[MSN] NAMIBIAN BONES IN EUROPEAN MUSEUMS. HOW LONG ARE THE DEAD TO REMAIN UNBURIED? GENOCIDE WITH IMPUNITY.

[MSN]

NAMIBIAN BONES IN EUROPEAN MUSEUMS. HOW LONG ARE THE DEAD TO REMAIN
UNBURIED?  GENOCIDE WITH IMPUNITY.
"I, the great general of the German troops, send this letter to the Herero
people... All Hereros must leave this land... Any Herero found within the
German borders with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot.
I shall no longer receive any women or children; I will drive them back to
their people. I will shoot them. This is my decision for the Herero people."

                                   The German commander General von Trotha 

 
The sender of the card, probably an Afrikaans-speaking South African
soldier, who wrote in Afrikaans, seemed to have thought that the bones were
destined for burial but the printed information on the card is very clear.

   When European ethnologists deny the intimate relationship of
Ethnology/Anthropology and colonialism or assert that they tried to restrain
colonialism or that their role was insignificant, one has ample evidence to
doubt the veracity of such assertions. The evidence of the mutual benefit
for both is too obvious for anyone to seriously doubt that the ethnologist
profited immensely from the colonial situation. Where else could they have
the abundance of skeletons and bones they gathered if not in the colonial
situation? Colonialism made several wars and destructions possible and in
this process, as in the classic case of the massacre of the Hereros, skulls,
bones and other parts of the human body became easily available.

   The German ethnologist Felix von Luschan who was director of the
Ethnology Museum, Berlin, was known to be obsessed with collecting human
skulls and skeletons. He drew up detailed guidelines for travellers to
German colonies, instructing them, inter alia, on how to pack skulls,
skeletons and human brains for transportation from colonies such as German
South-West Africa (Namibia).He added that there were places where for a
piece of soap one could get a skeleton! (1) 

   The same passion for measuring skulls, heads and other parts of the body
that made Luschan welcome the opportunity of measuring prisoners of war in
German camps, must have made him also enthusiastic about the opportunity
offered by the Herero Genocide. 
   Conflicts between the Hereros and German colonial settlers had been
brewing over a long period owing to the seizure of their lands by the German
colonial administration and the German settlers. The conflict erupted openly
on 11 January 1904 when, according to the standard version of events, the
Hereros attacked and killed some 120 German settlers. Since the local German
army was unable to contain the Hereros, Germany sent General Lothar von
Trotha whose declared aim was to exterminate the Hereros. With his policy of
war of extermination,“Vernichtungskrieg”, Trotha drove the Hereros into the
desert area, ordering his men to shoot every Herero man, woman or child not
fleeing in the direction of the desert. No prisoners were to be taken. Once
the Hereros were in the desert, they were kept away from water sources and
some sources were poisoned. When the state of war ended in 1907, the Hereros
had been reduced from a population of 80,000 to less that 20,000. The Namas
who had also revolted a year after the Hereros were also treated in a
similar fashion. Those Hereros who survived the war  were captured and put
into concentration camps and made to do forced labour.

   Just a year after the beginning of the war of extermination, Luschan
asked Lieutenant Ralf Zürn, the district chief of Okahandja, South-West
Africa, notorious for racism and whose conduct led to the first shots in the
war.: “If you are aware of any possible way in which we might acquire a
larger number of Herero skulls
” (2) This request came after Zürn had given
Luschan already a Herero skull. Apparently that was not enough for the
scientist who wrote: 

 “The skull you gave us corresponds so little to the picture of the Herero
skull type that we have thus far been able to make from insufficient and
inferior material that it would be desirable to secure as soon as possible a
larger collection of Herero skulls for scientific investigation.” (3)

 The lieutenant responded that this would be possible “since in the
concentration camps taking and preserving the skulls of Herero prisoners of
war will be more readily possible than in the country, where there is always
a danger of offending the ritual feelings of the natives” (4). It could well
be that the bones and skulls shown in the post card above landed in the
Ethnology Museum and then to Natural Science Museum. The Ethnology Museum
had a priority in all ethnographical materials that came from the German
colonies. A law passed in 1888, Federal Council Decree “Bundesratsbeschluss”
required that all ethnographic materials collected in the German colonies by
government officials or expeditions supported by the government funds be
sent first to the Ethnology museum and doubles were to be sent to other
museums. 
   We have no way of knowing for sure whose bones these are but since the
Germans always kept good records, under all circumstance, it must be
possible to determine where specific skeletons, skulls and bones came from.
But according to Zimmermann; “Today, the physical anthropology of the Berlin
Anthropological Society can be found in the attic and cellar of the Berlin
Museum of Natural History. The collection consists of over six thousand
skulls as well as dried skin, hair, plaster casts of faces, heads, hands,
and feet, postcranial skeletons, and perhaps even parts that have remained
packed in boxes since the Second World War. The cooperation between the
Berlin anthropologists and the German colonial state transformed
administrators and soldiers into anthropological collectors and colonial
raids and massacres into scientific expedition.” (5)

With a little bit of goodwill and an appreciation of the need for most
Africans to 
perform the appropriate traditional funeral rites, and here we are talking
to ethnologists, the German Ethnology museums and the Natural History
museums could assist the Hereros and other African peoples to identify and
bury their dead, even if only symbolically. Until and unless this is done,
the spirits of the dead and the living will remain unsettled.

   The Germans have refused to pay any compensation to the Hereros for their
land that was expropriated and exploited by German colonists and for the
massacre they suffered; the atrocities that were committed on their bodies,
the women who were used as sex slaves for German soldiers, the experiments
which German doctors conducted on their bodies and all the unmentionable
treatment meted out to an African people by an increasingly racist colonial
regime that practised what was to become later on examples for the Nazis to
follow, do not seem to move the present-day German government and people.
But should the bones and skulls of the victims of German colonialist
aggression still remain in German possession?

   It is really astonishing that the German government which has compensated
the Jews for their losses under the Nazi regime is unwilling to adopt a
similar policy towards the Hereros who also were victims of genocide under
the colonial regime. The German Minister for Development Co-operation,
Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul made an apology in fairly general terms in 2004 on
visit to Namibia  after the State President of Germany, Herzog had refused
in 1998 to make any formal apology, even though he expressed his regrets at
the “massacre” of the Hereros. Wieczorek-Zeul recognized the political,
moral and ethical responsibility of the Germans for the war of extermination
instituted by Lothar von Trotha against the Hereros and Namas but stopped
short of accepting legal responsibility of the consequences of that war. (6)
The Germans are willing to say “sorry” but are not willing to make a formal
apology or to engage in any discussions on compensation. The Hereros have
therefore started legal proceedings in September 2001 in the United States
to seek compensation of $2 billion from the German government for atrocities
committed under colonial rule; they are also demanding $2 billion in damages
from several German companies, including Deutsche Bank, mining company Terex
Corporation, formerly Orenstein-Koppel Co., and the shipping company
Deutsche Afrika Linie, formerly Woermann Linie, all of them were alleged to
have profited from German colonial occupation of Namibia.

It is remarkable how fast Europeans have been in massacring Africans but
when it comes to making apologies, they are very slow, their lips seem
sealed; they have a deep-seated aversion to admitting to Africans that they
have done something wrong. Unwillingness or inability to make an open and
straightforward formal apology is surely an indication that there is no
agreement on the wrongful and unlawful nature of past events. The alleged
perpetrator does not fully recognize the faulty conduct that the victim is
complaining about. He cannot admit that he had made a mistake in the past
without losing face. This reluctance does not seem to apply when they have
to apologise to Jews. The same State President who refuses to apologise to
the Hereros had no such problems in apologizing to Jews. Apart from
skin-colour, where is the major difference between the Herero Genocide and
the Nazi Genocide against Jews? Would the Germans have dared to refuse to
apologise to the Jews? Would they have ever thought of sending a Minister
for Development Co-operation, instead of a Head of State or Head of
Government to make an apology or express regret? It seems the disrespect
towards Africans and disregard for their rights is still continuing without
shame.
   It has been said that the Germans are worried that other groups such as
the Namas may come up with further demands if the Hereros were compensated.
I do not believe that the Germans are worried about the amounts involved,
taking into account the destruction they caused, the losses sustained by the
Hereros, and the profits reaped by the Germans. The fact is, no European
nation has so far openly and unequivocally apologised to an African people
for slavery, colonization, genocide or any other abominable atrocity; it is
the continuation of   committing indescribable crimes with impunity.
   The Germans argue that they give enough aid to Namibia and also that
compensation to the Hereros will be unfair to the other ethnic groups. With
all due respect, all the other ethnic groups that have a valid claim to
compensation, 
should be compensated.  Some persons may be tempted to buy this German
argument and hence be reluctant to support the Hereros’s claims.  It seems
to me however that aid or assistance to Namibia is one matter. Compensation
for damages suffered in the first genocide of the 20th Century is surely an
entirely different matter and should not be covered, obscured or drowned in
any discussions on assistance to the independent State. We should not allow
genocide to be covered by aid or other forms of economic cooperation. The
Herero Genocide, preceded by long series of massacres, dispossessions and
expropriations of land, blatant racism by the German colonialists should not
be obscured or down played by any other procedures. The historical memory
should not be blurred or cluttered by other matters. Nobody, quite
correctly, made such a proposal in the case of Jews and Israel. Why is such
a proposal being mentioned at all in the case of the Hereros? 

   Whilst the German Government seems to have difficulties in making an open
sincere and unambiguous apology to the Hereros and Namas, the family of
General von Throtha, the man largely responsible for executing the policy of
extermination, did not seem to have too much problem in doing the right
thing. A delegation of the descendants of General von Trotha went to Omaruru
on 7 October 2007 and apologised to the Herero people for their ancestor
atrocities. They expressed deep shame over von Trotha’s action. The head of
the delegation, patriarch Wolf-Thilo von Trotha declared:
“We, the von Trotha family, are deeply ashamed of the terrible events that
took place 100 years ago. Human rights were grossly abused that time. We say
sorry, since we bear the name of General Lothar von Trotha. We however do
not only want to look back, but also look to the future.” (7)
The Hereros heard the apology but the Herero Supreme Chief, Alfons Maharero,
grandson of Samuel Maharero, leader of the 1904 uprising reiterated their
demand for dialogue with the German government: “We expected the visiting
von Trotha family to demonstrate their moral sympathies and political
solidarity with us. We demand a dialogue with the present German government
to obtain restorative justice.”(8)
   It will be a disservice to the African peoples and an injury to our
forefathers and mothers who died under colonial rule and, in this specific
case, the Namibians who suffered under German imperialist rule and genocide
if any time they present a claim for compensation they are rebutted with
arguments based on financial and other aid to the independent State. The two
issues are not related and should not be confused. It could be very
instructive to study the means and methods used by the German government to
induce the Namibian authorities to consider a proposition which, on the face
of it, appears unthinkable and unacceptable.
    Attempts to subsume the rights and claims of traditional nations and
groups under the rights and claims of the national State should be resisted.
Its long-term effects will be disastrous for the future claims of many other
traditional nations in Africa. They will be told that their claims are
represented by the national State and their claims will be covered through
bilateral arrangements of development cooperation. They will soon hear from
the States that used as pretext for massacres alleged non-observance of
treaty obligations that they have no status under International Law. They
had status to acquire obligations but none to present claims! Many of the
injustices under slavery and colonialism would thus be avoided at no costs
to Western Governments since most of the atrocities were committed before
the establishment of the present independent States; during the relevant
periods there  were only traditional national States of the Hereros, Namas,
Asantes, Gas, Hausas, Yorubas, Zulus etc. in Africa.

   It is easy to imagine the anguish and frustrations of many Africans who
do not know where the remains of their ancestors are. How can they ever give
them a proper burial in accordance with African customs? The spirits of
these ancestors
will be roaming about, unhappy and constitute spiritual problems for those
who agonize that they have failed to give their ancestors proper burials.
Many will feel they have not done their customary duties.

How long must their unhappy souls wander through the vast expanse of the
Namib?
Should they sojourn at Okahanja or should they continue to Luderitz or
Swakopmund?
A resting place they must have to enjoy eternal peace.

 Kwame Opoku.
10 January 2008.

NOTES




1) Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf dem Gebiet der
Anthropologie, Ethnographie und Urgeschichte, 1914, (VDM Verlag, Saarbrücken
2007, p.5

2) Andrew Zimmermann, Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001, p.245.

3) Ibid. p. 244

4) Ibid. p.245.

5) Ibid. p.167.
6) “German minister says sorry for genocide in Namibia”
www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1283864,00.html
RaceandHistory.com - “The tribe Germany wants to forget“
www.raceandhistory.com/Science/germanynamibia.htm 
7) “German family apologises to Namibia tribe for ancestor |”
www.haaba.com/news-story/german-family-apologises-namibia-tribe-ancestor - 

8) Ibid.


Bibliography.

Helmut Bley, Southwest Africa Under German Rule 1894-1914.
Horst Drechsler, Südwestafrika unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft: der Kampf
der Herero und Nama gegen den deutschen Imperialismus 1884-1915, (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 1985), 318 pp.
“THE HERERO HOLOCAUST?” The Disputed History Of The 1904 Genocide Jeremy
Silvester, Werner Hillebrecht & Casper Erichsen
http://www.namibweb.com/hererohol.htm 
 “How the Germans Exterminated the Hereros”. Magazine Title: New African.
Publication Date: May 2003. Page Number: 62
Der Völkermord an den Herero 1904-1907
http://www.gfbv.de/voelker/afrika/herero.htm