The official delegation included representatives of the National Council of Traditional Rulers of Cameroon.
Under the guidance of the German Federal Foreign Office, concrete results were reached in talks with museums and the state governments involved in Munich, Stuttgart, Bremen and Berlin.
According to Cameroonian press reports, all four major cultural regions of Cameroon are to be covered in the „first restitution wave“ in September 2025.
Courtesy Museum Fünf Kontinente, Mumich
The restitution package could include the following belongings, among others:
- Coastal region: (Tangué from the Museum Fünf Kontinente München)
- Southern woodland: (Dzom So’o also from the Museum Fünf Kontinente München)
- Western grasslands: (Ngonnso‘ from the Ethnological Museum Berlin, 28 royal Nso‘ belongings from the Linden-Museum Stuttgart, possibly two royal Nso‘ belongings from the University of Mainz)
- Northern Sudan region: (royal belongings of Tibati from the Überseemuseum Bremen)
The cultural belongings selected for this first wave are to be brought to Cameroon in a joint operation in September 2025.
The Cameroonian government had made it unmistakably clear in the past that it would not tolerate any direct restitution processes between German institutions and communities from its country.
The director of Cameroon’s National Museum, Hugues Heumen, described the intended process in Cameroon following the return as follows:
„We are planning a restitution in three stages. At national level, the objects will first be exhibited in the National Museum in order to be recognised and appreciated by the entire nation. After a Cameroonian-Cameroonian dialogue, the objects clearly identified by the communities will be returned to them.“
The „Atlas of Absence“ has identified more than 40,000 belongings from Cameroon in public institutions in Germany. In the current talks with Cameroon, the handling of ancestral remains was excluded. This task must be tackled urgently by the German side.
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