A Benin Bronze held in the collection of Berlin’s Bode Museum.Photo: Richard Mortel/Flickr. April 30, 2021 at 3:41pm Germany has promised to return its trove of looted artworks known as the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria beginning in 2022. Some five hundred of the more than 90,000 brass, bronze, and ivory objects stolen by British soldiers in 1897 from the Republic of Benin (now Nigeria) are held in the collection of Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum at the Humboldt Forum, with still more in the possession of more than twenty other museums across the country. “We want to contribute to understanding and reconciliation with the descendants of those whose cultural treasures were stolen during colonization,” German cultural minister Monika Grütters acknowledged Thursday. In an attempt to coordinate the return of the purloined objects to Nigeria, Grütters that day met with her counterparts from four German states and the chiefs of ethnological museums in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Leipzig, Stuttgart, all of which hold Benin Bronzes in their collections.