The face of genocide

Abstract

German museums and universities have only slowly become involved in the repatriation debate. A major catalyst has been the Charité Human Remains Project at the Charité university hospital in Berlin that carried out in-depth provenance research and led to the return of the ancestral remains of a Paraguayan individual, the ancestral remains of Aboriginal Australians and a Namibian individual between 2011 and 2014. In particular, the German-Namibian returns were organised against the backdrop of very complex and fraught diplomatic and political relations between Germany and Namibia as well as severe contestations over how to commemorate the colonial genocide (1904–1908) in Namibian internal politics. The chapter investigates how these complexities played out in the design and procedure of the returns, gave voice to various interest groups and concerned communities, and were interpreted on community, regional and national levels. It also argues that the parallel returns of Australian ancestral remains that followed a protocol developed over multiple previous international repatriation events, made an impact on how the two German-Namibian returns evolved. But even if museum professionals and governments strive towards professionalisation and standardisation, repatriation events remains reflective and indicative of the different and, sometimes, conflicting views that actors hold on life and death, on museums and science, on law, ethics, politics, history and colonialism, and that t…