Abstract: German-Togo, a German colonial territory which encompassed today’s Togo and the eastern part of Ghana, has been often described as a “model colony” in colonial historiography. Due a dominant discourse of success and censorship by colonial propaganda, German literature on this colony remained bare of truthful accounts on the brutal conquest of the land and its people for decades. But ethnographic collections in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Cologne, Stuttgart, Hanover and Oldenburg house important material evidence and witnesses of this colonial violence. This paper relates the deeds of five German officers and colonial administrators still labelled as “collectors” in museum archives. By revisiting how these men laid their hands on artefacts and human remains in the northern part of the colonial territory, this paper challenges museal perceptions of the legacy of these “white hunters” (as Nayo Bruce once labelled German colonialists). It seeks to contribute to a greater acknowledgment of the entanglements between ethnography, anthropology and colonial rule. Through a critical appraisal of spoils of war from military expeditions and an “artefactual” history of loot, the paper develops a “necrography” of colonial spoliation in German-Togo that sheds new light on these scattered objects, subjects and the archives attached to them. This research on so-called “punitive expeditions” goes beyond a provenance research and calls for a reappraisal of this history both within the museums concerned and in the scientific community. Through an assessment of a round table that (will take place) took place in January 2022 where Togolese and Ghanaian colleagues were brought in dialogue with museum staff, this paper subscribes to a “relational ethics” in postcolonial provenance research that might pave the way for restitution or other future perspectives as far as these collections are concerned.
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