of the research project
The second phase of the project, which is also being funded by the German Research Foundation, focuses on disseminating the results in Cameroon and Germany. In Cameroon, the activities are aimed at traditional communities, civil society, cultural workers, universities and, in particular, the country’s youth.
„Between helplessness and need for action“
Apart from the 26 cultural objects that were handed over to the state of Benin by France in 2022 and the 20 or so Benin Bronzes that Germany officially brought back to Nigeria, there is a relative standstill eight years after the Sarr-Savoy report, according to Prof. Gouaffo’s assessment. Even the findings of the book Atlas of Absence, which was published in June 2023
did not accelerate the process of restitution. Prof. Gouaffo: „Cameroon and Germany must move towards each other: The current standstill is unproductive and only gives birth to indifference. Both countries need a dialogue that does not exclude fundamental differences and does not avoid conflict, while respecting the other party to the dispute without abandoning their own positions for no reason.“
Amnesia on the Cameroonian side
The current dialogue between Cameroon and Germany reminds Prof. Gouaffo of a conversation between a deaf person and a visually impaired person. One is deaf because he is saturated and the other is blind because he only looks at himself. The Cameroonian government is afraid of the decoloniality that the restitution debate entails. On the Cameroonian side, amnesia has also served to maintain the colonial privileges of the elite. In his country, there is a danger of the restitution debate being instrumentalized by politics, says Prof. Gouaffo.
Conditions for successful restitution
For Prof. Gouaffo, the following aspects are of great importance for the upcoming negotiation process between Cameroon and Germany:
„1. Germany must find legal solutions by amending its legislation on cultural heritage.
2. It would be appropriate for Germany to create a central or contact point as a counterpart to the Cameroonian Interministerial Committee for the repatriation of both Cameroonian cultural assets and the remains of their ancestors.
3. The financing of repatriation measures up to the communities of origin should be secured.
4. An official apology should be issued to the descendants of the victims of colonial violence so that the process of recovery from the trauma can begin.“
Petition to the Federal Government
The conditions for success mentioned by Prof. Gouaffo largely coincide with the demands of a recent petition to the new German government. The coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD contains clear words on the need to come to terms with Germany’s colonial history, including support for the restitution of cultural assets and the repatriation of ancestral remains.
Civil societies and restitution committees called for
Civil societies in Germany and the former German colonial territories are now called upon to critically monitor the implementation of the Germany’s policy objectives and the upcoming negotiations between the two governments. The official Restitution Committees in the African successor states of German colonial territories, namely Cameroon, Tanzania, Togo and Ghana, also play an important role in this context.