A collection of a dozen artefacts, including crowns, shields and paintings, all considered culturally and historically significant in Ethiopia, have been returned to Addis Ababa after being kept by a German family for more than 100 years, the BBC reports.
The objects were originally collected in the 1920s by Germany’s then-envoy to Ethiopia Franz Weiss and his wife Hedwig.
This week, they were handed over to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University.
The collection included crowns, shields and paintings, all considered culturally and historically significant in Ethiopia.
Professor Ramon Wyss, whose father was born during the family’s diplomatic posting in Ethiopia, handed over the items at a ceremony attended by Tourism Minister Selamawit Kassa.
He said the family’s intention to return the artefacts was to “share their beauty with the public and preserve the culture and history connected to my father’s birth”.
Ferdinand von Weyhe, Germany’s envoy to Ethiopia, is reported as saying: “The artefacts still stand as a symbol of the long-standing and friendly relationship between Germany and Ethiopia.”
Kassa thanked the Weiss family for “practically expressing their profound love for Ethiopia by meticulously preserving these artifacts and crucially ensuring their return to their rightful homeland”.
In 2022, according to the BBC, Germany was the first country to return some of the famous Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in what Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described at the time as an attempt to deal with its “dark colonial history”.
[Image: By Sailko – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89631051]