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135 and it also designates the chief’s status cult group, to which his brothers, fi rst cousins, and some female relatives belong. They gather for ritual and celebratory occasions and for the annual veneration of nature spirits and ancestors, among other purposes. Its members were political advisors to the chief in the past.15 Lefem fi gures were displayed for cult and representative purposes, and a lefem post fi gure such as this was planted at the entrance of the sacred grove to discourage trespassers. The head it holds proved oddly prophetic, since Conrau’s own head was taken during a confl ict in late 1899, though he had no way of anticipating this when he acquired the object. The object’s story largely ends here for the time being, but because of Conrau’s crude sketch, we have been able to reconnect it to most, if not all, of the major fi gures whose hands it has passed through. It defi nitely was in Fontem in 1899, where it was acquired by Conrau and sent to the Völkerkunde Museum in Berlin, after which it was among the objects transferred to Speyer. It may have circulated on the Western art market for some time before it ended up in Potter’s museum, since we do not know to whom Speyer sold it or how or when it entered the museum’s collection. It changed hands again last year through an auction at Sotheby’s, and it is now again in a collection in Berlin, this one privately owned. Created as a royal cult emblem and acquired by Conrau as an anthropological specimen, the movement of this lefem emblem from hand to hand in Europe as a fi ne art object is a destiny that none of its owners at the close of the nineteenth century, whether Bangwa or German, would have imagined was ahead of it. NOTES 1. Pierre Harter, “Royal Commemorative Figures in the Cameroon Grasslands: Ateu Atsa, a Bangwa Artist,” African Arts 23 (4, 1990), pp. 70–77, 96. 2. Christraud Geary, “Art in Cameroon: Sculptural Dialogues,” in Marie-Therese Brincard (ed.). Constellations: Studies in African Art, vol. 2, p. 11, fi g. 6. 3. Acta/Afrika, vol. 21, letter by Gustav Conrau, Bangwa, 11 June 1899. 4. Ibid. Conrau refers to certain illustrations with numbers and a questionnaire he carried with him when trekking to the Bangwa area. It seems to be a survey form. It is known that von Luschan was very active in instructing traders, offi cers, clerks, planters, missionaries, and FIG. 14 (below): Back of lefem emblem from fi g. 2. Collection of Javier Peres, Berlin. Photo: Trevor Good, Berlin. FIG. 15 (bottom right): Detail of the back of the head of lefem emblem from fi g. 2. Note broken section at the back of the neck and Conrau’s number “4,” corresponding to his letter of June 11, 1899 (fi g. 9). Collection of Javier Peres, Berlin. Photo: Trevor Good, Berlin. researchers to send ethnographic samples to the anthropological collection in Berlin at his address. He gave lectures and published “instructions” and then “guidances” for collecting in remote or unknown territories. 5. Acta/Afrika, vol. 19, correspondence between Gustav Conrau and Felix von Luschan, 7 April 1898 (sent from Germany) & 14 April 1898 (answer to a German address). 6. Acta/Afrika, vol. 20, correspondence between Gustav Conrau and Felix von Luschan, 5 May 1898, 9 May 1898, and 3 August 1898. 7. G. Conrau, “Im Lande der Bangwa,” in Freiherr von Danckelman (ed.), Mittheilungen von Forschungsreisenden und Gelehrten aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten, vol. 12, Berlin, 1899, p. 205. 8. Acta/Afrika, vol. 21, letter by Gustav Conrau, Victoria, 1 October 1899. 9. Acta/Afrika, vol. 22, letter by Gustav Conrau, Cameroon, 3 September 1899. 10. Kurt Krieger, “Abteilung Afrika,” in Hundert Jahre Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, Berlin 1973. 11. Acta/Afrika, vol. 20, letter by Felix von Luschan to Gustav Conrau in Berlin, 9 May 1898. 12. Robert Brain and Adam Pollock, Bangwa Funerary Sculpture, London, 1971, pp. 92, 93. 13. Speyer received these objects in 1926 and 1929. The notation “212/29” appears after both the Bangwa Queen and the temakan buibui post, likely indicating that they were deaccessioned on December 2, 1929. 14. Walter Potter suffered a debilitating stroke in 1914 and died in 1918, both dates before Speyer acquired the object, so it entered the museum collection at some unknown date in the twentieth century. 15. Brain and Pollock, op. cit., p. 84. FIG. 13 (right): Detail of the back of the headcrest in fi g. 11 showing Conrau’s number “5,” corresponding to his letter of June 11, 1899 (fi g. 9). Photo: Kevin Conru. From Fontem to Berlin


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