Provenance Report
regarding two human larynxes
in the Sound Archives at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
A research project has examined the provenance of two human remains. They may stem from the genocide waged by the German Empire against the Herero and Nama.
The following text addresses issues of war, physical violence, human remains and racism, which some readers may find disturbing.
In recent years, the awareness around human remains that come from colonial contexts and which have been stored in public collections unnoticed or unquestioned for decades has grown. The pressure from civil society, politics and communities of origin on institutions to face up to the provenance of their collections has also been increasing for several years.
Again and again, we see human remains in places where we would not expect to see them – like in the Lautarchiv (Sound Archive). The collection includes around 7,500 shellac records, wax cylinders and audio tapes – including recordings of languages and dialects that were produced under forced conditions in prisoner-of-war camps during the First and Second World Wars. The collection also includes recordings of German dialects from the 1920s, voice portraits of famous figures, and sonic documents from the GDR, as well as musical recordings and animal sounds. When the collection was reviewed for the Humboldt Lab’s exhibition in the Humboldt Forum, some laryngeal specimens caught the eye.
Why are there human remains in the Sound Archive of the Humboldt University of Berlin? Where do they come from? What was their purpose? The historian Holger Stoecker has investigated these questions as part of a provenance research project. The assertion cannot be proven, but, according to Stoecker’s investigations, it seems quite possible that the larynxes come from present-day Namibia and were taken from the corpses of Herero and Nama people who were prisoners of war during the German genocide. The question now is how the university will deal with these human remains, whose gruesome fate can only be surmised and which will probably always remain nameless. Does the community of origin have an interest in taking them back? Ought they to be buried?
Museums and academic collections around the world ask themselves these questions. In an interview, provenance research expert Holger Stoecker talks about the approach he takes to his investigations and the results of his research.