Article 246 stipulates that:
"Within the same period Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty's Government the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany."
A couple of questions arise: Who was this Sultan Mkwawa? Why did his skull end up in Germany? Why did the British government want it? Was it ever delivered?
The last question arises as there is a German book originally titled "Der Schädel des Negerhäuptlings Makaua" ("The skull of Negro-Chieftain Makaua") and published in 1931 where the author claims that the skull was lost.
Chief Mkwawa was a tribal leader of the Hehe. They were a tribe in German East Africa, a German colony which Germany acquired during the reign of William II. During the "pacification" of German East Africa, the Hehe rose in 1891 against the colonial troops. They were part of the Maji-Maji rebellion. They beat the Germans a couple of times. Ultimately however, the Hehe were beaten and their leader executed and his skull taken to Germany. There he was used as a prime example for an African leader and as such a good object for the research in phrenology. With racism rampant at the time, they tried to prove that the shape of the skull determined the intelligence and "culture" of its owner. Then came the First World War and Germany lost and had to accept the Versaille's treaty. German East Africa was a colony, part of the Versaille's treaty was the hand-over of all German colonies over to the Völkerbund/League of Nations. The United Kingdom became the new "protector/governor" of the territories that made up the former colony. To make the hand-over easier and to make the local tribes more acceptive towards the new power, they asked the Germans to hand over the skull of the local hero of Mkwawa.
That's not the end of the story, however. The skull didn't make it there because nobody knew where it went. As you can tell from the book you mention. It took a very determined Englishman to finally find it in a museum in Bremen. That was in 1954. It now rests in Tanzania in a museum dedicated to Mkwawa and the Hehe.
They actually turned the story into a small documentary, which is, sadly, only available in German, as far as I know. "EINE KOPFJAGD" "Auf der Suche nach dem Schädel des Sultans Mkwawa Ein Film von Martin Baer"
Most of the literature I know for this is in German as well. That comes from having studied at a german University, I guess.
Julia Meerkatz, Schwarz-Weiss-Rot über Ostafrika, LIT Verlag Berlin -Hamburg-Münster 1997 ---
Wilfried Westphal: Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien. Bindlach: Gondrom, 1991---
Gisela Graichen, Horst Gründer: Deutsche Kolonien. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2005---
EDIT: Fixing small mistakes.
2nd Edit: Very good article, especially if you are more interested in the Hehe people: Mkwawa and the Hehe Wars, Alison Redmayne; The Journal of African History online
Additionally - There is a comic about "hunting" for the skull. which seems to be available only in french (EDIT 3: it's originally Dutch and available in Dutch as well), but you can buy it on Amazon.fr
We don't know for sure, as the chain of custody of the skull was lost.
Chief Mkwawa, shortened from "Mukwavinyika" which translates roughly as "conqueror of many lands", and a leader of the Hehe people of South-Central Tanzania. When the Germans entered the scramble for Africa there were only a handful of unclaimed pieces left, and one of them belonged to the Hehe. Mkwawa was a war leader that resisted the take over, in 1891 he declared war by completely destroying a German column 320 men strong effectively ending German control of the area until 1894. A much larger German force took the Hehe fortress at Kalenga, reasserting some measure of territorial control, but Mkwawa led some three thousand men against German colonial authorities until 1898 when he was caught out and shot himself to avoid capture.
During the First World War the area was engulfed in a protracted conflict as Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck launched one of the most successful German campaigns of the war, pinning down more than 300,000 allied troops with an army that never exceeded 14,000. Despite being undefeated in the field, German forces were unable to hold the colony largely due to the assistance of the Wahehe people. The British included the return of the skull of one of their folk heroes as a way to pay them back for their contributions to the war effort.
The Germans claimed they simply didn't have it, and despite going through the records of the museums in question British diplomats were unable to locate the skull.
That was that until 1954, when Sir Edward Twinning (of A History of the Crown Jewels of Europe fame), who was governor of what would become Tanzania at the time, went to the Bremen Museum and examined some 84 uncategorized skills from German East Africa by hand. He located one that was the correct size and shape, with a wound consistent with the eyewitness account of the death of Chief Mkwawa. Under the terms of the treaty this skull was handed over and now sits in the Mkwawa Memorial Museum in Kalenga, although there is some dispute as to whether or not this is the actual skull or not.
Here is a Die Spiegel piece on the subject.
Unfortunately, virtually everything on this topic is either in German or rather dated. But here's some additional reading if you are interested:
How do we tag this thread and responses for the best-of-the-year roundup? This is a great unique question and the answers are very interesting.
