Germany returns 18 Aborigine skulls home |
07:02 AEST Fri Nov 14 2008 |
By Patrick Mcgroarty |
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A German medical museum will return the skulls of 18 Australian |
Aborigines |
that were taken from the continent more than a century ago. |
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The skulls - part of a sprawling and poorly documented anthropological |
collection - have been at the Medical History Museum at Berlin's |
Charite |
hospital and medical school. |
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The collection is among a dozen in Germany and many more in Europe |
where |
Australian diplomats have asked curators to repatriate Aboriginal |
remains. |
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Yet Charite is the first German institution to commit to repatriation |
and |
talks with the caretakers of 11 other collections are ongoing, |
according to |
Ian Kemish, Australia's ambassador to Germany. |
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Similar efforts in Britain and Sweden have already yielded the return |
of |
Aboriginal remains. |
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In February, Australia's government apologised to indigenous |
Australians for |
the injustices they suffered for decades due to official policies. |
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No date for the handover from Charite has been set yet. Thomas |
Schnalke, |
director of the medical museum, said he will happily return the skulls |
to |
Aboriginal leaders after joint research to verify them. Labels on the |
skulls |
say they came from northwestern Australia in the 1890s. |
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The history of Charite's 10,000-bone collection is nearly as murky as |
that |
of the skulls. The bones were gathered by German pathologist Rudolf |
Virchow, |
who bequeathed them to a state society after his death in 1902. |
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In the 1930s, the collection was confiscated by the Nazis. With the |
start of |
World War II, the bones languished in a warehouse for decades. The |
collection passed through the care of several Berlin museums before |
arriving |
at Charite in 2005. |
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The museum is also working to return nine skulls to Namibia, which |
believes |
they were taken from tribal fighters beheaded in uprisings against |
German |
colonial forces between 1904 and 1908. |
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