Fryderyka Joliot-Curie 12, Wrocław
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We invite you to the conference “Sensitive Legacy in University Collections: Between Adaptation and Restitution”. The aim of the event is to learn about and discuss Australian, German and Polish perspectives on the problematic collection of human remains, ethnographic objects and photographs created in the early 20th century by the German researcher Hermann Klaatsch, which is currently in the collections of the University of Wrocław. This collection is the starting point for our discussion on the status of such collections, their cultural biography and, above all, whether their use in contemporary research is justified.
Fot. Wojciech Chrubasik
CONTEXT OF THE CONFERENCE
In 1945, as a result of the Potsdam Conference, Wrocław, formerly a German city of Breslau, became part of Poland. This transnational Polish-German context makes Wrocław, a unique city on the map of Europe, together with other cities and the entire area of the Western Territories that were then incorporated into Poland. The scientific collections of yesterday's University of Breslau, which had been collected and saved from destruction, after the WWII became the property of the Polish state at the disposal of the University of Wrocław. The university's possessions include ethnographic, archaeological and natural history collections as well as human remains collected by German scholars in the colonial period during research expeditions and used by them to pursue studies on, among other things, the origin and evolution of homo sapiens, race typologies, and eugenics.
A telling example of such heritage is the collection of human remains brought to Breslau/Wrocław from Australia by Professor Hermann Klaatsch at the beginning of the 20th century, and used in research conducted by Polish scholars after 1945. Such collections, although not gathered by Polish researchers, have become a sensitive legacy, a difficult heritage of the University of Wrocław illustrating non-obvious historical entanglements between Australia, Germany and Poland. Both their origin and their use raise ethical controversies today, that are set in the postcolonial, postwar and postcommunist contexts.
Hermann Klaatsch's collections of human remains, ethnographic objects and photographs have become a starting point for us to open a discussion on the status of such collections, their cultural biography and, above all, the rights to use them in contemporary research. During the conference, we would like to reflect on the ethical aspects of working on and with such collections.
We want to discuss what are ethically appropriate procedures for using them, as well as whether their restitution, if any, is advisable. We are also interested in hearing the voices of scholars and museum professionals, especially those representing indigenous communities, researchers using such collections for scientific purposes and those who have been involved
in the restitution processes.
ORGANISING COMMITTEE:
Prof. Renata Tańczuk, UWr
Dr. Jacek Małczyński, UWr
Dr. Katarzyna Williams, ANU
Dr. Agata Strządała, WMU & UMF
Dr. Łukasz Bukowiecki, UW
Mgr. Agnieszka Jabłońska, UMF
Odra Center
Odra Center Cultural studies scholar, PhD, professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Wrocław, member of the Committee on Cultural Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. She conducts research in the field of studies on objects and collecting, sound studies and soundscape studies. She is interested in the condition of contemporary humanities and new areas of humanities research. She belongs to the research teams of the Soundscape Research Workshop and the Contemporary Humanities Laboratory. Author of the monographs Ars colligendi. Collecting as a form of cultural activity (Wrocław 2011), Collection – memory – identity. Studies on collecting (Wrocław 2018) and co-editor of, among others: Audiosfera. Studies (Wrocław 2016), Sounds of War and Peace. Soundscapes of European Cites in 1945 (Berlin 2018).
Dr Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams is Deputy Director at the Centre for European Studies at The Australian National University. Her research focuses on migrant cultures, particularly life narratives and non-traditional forms of telling life (e.g. biographies of things), transfer of memory between generations and communities, mediation of memory and constructions of the self within the contexts of migration, displacement and transcultural belonging. She is also interested in the politics of memory and reconciliation. She has been the lead on several international projects, including the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet projects Remembering Across Continents and Culture in International Relations, and the Centre of Excellence Leadership Emerging from Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Gender.
Dr Hilary Howes is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the Return Reconcile Renew.(RRR) Centre in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. Since 2007, her research has focused on cross-cultural contacts between German-speakers and the peoples of Australia and the South Pacific, including histories of the acquisition and study of Indigenous Ancestral Remains and cultural objects. Her books include The Race Question in Oceania: A.B. Meyer and Otto Finsch between Metropolitan Theory and Field Experience, 1865–1914 (2013); Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania, ed. with T. Jones and M. Spriggs (2022); Repatriation, Science and Identity, ed. with C. Fforde, G. Knapman and L. Ormond-Parker (2023).
The repatriation of First Nations Australian Ancestral Remains has a much longer history than is often realised. From the early decades of the 1800s onwards, European visitors and settlers documented First Nations Australians attempting to resist the removal of their ancestors’ remains. By the 1970s, First Nations Australian communities had enough political agency within Australian society to mount organised campaigns against further disturbances of graves and publicly challenge arguments against reburial. From the mid-1990s, Australian federal and state governments responded to increasing public support for repatriation by committing funds to provenance research and supporting negotiations by elders and community leaders. Repatriations from overseas institutions have gathered pace since the early 2000s. Despite this trajectory, misunderstandings around repatriation persist. I outline some of the misunderstandings I have encountered to date, in particular as an employee of the Australian Embassy in Berlin from 2011 to 2015, and seek to counteract these by drawing on the words and actions of First Nations Australians I have been privileged to meet and work with. I conclude by suggesting various resources for those wishing to learn more about First Nations Australian perspectives on repatriation.
Paul Turnbull is the first historian to investigate in depth the history of European scientific curiosity, collecting and the repatriation of the bodily remains of the Ancestors of Indigenous Australians. His ground-breaking research is grounded in thirty years of investigating hitherto unexplored museum records and medico-scientific archives in Australia, Europe and North America. His 2017 book, 'Science, Museums and Collecting the Indigenous Dead in Colonial Australia (2017)’ has been acclaimed as a ‘superbly written and exemplary scholarly work that…is sure to become essential reading for students and scholars in the fields of museology, Australian history, repatriation studies, and the history of anthropology.‘ Paul’s career has also been noteworthy for his active commitment to reconciliation. For over thirty years, he has pursued research pro bono for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and their representative organisations around Australia to locate, identify and bring home to Country their Ancestors held in overseas museum collections.
Overcoming the legacies of the colonial past requires understanding the connections between European knowledge-making and colonial ambitions. A vital dimension of this task is to contextualise the ideas and aspirations of scientists in colonial times, paying close attention to their rules of argument and criteria for evidence in establishing matters of fact. This is a vital contribution to the work of intellectual decolonisation. For as I explain in briefly speaking of the scientific context and social influence of Hermann Klaatsch’s anthropological research, close contextual investigation of anatomists and anthropologists active in colonial contexts can reveal not only the more subtle ways in which European science legitimated colonial oppression, but also, in doing so, invite us to question whether current scientific aspirations risk re-inscribing coloniality.
Sarah Yu is as an anthropologist, curator and heritage consultant who focuses on relationships between people and their connections to country. Currently based in Broome, she works for Nyamba Buru Yawuru— the business arm of the Yawuru native title group. Collaborating with Indigenous artists and writers she has curated many award-winning projects: Lustre: Pearling & Australia exhibition (2015- 2021) with the Western Australian Museum; Jetty to Jetty Heritage Trail, (2016); Opening the Common Gate exhibition, to honour the 1967 Referendum (2007) and Wanggajarli Burugun: we are coming home, co-curated with the Yawuru community curatorium. She has recently completed her doctoral thesis in anthropology at Heidelberg University and is a research affiliate with the Australian National University, the University of Notre Dame (Broome), and the West Australian Museum.
Naomi Appleby is a Yawuru and Karajarri woman, residing in Broome and is the Manager of the Yawuru Language Centre at Nyamba Buru Yawuru. Her journey in Yawuru’s repatriation project extends from personal connection as a fourth-generation descendent of an eyewitness survivor of violent first contact encounters, to a project ambassador working under the guidance of the Yawuru community to assist in the repatriation processes. She was the recipient of the National Museum of Australia’s Encounters Fellowship to further investigate the scale of international trade in human remains. Naomi has co-facilitated numerous community meetings to capture the emotional response, which has shaped the Wanggajarli Burugun: We are coming home digital exhibition, film, and interpretive blueprint for the memorial-resting place.
In 2016 the Yawuru community, the indigenous people of the country around Broome Western Australia, discovered that the bones of their ancestors had been taken from their country and placed in museum collections in Europe, Asia and America. To date 32 ancestors have been found, each with a story that, collectively, reveals and confirms the harsh truths of the colonial encounter from the time of first settlement in the 1860s to the mid-1900s. It is a story that exposes the collusion between the State, the church and the settlers in further violating and de-humanising first nations peoples in the northwest of Australia.
In this paper we will discuss how the Yawuru people came to terms with this dark aspect of shared colonial history, by establishing the Wanggajarli Burugun: we are coming home—a multi-faceted project that aims to bring their ancestors home, investigate and share the stories of their ‘old people’, and establish a permanent resting place. Through this work they seek to create a pathway to healing and reconciliation in the spirit of mabu liyan (spiritual wellbeing).
Dr Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams is Deputy Director at the Centre for European Studies at The Australian National University. Her research focuses on migrant cultures, particularly life narratives and non-traditional forms of telling life (e.g. biographies of things), transfer of memory between generations and communities, mediation of memory and constructions of the self within the contexts of migration, displacement and transcultural belonging. She is also interested in the politics of memory and reconciliation. She has been the lead on several international projects, including the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet projects Remembering Across Continents and Culture in International Relations, and the Centre of Excellence Leadership Emerging from Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Gender.
Dr. Corinna Erckenbrecht is a cultural anthropologist from the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums in Mannheim, Germany, where she is Head of Department of World Cultures and Natural History. Her work and research focusses on Australia and Oceania since the 1980’s. She has mainly worked at Museums (Cologne, Saxony, Mannheim), but also at universities (Heidelberg). Since 2004 she conducted substantial research in various short- and long-term projects concerning Hermann Klaatsch’s Australian journey based on the newly available archival documents owned by the Klaatsch family in the USA. This was mainly done while at the Museum of Ethnology in Cologne, which holds the biggest part of Klaatsch’s ethnographic collection. But she also visited and studied other Klaatsch collections in Germany and in Poland (Wrocław and Warsaw). At Heidelberg University her focus was Klaatsch‘s cultural and linguistic research in North Western Australia, but also the human remains Klaatsch obtained while in that area. She also helped with the provenance research concerning human remains from Australia in other cases. Since 2018 Corinna Erckenbrecht is based at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums in Mannheim. In 2023-24 she transferred Hermann Klaatsch‘s Australian Archive from the USA to the Mannheim Museum, where it officially belongs to the archive of her department now.
My paper presents the 3-year journey to Australia (and Java) by the German doctor, comparative anatomist, physical anthropologist and collector Hermann Klaatsch (1863-1916). Upon his return from Australia he became professor of anthropology at Breslau/Wrocław university in 1907. Based on some general information about his biography and personality at first, the wide array of his diverse archival documents, photographs, and ethnographic artefacts from Australia and their significance are introduced. The paper then focusses on the sensitive legacy of his collection of human remains and discusses a critical assessment of the ethical circumstances involved. The archival documents which can shed light on the origin, locality, personality, and cause of death of the Indigenous individuals are outlined (depending on the existing data) as well as the ways how Klaatsch was able to find the locations plus the reactions by white and Indigenous Australians concerning his behaviour.
The ways of appropriate communication and consultation with the relevant Indigenous communities in Australia today, the approaches by scientists for their research, the potentials – and limitations – of the available Klaatsch documents, the negotiations of politicians regarding repatriation and other relevant issues are discussed at the end, opening up to a discussion with the wider audience about this or any other issues/questions relating to Klaatsch.
Łukasz Bukowiecki holds an MA and a PhD in cultural studies. He is Assistant Professor and the Head of cultural studies and social arts program at the Institute of Polish Culture of the University of Warsaw. In 2018–2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher within the Horizon2020 project ECHOES – European Colonial Heritage Modalities in Entangled Cities, participating in the work package on City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts (https://projectechoes.eu/work-package-3/). His academic interests focus on history of museum collections and concepts, social construction of heritage, and urban memory and imaginary in the Baltic Sea Region. He published three academic monographs on cultural history of museums (in Polish) and has contributed articles to main Polish and some international academic journals, including Heritage & Society, Kultura Współczesna, Przegląd Humanistyczny, and Teksty Drugie.
Among collections of different provenance kept at the Museum of Man at the Human Biology Department of the University of Wrocław (today Wrocław in Poland, before 1945 – Breslau in Germany), there are human remains collected during fieldwork in Australia (1904−1907) by a German comparative anatomist and physical anthropologist Hermann Klaatsch (1863−1916), who later became of chairman of the physical and cultural anthropology department at the University of Breslau.
The argumentation will be focused on the history of the Klaatsch’s collection after the Second World War and complex entanglements affecting this legacy in contemporary Poland.
The paper addresses both the global approach to engaging with colonial pasts, dealing with sensitive collections and reframing the history of science, as well as discusses Poland’s historical particularities, with such challenging issues as provenance and status of human remains in Polish museums, and the ownership of the museum objects that used to be property of German institutions and/or citizens before the war.
The paper is aimed at presenting how musealized human remains embodying difficult pasts might be identified as dissonant academic heritage and how the call for decolonization in the museum sector may refer to museum objects kept in a country such Poland that did not have its own colonies.
Dr Magdalena Wróblewska is an art historian and museologist, interested in the issues of decoloniality. Director of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw and assistant professor at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. She completed a post-doc fellowship at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz- Max-Planck-Institut and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2012-14). From 2015 to 2021 she directed research at the Museum of Warsaw, as well as several teams: the Warsaw Research Department, the Archaeological Department, the Heritage Interpretation Centre and Korczakianum. She was co-curator of the main exhibition "The Things of Warsaw", and responsible for the "Room of Portraits". The project she led "Where do Varsovians come from? Migrations to Warsaw in the 14th-21st centuries" was awarded the Sybilla award by the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections (2016). As part of the City Museums and Multiple Colonial Pasts project in the ECHOES project (H2020), she published the book "Practicing Decoloniality in Museums: A Guide with Global Examples" (Amsterdam University Press, 2021) with C. Ariese. She has authored books and articles on photography, including "Photographs of ruins, ruins of photography. 1944-2014" (2014, awarded by NIMOZ in the "Visible Museum" competition in 2015), "Images of memory and knowledge. Photographic reproductions of works in archives and narratives of art history" (2022). In 2023, she completed a research internship at the Department for Anthropology, The National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Art historian, museologist. She studied in Wrocław, Frankfurt (Oder) and Warsaw. Holder of scholarships of the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst, the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, and the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe in Oldenburg. Author and co-author of books and numerous scientific articles. She is a member of the Polish Association of Art Historians, the Association of University Museums in Poland, the Association of Polish Museologists, and the Silesian Historical Commission in Germany. Professionally, she is interested in the history of art and culture around 1800 and the history of museology in Wrocław
The paper will address the adaptation of the post-German legacy in the Polish city of Wrocław after 1945, the transfer as well as the dispersal of the collection. What a complicated process was initiated at that time is evidenced by the fact that to this day not all components of the acquired property have been sufficiently researched and compiled. In particular, those items that were considered sensitive, remained in storage for decades. These included archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological collections. Interestingly, all three groups of collections, came from two German museums at the University of Wrocław: The Archaeological Museum and the Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum, which had no continuators in Polish Wrocław. The collections of these museums surviving after the war became susceptible to dispersal. Some were incorporated into the collections of the departments and institutes of the University of Wrocław, but the most valuable objects were transported to Warsaw. This happened, among others, with the archaeological and ethnographic collections, which will serve as examples to present attempts to implement methodological proposals from contemporary humanities that can support research on dissonant heritage.
Agata Stasińska is working in the Gallery of Art of the 12th-15th centuries at the National Museum in Wrocław. She is a PhD candidate at the doctoral Cultural Science (Faculty of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences) at the University of Wrocław. Her research interests are: late gothic sculpture in Silesia, medieval piety and devotion, the problem of relation between the believers and art objects in Middle Ages, provenance research. Currently preparing a doctoral dissertation about the Late Gothic wooden crucifixes in Silesia. Her other research areas are German ethnology and decolonization – currently working on a project devoted to non-European art in Breslau.
The speech will be devoted to the process of preparing the first exhibition of non-European art from the Breslau collection. The work on this exhibition offers the possibility of an appropriate presentation of objects, in accordance with the standards promoted by the most important museums in the world.
Attention will be paid to the topics that the exhibition will address. One of these is the issue of collecting at that time, as well as the closely related specifics of German colonialism. In this case, special emphasis will be placed on Silesia – the exhibition will tell the story of local researchers such as Georg Thilenius or Hermann Klaatsch, as well as draw attention to the important role of travelers and collectors coming from wealthy Silesian families, whose travel directions left their mark on the formation of the collection of the former Anthropological Ethnographic Museum.
However, in these considerations, as well as in the process of preparing the exhibition in general, our most important goal is to change the perspective – to move away from a biographical approach to give voice to objects whose creators today most often remain anonymous.
Jan Kotusz, PhD in Biological Sciences. Graduate of biology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the University of Wrocław (1993); PhD (2001) and habilitation (2016) at the University of Wrocław. Specialist dealing with ichthyofauna, morphology and evolutionary ecology of fish. His main object of scientific interest is the family of loaches and asexual hybrid complexes occurring in loaches. Author and co-author of two monographs, as well as over eighty scientific articles and chapters in books on various aspects of fish biology. For many years he was the editor-in-chief of the journal Zoologica Poloniae, and since 2016, section editor in Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria. Participant of several scientific expeditions, including to Lake Baikal, the White Sea and Spitsbergen. Currently, he works as the director of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Wrocław.
Issues concerning the ethical side of acquiring and keeping preparations of plants, animals, and fungi as scientific collections are part of the daily activities of natural history museums. From the founding of the Natural History Museum in Wroclaw in 1814 until today, 210 years have passed. For more than 60% of that time, it served a German university, from which we inherited some of the richest and most valuable zoological and botanical collections in modern Poland. However, almost no catalogues and documentation concerning the provenance of individual collections have survived – they were destroyed or lost during war operations and the disastrous evacuation of the collections in 1945. Based on the sparse label notes accompanying the specimens, we can guess today that the main sources of acquisition of museum collections in German times were large-scale scientific expeditions, collections donated by researchers, purchases, exchanges, etc. Although the German legacy of the Wroclaw Museum of Natural History is not even vaguely recognised in terms of its origin, it can be assumed that some of the specimens were acquired following the ruthless colonial rules of the time. The justification for today's owners coming into possession of such goods cannot be a simple appeal to science. The long-standing, somewhat justified lack of responsibility for another nation scholars and their methods of conducting scientific activities has led to an almost complete denial of the connection with this inconvenient past. It has also resulted in a lack of greater interest in historical knowledge of the property held. Awareness of the provenance of all materials that arouse such emotions should accompany current inquiries.
The contemporary approach to maintaining natural history collections takes into account two ethical aspects: 1/ responsibility for biodiversity, and 2/ fair and equitable distribution of genetic resources of various organisms by both developed and developing countries which are often the owners of these resources. Each of the presented aspects is appropriately embedded in national and international legislation. Despite these limitations, the Natural History Museum of the University of Wroclaw systematically enriches its collections, performing within the framework of current legal conditions. However, ethical issues go beyond the changing legal regulations over time and must leave room for reinterpretation of current and past activities.
Assistant professor in the department of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences in medicine at the Medical University of Wrocław, Poland. She received her PhD in history from the University of Wrocław in 2001 with a dissertation titled "The concept of Race Hygiene and Implementation of Race Hygiene Legislation in German Province of Lower Silesia" (Toruń: Marszałek, 2002). Research interest include history of eugenics and implementation of eugenic legislation in interwar years, extermination of people with disabilities during the time of Third Reich and Nazi medical experiments.
Recent studies revealed close collaboration between Nazi regime and anatomical institutes in the years 1939-1945. Based on ministerial circular of 18 February 1939, bodies of prisoners executed in Gestapo or criminal prisons were to be transferred to anatomical institutes. Medical Universities were assigned to specific prisons from which they received corpses for teaching and research. Vienna University’s investigation into circumstances of creation of Eduard Pernkopf’s anatomical atlas in 1997/1998 was a trigger for studies of anatomical collections held by German and Austrian anatomical institutes. This paper gives an overview of the findings of still ongoing historical research.
MA in Ethnology, Director of the University of Gdańsk Museum and member of the board of the Association of University Museums. Member of the editorial board of the journal "Ethnography. Practices. Theories. Experiences". At the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the University of Gdańsk, she teaches museum studies and object education. She completed doctoral studies at the Jagiellonian University and is currently preparing a doctoral thesis in the field of contemporary museum studies.
PhD in Cultural and Religious Sciences, Master of Laws. Deputy Director of the Jagiellonian University Museum in Cracow, Poland. Member of the Rector's Commission for the Heritage of the Jagiellonian University and the Jagiellonian University Medical College. For years, she has also been cooperating in the structures of the network of European consortia, including as a member of UMAC, Coimbra Heritage Working Group, Universeum and within the UNA Europa alliance. She deals with the issue of protection of museum collections, their status and the specificity of university collections as part of the academic heritage.
Museums and collections, located within the structures of universities, collect and secure not only traces of the university's activity and history, but also (depending on the profile) scientific instruments, artistic, natural or medical collections. The resources of these units often include human remains or sensitive objects, which play a key role in scientific research and the teaching process. They are also important witnesses and testimonies of fate, achievements, and a painful past. The collection, storage, and all processes involved in the study or adaptation of such resources present both practical and ethical challenges.
The presentation will discuss two specific cases of sensitive collections of the University of Gdańsk and the diverse sensitive resources of the Jagiellonian University. The analysis of these examples will allow us to familiarize ourselves with the issues related to the responsibility for the protection, documentation and records of collections. Both management aspects and the issues of interpretation and building a narrative based on such collections will be mentioned.
In addition, the authors will present the conclusions of the seminar "Museologization of human remains. Practical and ethical aspects of collecting and recording human remains in museums", organized by the National Institute for Museums and Collections Protection (NIMOZ) and the Association of University Museums (Stowarzyszenie Muzeów Uczelniancych), in which representatives of archaeological, university, martyrological and church museums participated. The authors of the presentation led working groups preparing for the seminar and moderated and summarized the discussions.
The speech will also refer to the importance of international cooperation and exchange of experience in order to develop a research methodology for this type of collections in Polish resources. It will also indicate that Central and Eastern Europe, based on the experience of academic collections, is also struggling with the problem of sensitive heritage and colonial history, although in a slightly different version and not only concerning highly sensitive objects, such as human remains.
