Museum Wiesbaden to Return Colonial-Era Human Remains to Indonesia
Museum Wiesbaden will hand back 10 human skulls to Indonesia on November 10, becoming the first German museum to repatriate human remains from the Dutch colonial era.
A First for Germany
Museum Wiesbaden will return 10 human skulls to Indonesia in a formal ceremony on November 10 in Wiesbaden, the capital of the German state of Hesse. According to the Hessen Wissenschaft, the state culture ministry, the institution will be the first German museum to return human remains from the Dutch colonial era to the country.
Out of respect for the deceased individuals, the remains will be covered with a cloth during the ceremony.
How the Skulls Entered the Collection
The skulls entered Germany in the 19th century and were initially taken from Indonesia by Ernst Albert Fritze, a military physician who worked for the Dutch East India Company beginning in 1817, according to research by Andy Reymann, the museum's curator of cultural anthropology.
Fritze donated several natural history objects to the Nassau Society for Natural History, the Museum Wiesbaden's predecessor, beginning in 1833.
The restitution marks the first return of Dutch colonial-era human remains by a German museum, per the state culture ministry.
A Collection Rooted in the Enlightenment
The museum's founding collection dates to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when it was assembled by father-son collectors Johann Christian Gerning and Johann Isaac Freiherr von Gerning. It ranged from paintings and drawings to books and maps to insects and coins.
At the suggestion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the younger Gerning donated his holdings to the Duchy of Nassau. They were subsequently split among three museums and then transferred to the city of Wiesbaden in 1900. Since 1973, the three institutions have been managed by the state of Hesse as the Museum Wiesbaden.
Research Still Catching Up
Reymann has been investigating the origins of Fritze's human skull collection for several years. In 2023, the museum received funding from the German Lost Art Foundation, together with the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University Hospital in Frankfurt am Main and researchers from the Department of Dutch Studies at the University of Cologne, to continue that work.
A description of the research project notes that although Fritze was well-known in his time and is frequently mentioned in the writings of his student Junghuhn, very little has been compiled about him personally, and that the provenance of the human remains remains unclear.
The State's Position
In a statement, the Hessian Ministry of Culture said the restitution is part of the efforts of Hessian state institutions to systematically examine their collections for unlawful acquisitions during the colonial period and to assume responsibility for the history of their holdings.
