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
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.

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. The society is striving to systematically process the history of the collection. In individual cases, restitutions have already been made to the countries of origin.

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.

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: „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.