Caption translation: Fig. 18. Benin artist molding a group of Europeans. Photographer: Erdmann. 1897. Text: “Due to a particularly happy stroke of luck Mr. Erdmann himself was even able to photograph a modern Benin artist at work in 1897. The instructive photograph is reproduced here in Fig. 18. Similarly large reliefs appear very often in Benin serving the purpose of decorating the inner rooms; […].” (von Luschan, Die Altertümer von Benin; p. 26) 1897 and Erdmann the German The German foray in Africa is known for its genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Germany’s attempt to erase them from the face of the earth. On our West African coastline however, accounts of Germans are scant, as we all know, though not so scant as we may believe, especially as some of the surviving and earliest European accounts appear to have been written by German visitors and/or traders on the West African coastline. It would seem that on our coastline the German foray is largely, how sh