Producer unknown to us
Spear
Africa, Tanzania
Prior to 1905
Wood, iron
Spoils of war during the Maji-Maji resistance from 1905–1907
Transferred to the museum by the Imperial Colonial Office in 1907
MAf 13654
During the Maji-Maji War from 1905 to 1907, the Germans seized so-called 'spoils of war' on the territory of what was the colony of German East Africa at the time. This was considered German state property and was initially sent to the central magazine in Dar es Salaam. The Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin was informed about the process by the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office. The museum then sent Karl Weule, then director of the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology, who was in German East Africa on a research trip, to view the looted items. Weule selected 500 arrows, 1,300 spears, 100 bows, as well as drums and ammunition belts from the assortment, which he had shipped to Berlin in six crates. In 1907, through the mediation of the Colonial Department, he also secured an assortment of looted war material for Leipzig. These spears thus bear witness to the brief but no less brutal German colonial rule on the African continent.
Stefanie Bach