German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts: Benin-Bronzes in Germany




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 005372 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Object Name	High relief (copper alloy) plaque depicting an army commander in full armor, wearing a bell and a leopard-teeth necklace. He holds the court ceremonial sword eben. Sun symbols are also represented on the plaque.
Description	This relief plate from the royal palace shows a rank soldier with armor, sword "eben" in hand, dagger, chain of leopard teeth, helmet-like headgear and bell around his neck. Such square bells were made of yellow cast iron. They announced the beginning of a ceremony at ancestral altars, were considered amulets and badges of rank in the military. In the 16th century they were exported as far as England. Text: Dietmar Neitzke.
Type	Figurenrelief
Materials	Copper alloy
Size, Dimensions	Width: 34 cm. Height: 44 cm.
Dating of Object

Museum	Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Museum Inv.-No	005372
Collector	Felix von Luschan (Berlin) purchased a large number of royal objects produced in the Benin Kingdom and sold parts of the collection to other museums. The objects reserved for Stuttgart were paid by Karl Knorr (Heilbronn, Germany).
Acquisition date	1899
Circumstances of acquisition	In October 1898, the Hamburg company "H. Bey & Co" offered the Berlin Ethnological Museum a Benin collection that came directly from Africa. However, due to a lack of funds, the entire collection could not be purchased and was therefore to be passed on to other interested parties. Felix von Luschan of the Berlin Museum therefore informed Karl Graf von Linden in November 1898, and offered him a right of first refusal. The Linden Museum then made 15,000 M available for the purchase of objects. The purchase price was paid by the Heilbronn entrepreneur Karl Knorr, which is why the collection became known as "Die Karl Knorr'sche Sammlung von Benin-Altertümern". Von Luschan published a detailed description of the collection under the same title (1901) on behalf of Count Linden and Knorr. Other buyers of the collection included the museums in Vienna and Munich, but also people such as Hans Meyer (Leipzig) and Eugen Rautenstrauch (Cologne). Text: Markus Himmelsbach.

Notes

Status	restituted
Date of last status change	14 December 2022
Current ownership	Federal Republic of Nigeria
Holding institution	National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM, Nigeria)
Current location	Linden Museum Stuttgart (permanent loan)