ProHumStra

The proposed project aims to shed light on the provenance of ancestral remains from a specific collection at the University of Strasbourg marked by a Franco-German past: between 1892 and 1911, during the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, when the University of Strasbourg had become the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität, 135 human remains from at the time German colonies in Africa: German East Africa, Kamerun, German South West Africa and Togo, entered the University’s Institute of Anatomy. ProHumStra has three main research aims: 1) Grasp Franco-German-African relations at play in provenance research by departing from a collection in Alsace; 2) Enhance provenance research by trying to re-connect ancestral remains and cultural materials that have been collected concomitantly; 3) Take provenance research as far as possible and seek to reconstruct the biographies and the social, cultural and economic backgrounds of persons whose bodily remains are housed in Strasbourg. The overarching aim of this project is to contribute to a “re-humanization” (Rassool 2015) of ancestral remains from former colonies and to a shift of perspective enabling African populations to reappropriate their past, however painful and traumatic, and to rethink the post-colony (Bachir Diagne & Amselle 2018).

ProHumStra will mainly rely on archival research and oral history. A collaboration with museums, especially the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich and the Musée des Civilisations du Cameroun in Dschang will be essential in order to try to connect ancestral remains to cultural objects. ProHumStra will further contribute to student training at the intersection between universities and museums: a master’s class in museology at the University of Strasbourg and students from Tanzania will create an exhibition on ancestral remains and cultural materials, through which the project results will be made accessible to a non-academic public. The results of ProHumStra will further be accessible through the open access publications of one special journal issue, one edited volume and through the organization of three conferences in Strasbourg, Munich and Dschang. An interdisciplinary team of 16 researchers and museum professionals in Cameroon, France, Germany and Tanzania will conduct this project. Exploratory research, past collaborations between some of the team members as well as various fallback solutions in cases of emerging difficulties ensure the feasibility of this project. Data managers and an ethical committee will also counsel the team in ways to overcome possible ethical problems, to comply with relevant legislations, but also in ways to make diverse data accessible to a wider public. This project can have a significant political and social impact: it can pave the way for restitutions of ancestral remains from Strasbourg to Africa, give insights on ways to concretely implement the recently enacted French law on restitutions of humain remains, and elaborate suggestions on how to develop the planned French law on the restitution of cultural goods illicitly appropriated, by departing from crossed perspectives between African countries, France and Germany.