Those remains are largely skulls and bones, many from the bodies of people who were executed.They were dismembered, cleaned, and sent back to Germany as trophies.
Berlin’s university hospital, the Charité, has 106 such human remains in its depot.
They came from people in Africa, Oceania, Asia and North America. As part of current provenance research, they’re being examined more closely and their origins are being documented.
The German capital became a center of anthropological research at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, “simply because some of the craziest collectors worked here,” Andreas Eckert, a professor of African Studies at Humboldt University, told DW.
Only nine items were restituted between 2011 and 2019 as a result of these investigations.
And while other museums document some of their exhibits from colonial contexts online, the depots of the Charité in Berlin remain under wraps.
“We don’t make any photos available until we know where the individual human remains come from.”
