Museum Wiesbaden returns ten colonial-era skulls to Indonesia on 10 November

Ten skulls leave Wiesbaden for Indonesia

The Museum Wiesbaden will hand ten human skulls to representatives of the Indonesian government at a ceremony at 13:00 on Tuesday, 10 November 2026. The skulls will be covered with black cloth to preserve their dignity, and Hesse's culture minister, Timon Gremmels (SPD), is expected to speak at the event. According to the state culture ministry, it is the first time a German museum has returned colonial-era human remains to Indonesia. The skulls had belonged to the collection of Ernst Albert Fritze, a Hessian military doctor who worked for the Dutch colonial administration in Southeast Asia almost two centuries ago. They reached Wiesbaden in the 19th century, and Indonesia was never a German colony.

Years of research and earlier returns

The ministry said the handover followed several years of intensive provenance research, a process that checks collections systematically for unlawful acquisitions. That work is better known for tracing Nazi-looted art than for colonial objects, which emigrants, travellers and missionaries once sent from former colonies to Europe. Other Hessian institutions have made similar returns. The Senckenberg research institute and natural history museum in Frankfurt said it returned an Aboriginal skull to Australia in 2017 and a Maori skull to New Zealand in 2011. The Weltkulturen-Museum in Frankfurt returned a mummified tattooed head, known as a Toi Moko, to New Zealand in 2011, in a ceremony closed to the public at the New Zealand delegation's request. A 2016 exchange with Namibia over two skulls has not yet led to a return. In 2023 the Museum Wiesbaden itself gave a Maori ancestral skull, also sent by Fritze, to a New Zealand delegation.

Oldenburg returns a Maori ancestor

On Monday, 9 November 2026, the Landesmuseum Natur und Mensch in Oldenburg handed the remains of a Maori ancestor to a New Zealand delegation. Members of the delegation carried out a traditional Maori funeral ceremony during the handover. The museum's documents review showed that the remains came to Oldenburg in 1881 through an exchange, and the museum had held them since then. New Zealand representatives had made a return request in 2024. The community the ancestor came from has not been identified, so the Maori descendants will decide where he is laid to rest. Museum director Ursula Warnke said the museum was acknowledging its historical responsibility:

“Human remains from colonial contexts were generally brought to Europe by force and without consent.”

Arapata Hakiwai of Te Papa in Wellington said in a statement that the return helps restore the Maori's cultural and spiritual ties to their ancestors. Lower Saxony's culture minister, Falko Mohrs, said the ancestor should never have been taken and held by the museum, and that the state sees the return as part of addressing colonial injustice:

“The unlawful appropriation and museum holding of the Maori ancestor should never have happened.”

Timeline of the returns

The chart lists the dated steps reported across the two handovers, from the 1881 exchange in Oldenburg to the planned Wiesbaden ceremony at 13:00 on 10 November 2026.