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

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Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 071021




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 071021 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 071021 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 071021 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Object description
This information was provided by the German museum where the object is currently located or where it was located prior to restitution.

Object Name	Copper alloy sculpture representing a human face, in the form of a mask
Description	This sculpture represents the head of a man, recognizable by the typical braid hairstyle. He does not seem to belong to the nobility, as the corresponding status jewelry is missing. It was possibly made as a miniature mask in memory of an ancestor and then either attached to a wall or worn on the belt (or elsewhere on the body), for which there is an attachment eyelet on the back. The head was considered the most important part of the body and the essence of a living being's powers and personality. This object is probably a memorial head for an ancestor, as they were also placed on the altars of chieftain lineages at least since the early 19th century. Ancestors can be recognized by the unmoving posture and the large, protruding eyes. Thus, the "bourgeois" families of rich merchants, for example, imitated the royal ancestor cult. We would thus be dealing with a non-royal counterpart to the commemorative heads (005410, 005379) and the ivory mask (F50565). Text: Dietmar Neitzke.
Type	Plastik
Materials	Copper alloy
Size, Dimensions	Width: 10.4 cm. Heigth: 15.8 cm.
Dating of Object

Museum / Collection / Acquisition
This information was provided by the German museum where the object is currently located or where it was located prior to restitution.

Museum	Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Museum Inv.-No	071021
Collector	Albert Spring
Acquisition date	1911
Circumstances of acquisition	Through the intermediary of Paul Staudinger, contact was made with the merchant navy captain Albert Spring. He agreed to donate his collection of over 200 objects from various parts of the world to the museum. Among them was this copper alloy sculpture. Text: Markus Himmelsbach.

Notes

Current ownership status and location

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	Temporarily at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart

Categorization for the search functions
This information was included by the German Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts and is intended to make the object easier to find in the database.

Object Type	sculpture
Materials	metal; copper alloy
Tags

Dataset

ID	156
last Change	2023-01-26 12:15:00
License	Linden-Museum Stuttgart

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