The Berlin Museum authority has concluded plans to return hundreds of human skulls of prominent citizens from former German colony of East Africa after having researched their origin for several years, the museum management said on Wednesday.
Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, an authority that oversees many of Berlin’s museums, including the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, said in a statement that during extensive research at the city’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, scientists examined 1,135 skulls.
Out of the figure, 904 skulls could be assigned to areas in present-day Rwanda, 202 to Tanzania and 22 to Kenya while the origin of seven of the skulls could not be assigned.
“The clear objective of provenance research on human remains is to restitute them to the countries concerned,” said Parzinger.
“We are ready for immediate restitution and are now waiting for signals from the countries of origin,” he added.
According to Parzinger, a vast majority of the skulls originate from burial sites, especially cemeteries or burial caves, but partly also from local execution sites and in some cases also from executions by Germans.
“The human remains examined belong to the anthropological collection of about 7,700 skulls that the museum authority had taken over from Berlin’s Charité hospital in 2011.
“Due to the size of the collection and the diversity of its geographic origin, it has not been possible to examine all skulls yet,” he added.
In the days of colonial rule, most of East Africa was a German colony which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, parts of Tanzania, and a small region of Mozambique.
In recent years, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has made efforts to return several human remains and artifacts that were stolen by Germans and other European colonialists in the past and ended up in Berlin collections.