Museum Wiesbaden plans to return 10 skulls to Indonesia

Museum Wiesbaden plans to return 10 human skulls from the Dutch colonial era to Indonesia at a ceremony on 10 November, Hesse’s culture ministry said. The handover was still forthcoming when it was reported on 4 November. The ministry said Museum Wiesbaden would be the first German museum to return human remains to Indonesia.

The remains were part of the collection of military physician Ernst Albert Fritze and reached Wiesbaden in the 19th century. The ministry said the planned return is part of efforts by Hesse’s state institutions to examine their collections for unlawful colonial-era acquisitions and take responsibility for their history.

Tracing the collection

Fritze worked for the Dutch colonial administration in the 1830s. According to the museum’s historical account, he sent natural-history material, including human skulls from Indonesia, to the Netherlands and museums in his home region beginning no later than 1833. He supplied the Nassau Society for Natural History, a predecessor of Museum Wiesbaden.

The connection to Fritze does not establish the remains’ precise origins. The German Lost Art Foundation says their provenance remains unclear; its research project aims to learn more about where they came from and how they should be handled.

On 7 June 2023, the museum returned a Toi Moko, a specially prepared ancestral skull from New Zealand in Fritze’s collection, to a Māori and Moriori delegation. The museum linked that return to continuing research intended to enable the remaining individuals’ return.

Research and the planned handover

Museum curator Andy Reymann has researched the collection’s origins for several years, ARTnews wrote. In 2023, the museum received German Lost Art Foundation funding for work with Frankfurt’s university hospital forensic medicine institute and University of Cologne Dutch Studies researchers. The project combines forensic examination that does not alter the remains with research in Dutch East India Company archives.

At the planned ceremony in the museum’s lecture hall, Hesse’s arts and culture minister Timon Gremmels is to hand the remains to Indonesian government representatives. The remains will be covered with a cloth out of respect for the deceased.