Investigations were also carried out on 1,100 skulls from former German East Africa, with the aim of returning the remains to the countries involved.
Berlin held funeral ceremonies on Thursday for five indigenous Australians whose remains will be returned to this country, nearly 150 years after they were looted during the colonial era.
Two mummified bodies, two skulls and a traditional “burial set” were taken from Australian cemeteries and brought to Germany around 1880, researchers said at the ceremony in .
The museum, as well as the museum of nature and man in Oldenburg (northwest), will send them back to Australia, as part of Berlin’s efforts to make amends for crimes committed during the colonial era.
The coffins were covered with traditional flags, under chants by representatives of Australian aboriginal communities, accompanied by drums, “profoundly important” ceremonies, highlighted the Australian ambassador in Berlin Natasha Smith.
“These repatriations are of the highest priority” for Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, as well as the government, he added.
Berlin’s museums and their reserves are full of millions of objects brought back by scientific expeditions that traveled the world from the mid-19th century onwards.
Germany gradually began to remember its colonial past
The remains are those of three women, a man and a person of unknown sex, bringing to 162 the total number of remains returned by Germany to Australia, according to Smith.
Over the past twenty years, Germany has gradually begun to remember its colonial past. The German colonial empire, smaller than that of the French or the British, spread across several African countries, including Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia and Cameroon. It ceased to exist after the First World War.
The country has already returned to Namibia bones from members of the Herero and Nama tribes, as well as “Benin bronze”, originating in what is now Nigeria.
Investigations were also carried out on 1,100 skulls from former German East Africa, with the aim of returning the remains to the countries involved.
“In recent years, our approach to certain issues has evolved significantly,” said Parzinger, noting that the Nazi period “has long obscured the view of Germany’s role in colonialism.”
