The University of Freiburg acknowledges its historical responsibility for deceased individuals who came into university custody through colonial, racializing and anatomical-anthropological research contexts. Provenance research on these victims and the preparation of possible repatriations, are therefore matters of university-wide responsibility.
This historical photograph has been deliberately obscured to avoid renewed public display of deceased persons held by the University
The historical anthropological collection of the University of Freiburg originated in the nineteenth century. Founded in 1857, it eventually comprised more than 1,500 deceased persons. Many remained unnamed in the surviving documentation. Some were killed in colonial contexts of violence; others were taken from graves after death. They were brought to Freiburg and used for anatomical and anthropological research.
The surviving records often did not preserve names, biographies, kinship relations or personal histories. Historical inventories reduced people to numbers, geographical attributions and body-related classifications. The University’s provenance research therefore seeks, as far as possible, to reconstruct origins, contexts of violence, relationships and biographical traces, while making the limits of the surviving documentation transparent.
Photo: Christoph Balzar
Provenance research at the university is shaped by a severely fragmented archival situation. Large parts of the historical documentation were damaged or destroyed in the twentieth century. The surviving traces are dispersed across inventories, inscriptions, historical publications, institutional records and other indirect references.
For this reason, provenance cannot be reconstructed through a single archival source. It requires the careful connection of fragmentary evidence. The research distinguishes between what is documented, what is probable, what remains uncertain and what cannot currently be established.
In close cooperation with the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg and international partners, the University of Freiburg has participated in several repatriations. Further provenance clarifications and repatriation procedures are in preparation.
In 2014 to Namibia, in 2019 to Australia, in 2024 to Hawaiʻi and in 2025 to the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
