German museum returns human skulls to Hawaii

Bremen's Übersee-Museum held a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the handover of human remains that had been long kept at the museum to the US state of Hawaii.

In total, eight human skulls were received in Bremen by a delegation from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) in a traditional ceremony.

Hawaii had requested the return of the remains in 2019. The museum launched an investigation to find the origin of the skulls, with the help of the German Lost Art Foundation. 

'Righting the wrongs of the past'

The skulls had been brought to Germany over 100 years ago, when colonial expeditions frequently brought back artifacts from areas occupied by Europeans.

"For ethical reasons, there is no longer any justification for continuing to keep the human remains in our collection," said Wiebke Ahrndt, director of the Übersee-Museum Bremen. "Our task is to play our part in righting the wrongs of the past," she added. 

Ahrndt has also served as the chair of the German Museums Association working group, which has advocated for returning collections from colonial contexts, especially human remains, to the countries and communities of origin.

In Berlin alone, some 7,700 human remains from almost all parts of the world are stored at museums and other institutions. 

They were all collected in the 19th and 20th centuries, with some 40% originating in former German overseas territories in Africa and the Pacific region.

Hawaii gets remains from Berlin, Göttingen and Jena 

The Übersee-Museum has actively participated in the push to return remains to their countries of origin. In 2006 and 2017 the museum returned the remains of the Maori and Moriori, New Zealand's indigenous people, and in 2018, two skulls from what is now Namibia were handed over.

"We acknowledge the anguish experienced by our ancestors, and take responsibility for their well-being (and thereby our own), by transporting them home for reburial," OHA's Edward Halealoha Ayau said. 

"In doing this important work, we also acknowledge and celebrate our respective humanity – Germans and Hawaiians together in aloha – as we write a new chapter in our historic relationship as human beings," Ayau added. 

On Friday, the OHA delegation will receive the remains of 32 people from a Berlin museum, according to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

They are also set to receive skulls and bones come from collections of German universities in Göttingen and Jena, as well as the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

"Human remains from colonial contexts have no place in our museums and universities, their return must be a priority," said Claudia Roth, the German government's commissioner for culture and media.

Colonial history had left many wounds, Roth said. "We must do our part to ensure that these wounds can be healed - through restitution, through a consistent reappraisal and confrontation with our colonial past and through greater international cultural exchange," she added.

jcg/fb (dpa, EPD)