German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/7, pp. 540-541.
Herr President. Herr State Minister. Ladies and gentlemen.
The protection of cultural goods is a concern which we share. Nevertheless, this lofty aim ever again encounters the question: To whom belong culturally significant works of art actually? We in the past years have learned that to each people is due a right to its cultural goods, and these cultural goods if necessary need to be returned. If that however, ladies and gentlemen, applies for African peoples, so it needs also apply for our own people.
Three years ago, our former Foreign Minister, in common with the then Federal Commissioner for Culture, handed over the so-called Benin Bronzes to the state of Nigeria. The Nigerian President immediately gave by decree the rights of ownership to the official Oba of Benin, and thereby to the private possession of the ruling family. In the U.S.A., there is a group of descendants of former slaves from Benin, who expressly rejected the return of the Bronzes, and indeed with the words – cite: As a result, the descendants of slaveholders receive a second opportunity to profit from the enslavement of people. It is embarrassing that the Federal government had a hand in that.
Western ethnological museums for long saw therein their mission to preserve such cultural goods, to research and to make them accessible to the public. Today, all of that is colonial robbery art which needs to be given back, and then in the worst case disappears. Protection of culture can be very paradoxical, ladies and gentlemen.
Let us look at the reverse case. The State Museum of Berlin and the Prussian State Library stored during the Second World War a large part of their inventory in places which today belong to Poland. The most well-known collection is the Berlinka, from the Prussian treasury, which is now to be found in Cracow. Among thousands of valuable, Middle Age manuscripts are writings of Luther, Goethe and Schiller – clearly, German national cultural goods. Ladies and gentlemen, these manuscripts need finally return to Germany. We expect your engagement, Herr State Minister.
Additional German cultural goods are found in depositories and storerooms in Russia – presently difficult to access – and in the surrounding states, and in the Ukraine. Why actually has the Federal government not demanded, in consideration for our billions in assistance payments to the Ukraine, the return of the art still to be found there, among which are valuable paintings and precious porcelains; for example, from Dresden? These cultural goods also belong to us, and we gladly want it back.
Ladies and gentlemen, an inquiry of the AfD delegation has yielded that also in Georgia German cultural goods are still to be found. 70,000 books have been found in a cellar of the University of Tiflis. This treasure was offered to the Federal Republic of Germany, yet the gift was rejected. Supposedly, it is too expensive to restore these books. I need be quite astonished. Recently, the Elders Council decided, in compensation for members’ air travel, to pay hundreds of thousands of euros to water swamps and for cooking pots for Rwanda. Ladies and gentlemen, this money should have better been used for the German cultural goods, in this case in Georgia.
Rebecca Lenhard
(Greens): That is repulsive!
There are still further examples; for example, the Paramentenschatz [liturgical vestments]. Here, we have a cultural good in the hands of the church; the state has not the least access. The Evangelical Church decided to simply give it away. Here unfortunately, the law put forward does not have effect. We see here a need for subsequent improvement.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me in closing say: We should grant all peoples and nations have the right to the conservation of their respective cultural goods. Yet we have not only the right, but also the obligation to conserve our own culture and all cultural goods which the German people have created. We owe that to our ancestors and to the generations which come after us.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
