BERLIN
More
than 1,000 skulls and bones belonging to east Africans and brought to
Germany for racial "scientific" research during the colonial era are
still in storage in Berlin, a media report said Tuesday.
Public
broadcaster ARD said it had obtained lists of the human remains that
are still held by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which
administers the capital's state museums.
Most
of the skulls and bones are marked as stemming from Germany's former
East African colonies, including 1,003 items from Rwanda and 60 from
Tanzania. Among them are 10 skulls of children.
Some
of the human remains, kept at the Foundation's main storage facility,
came from insurgents who had been decapitated by German troops. Their
skulls were then sent to Berlin for "scientific" experiments.
Asked
about the items, the foundation's chief, Hermann Parzinger, told ARD
that his organisation "has no problem with returning these things".
Germany has in recent years handed back 20 skulls belonging to indigenous Namibians.
The
skulls are among an estimated 300 taken to Germany after a slaughter of
indigenous Namibians during an anti-colonial uprising in what was then
called South West Africa, which Berlin ruled from 1884 to 1915.
The
skulls gathered dust in the German archives until 2008, when ARD
reported that they were still kept at the Medical History Museum of the
Charite hospital in Berlin, and at Freiburg University in the southwest.
No comments :
Post a Comment