Returning Germany’s stolen skulls
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1900, German colonial officers executed 19 Tanzanian leaders, including Akida Kiwelu, and shipped their skulls to Berlin for scientific study. Thousands of such skulls and ancestral remains stolen from Germany’s past colonies are still kept in Berlin museums to this day. In an administrative building in Berlin, Zablon Kiwelu encounters his grandfather’s skull for the first time. DNA testing confirmed a genetic match to this skull, held in an anthropological colonial-era collection of thousands of skulls known as the S-Collection. But despite proof of his heritage, Zablon cannot bring his grandfather home for a proper burial.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When I was a young boy, my father told me that the skull of your grandfather is in German. |
| 0:12.7 | That's what my father knew about this thing. |
| 0:18.0 | That voice you just heard belongs to Zablon Kueu, who I met on his recent visit to Berlin. |
| 0:23.9 | He'd come to the capital of Germany for a unique purpose to visit the skull of his grandfather, Akira Kuelu. |
| 0:31.1 | Tuesday is the day which I cannot forget in my life going to see the remainder of my grandfather. |
| 0:41.0 | Sunday, Sunday was happy, Monday was happy, but Tuesday, it's really pain. |
| 0:47.7 | I'm not happy. |
| 0:49.9 | It's really pain. |
| 0:51.4 | Before I saw this girl, I wasn't very, but now it's really pain. It's really pain. Before I saw this girl, I wasn't very, but now, it's really pain. |
| 0:58.2 | Zablon lives in the Kilimanjawa region of Tanzania. |
| 1:01.5 | He's an old man, but for his entire life he's known the story of the execution. |
| 1:05.9 | How more than 100 years ago, the German colonialists publicly killed 19 local leaders. |
| 1:12.2 | They were hanged, one after the other, from a tree. |
| 1:15.3 | On the same day, 19 people were killed the same day. |
| 1:20.7 | My father was very young, so he didn't know much about his father. |
| 1:25.1 | But he told me that your grandfather was held by the German, |
| 1:29.3 | and they took the skull to German. |
| 1:33.3 | After the hanging, German officers ordered that several of the victims be decapitated, |
| 1:39.3 | and their skulls shipped off back to Germany to enter the collections of one of the city's new museums. |
| 1:47.0 | But ever since that day over a hundred years ago, Zavlon and his community have told the story of the execution and the missing skulls. |
| 1:54.5 | And recently, that oral tradition was backed up by science. DNA testing confirmed that a skull lying in an archive in a Berlin museum |
| 2:02.6 | was that of his direct ancestor, Akida Kiwelu, and that's what brought him to Berlin. |
... |
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