Saturday, October 1, 2011

Germany Returns 20 Skulls to Africa



By VICTOR HOMOLA, The New York Times

Namibian government representatives and leaders of the Herero and Nama tribes attended a ceremony at Charité Hospital in Berlin on Friday to take possession of 20 skulls brought to Germany for racial research a century ago. Although it is not clear how the 9 Hereros and 11 Namas died between 1904 and 1908, the four females and 16 males, including a boy of about three, were possibly victims of German colonial forces in their colony South West Africa. Imperial German troops and settlers massacred tens of thousands of tribe members when they revolted in 1904, after being expelled from their land, or recruited them into forced labor. In Berlin, scientists tried to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans over black Africans by analyzing features of the heads, Thomas Schnalke, the head of the Berlin Medical Historical Museum, told The Associated Press. According to Charité officials, there are still roughly 7,000 skulls from all over the world in their collection. "Today's handing over of the skulls into Namibian hands recalls a dark chapter in German Namibian history," Cornelia Pieper, Minister of State at the German Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. "With deep respect I commemorate the people who died more than one hundred years ago in the fight for their self-determination."

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.




Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11274/1179088-82.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml#ixzz1ZWnbqDbN

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