It's time to say goodbye.

And "Time to say goodbye" is also the appropriate headline for a small special show in the Landesmuseum Mainz: until mid-September, a bronze head can be admired in the modern department, which comes from the former kingdom of Benin for more than 50 years of the Johannes Gutenberg University and which is now to be returned to the rightful owners in present-day Nigeria as soon as possible.

Before that, the stolen memorial head, which is said to have been stolen by British soldiers during the conquest and plundering of the royal palace in 1897, may be put on public display in Mainz for what will probably be the last time.

Markus Schug

Correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

  • Follow I follow

A guided tour of the museum, Große Bleiche 49-51, has also been announced for Sunday from 2 p.m., during which Anna-Maria Brandstetter from the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies at the university will tell visitors the whole story.

If you want to take part, you should register online and have to pay an extra fee of two euros in addition to the entrance fee.

2800 objects from Africa and Australia

The looted goods, which at the time also reached the Rhine via several stations from Africa, were by no means just unsightly isolated cases.

After all, more than 4000 pieces of brass, ivory and wood are said to have been lost when the palace was stormed 125 years ago.

In the course of provenance research, there is now a discussion in many places in Europe about where exactly individual works of art come from and who they belong to.

According to the university, in Mainz, where the return of the head has already been agreed, there are around 2,800 objects from Central and West Africa as well as from Australia, Papua New Guinea and other parts of Oceania in the ethnographic study collection alone.

The bronze sculpture from Benin, which has had a permanent place in the teaching and research collection for five decades, will probably return to its home country later this year, where it is likely to have once decorated an altar in honor of a deceased Edo king.