It is never too late to make amends, even if, as in this case, there was no violence or will to abuse at the origin. Germany has returned to Colombia two masks of the Kogui indigenous culture that were in the possession of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), the institution that encompasses the main museums in Berlin. The delivery was made last Friday, during the visit to the German capital of the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, in an act at the Bellevue Palace, headquarters of the Head of State. The two wooden Kogi masks, dating from around the mid-15th century, rested on a table in the center of the palatial hall. They are called Mama Uakai (sun mask) and Mama Nuikukui Uakai or Malkutše (big sun mask).
“I am pleased to be able to return these two masks; they are sacred for the Kogi, they must be there,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. “The extent to which the Kogi live in harmony with nature made a great impression on me. This return is part of a change of mentality; only if we free ourselves from the thinking parameters of the colonial era will we be able to solve the problems of humanity”, he added.
Gustavo Petro recalled that the Kogui, like many indigenous cultures of America and the world, teach and defend harmony between nature and humanity. The Colombian president celebrated the return of “these magical masks”, which will once again pass into the hands of the Kogui community, and said that he hopes that “more and more pieces can be recovered.”
The Kogui – or Kággaba, as they often call themselves, because Kággaba in their language means people – are one of four indigenous peoples who live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia. In their culture, these masks are made only to be used by a mama (priest) at the consecration of a temple, are then used for ritual functions, are kept in a sacred place, and are passed down from generation to generation.
The returned masks had been acquired by the German ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss, who made research trips to Colombia between 1913 and 1919. From there he brought back 700 pieces, of which 440 are still in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. The rest were destroyed in Allied bombing raids in World War II.
Preuss, who ran the predecessor institution of today’s Berlin museum, bought the two masks in 1915 from a descendant of a deceased mama. According to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the ethnologist was not aware of their age or the fact that they could not be sold. The central focus of his research was the oral tradition of the peoples he visited, whose myths and songs he published in 1926 in an anthology translated into German.
At the delivery ceremony, Hermann Parzinger, president of the foundation, argued that the background is complex in the case of these masks, which “were not stolen in a violent context” and were bought while Colombia had been an independent country for a long time. Preuss bought them from an heir who “did not have the right to sell these masks,” so the acquisition “was not entirely correct.” In any case, Parzinger stressed, there is “another aspect in this discussion of colonial contexts, which is the rights of indigenous peoples,” and he alluded to a 2007 UN resolution that establishes that objects with spiritual and ceremonial significance for indigenous peoples must be returned to them.
Colombia asked Germany in September 2022 for the restitution of the two masks, after years of contacts between the Berlin SPK and the indigenous organization Gonawindúa Tayrona (OGT) and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH). According to the Kogi faith, the masks represent mythical ancestors and natural phenomena, allowing the wearer to take his perspective and thus communicate with ancestors and forces of nature, who perceive him as an equal. In the Kogui ideology, this ritual use serves spiritual healing, the preservation of the social structure and the well-being of its people and the world.
Their return to their Colombian owners is part of the process of cultural decolonization undertaken by some European museums, a process in which Germany has already carried out the highly relevant restitution of hundreds of the so-called Benin bronzes. Looted by the British in colonial times in the former African kingdom of that name, they ended up in Western museums, and the bulk of those in German centers were returned to Nigeria at the end of 2022. For Germany, this procedure is also a form of gain diplomatic influence in those countries.
