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




Linden-Museum Stuttgart: 005395 License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Object Name	Copper alloy stand to support elephant tusks? Turban-shaped
Description	This metal object is probably a holder with which elephant tusks could be placed vertically on the ancestral altars - in the royal palace and, at the latest since the middle of the 17th century, also in rich bourgeois houses. His description as "turban-like" is not necessarily in contradiction with it, because the elephant tusks stood by the way also above in the memorial heads of the ancestors, whose hairstyle or headgear functioned consequently likewise as such a mounting. The vertical position of the tusks made possible by such holders refers to their symbolic meaning as a world axis, i.e. as a connection from the world on this side to the world of the ancestors and gods on the other side. The emphasis on this vertical axis is a central stylistic feature of the formal language in the art of the Kingdom of Benin. Text: Dietmar Neitzke.
Type	Halterung
Materials	Copper alloy
Size, Dimensions	Heigth: 20.7 cm. Diameter: 21.5 cm.
Dating of Object

Museum	Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Museum Inv.-No	005395
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	Temporarily at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart