# Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte

The Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory (German: Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte) is a learned society for the study of anthropology, ethnology, and prehistory founded in Berlin by Adolf Bastian and Rudolf Virchow in 1869 as the Berlin Anthropological Society (German: Berliner Anthropologische Gesellschaft).

## History

Rudolf Virchow founded the ‘’Berlin Anthropological Society‘’ in November 1869 together with Adolf Bastian and Robert Hartmann, from which the ‘’Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory‘’ emerged. As a national organization, the German Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory was founded in 1870, but dissolved in 1935. Before the inflation after the First World War, the company had considerable assets, which were gained from well-known foundations, such as that of Heinrich Schliemann. This made it possible for the company to financially support expeditions and excavations. Numerous holdings in Berlin museums go back to earlier research by the company and some of them are still legally owned by the company.
After the Second World War, the company was temporarily dissolved by the Allies and re-established in the early 1950s, particularly on the initiative of Hans Nevermann.

## Current activities

Since then, the company has been organizing lectures, excursions and forums on a regular basis and promoting the exchange between scientists from different disciplines. The society annually awards the Rudolf Virchow Prize for excellent master's, master's and diploma theses from universities in Berlin and Brandenburg relating to the subjects represented in the society.

## Archive

The archive of the BGAEU holds historical archival material on the activities of the society and on the history of the scientific disciplines it represents. It preserves the estates of important personalities such as Arthur Baessler, Hans Grimm, Rudolf Virchow and Alfred Maaß, as well as extensive collections of original historical photographs, which are in the care of the Ethnological Museum Berlin, the Museum of Asian Art Berlin and the Museum of European Cultures. The archive is located in the Archaeological Centre of the Berlin State Museums and is open to the public by appointment. The head of the archive is Nils Seethaler.

## Rudolf Virchow Collection

The Society owns an internationally outstanding collection of physical-anthropological specimens. It bears Rudolf Virchow's name, as it was largely compiled during Virchow's lifetime and at his instigation. It includes skulls and other skeletal parts from numerous non-European countries and partly also from Europe. Most of the items in the collection date from the 19th century. There are also archaeological finds, particularly from Egypt, Europe and Latin America.
In the past, representatives of the BGAEU have been accused of handling parts of the anthropological collection uncritically and avoiding the post-colonial discourse in public. Under the chairmanship of Elke Kaiser since 2020, however, a critical and transparent approach to the specialist community has increasingly prevailed, especially with regard to those parts of the anthropological collection that originate from non-archaeological and presumably colonial contexts. The Society is in close contact with representatives from various countries of origin and pursues an offensive strategy of restitution. Since then, human remains from the BGAEU collection have been returned to countries such as Hawaii and Japan. The Society's work focuses on questions of provenance research and the critical appraisal of the origins of the osteological collection. This policy will be continued under the current chairman, Raiko Krauß.

## Racism scandal

In 2021, the Journalist Markus Grill, with the support of the Society's head of archives, succeeded in finding skulls of Canadian aborigines in the Archaeological Centre of the National Museums that were thought to be missing from the Society's anthropological collection. The collection's administrator, Barbara Teßmann, who was supposedly unaware of the existence of these skulls, gave a racist explanation to the international press for the constitution and survival of the collection of skulls she was continuing to study: She countered the accusation that Virchow wanted to differentiate between "races". Rather, he had documented human diversity through the collection: „If you look at the people on the North Sea, for example, they have long, narrow skulls and long, narrow faces. People from the Alpine region tend to have round heads. Black Africans have long, narrow skulls in contrast to, say, Chinese people - they have broad, short faces" "The skulls, they just all look different". She declared that the skulls stolen from tombs during the colonial era were archaeological material: "As a general rule, we don't return archaeological material!" At the same time, she expressed her lack of interest and justified this by her insufficient salary: "I'm not going to start opening boxes!" She refused to return the stolen skulls.