Summit meeting
The historic galleries housing mammal skulls, deer and bovids have been refurbished and filled with impressive exhibits. During the design process, African co-curators also took a critical look at objects from their home countries.
Richard Tsogang Fossi, a provenance researcher from Cameroon, demonstrates through his research that many of the Museum für Naturkunde’s collection items arrived in Berlin under questionable circumstances.
Can an elephant skull be described as an ‘object’? Under what circumstances did the animal die? And how did it end up in Berlin? These are the kinds of questions Richard Tsogang Fossi asks. The provenance researcher from Cameroon sees countless stories behind the natural history ‘objects’ in the Museum für Naturkunde’s collection – stories that speak of violence, coercion and complicity. This is because many of the remains of hippos, lions or buffalos date from a time when the German Empire held colonies in Africa – Cameroon, for example. “Colonial officials, traders and military personnel had these animals hunted down and brought to Europe,” says Tsogang, who conducts research into colonial and collection history at the Technical University of Berlin. “These things weren’t simply lying on the ground for people to pick up,” he says. “They are often regarded purely as ‘scientific objects’, but in many cases they also have a violent past.”
Through his research, Tsogang aims to raise awareness of what happened in the colonies that allowed all these natural history treasures to accumulate in Berlin – thousands of animal remains from the African colonies alone. The Museum für Naturkunde Berlin has invited Richard Tsogang Fossi and eight other individuals from Egypt, Burundi, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania and Togo to examine the research collection of Mammal Skulls from the perspective of their home countries. The result is nine ‘interventions’ which will be on display in the refurbished historic Skull Hall.
Photo: Pablo Castagnola
In doing so, Tsogang draws in part on the research of her colleague, the historian of science Lindiwe Breuer, who is currently examining the history of provenance and provenance research at the Natural History Museum. In her article ‘The “First German Elephant”’, she reconstructs for the first time the history of the young elephant, which was captured in Cameroon in 1899 on the orders of the colonial official Hans Dominik and shipped alive to the Berlin Zoological Garden. It was regarded as the ‘first German’ elephant because it originated from a German colony. Following its death, the skull entered the museum’s collection in 1907, where it is now of great scientific value as the holotype of the African forest elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis. “What is easily overlooked is that ten elephants were killed in order to isolate and capture this young elephant,” says Tsogang. “It was a situation of extreme violence, in which local people were forced to participate at the risk of their lives.”
Hans Dominik killed up to 60 elephants during his time in Cameroon, ‘collected’ their ivory and received 6,000 marks for the young elephant, Tsogang’s research also revealed. The logic of colonial exploitation is evident in this ‘deal’ and its background. “It was a lucrative business and a demonstration of power by a white colonial master who could subjugate the ‘wild’ locals just as he could subjugate nature,” says Tsogang. So, for all its scientific value, the collection is also a result of the plundering of nature and the oppression of people. “That is the part of history that often remains hidden, and which we want to bring to light.”
Text: Mirco Lomoth
Updated by the MfN Berlin on 13 July 2026.