BERLIN — Rows of gaptoothed human skulls and formaldehyde-soaked brains stock the Museum of Medical History here, where the popular exhibition “Beneath the Skin” can be so grim that visitors will occasionally swoon to the cold stone floor.

For more than a century, the museum has exhibited assorted limbs, bones, tubercular lungs and fetuses, all in the name of science and enlightenment. Yet lately the curators are re-evaluating the principles that govern their displays as they confront a growing debate over what cultural organizations should be doing to preserve the dignity of the dead.

Many of the world’s grand museums are hearing increasing demands for the return of human remains from former colonies or conquered peoples. Some are giving back bones and skulls that were once viewed as exotic trinkets and were traded by native peoples for calico or plundered in the late 1800s by scientists exploring racial differences.

Late last month the medical museum and officials who direct the anatomy collection of a sister organization at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, returned 33 skulls and skeletons to Australia and to members of tribes from the Torres Strait Islands between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.

The handover took place in a simple ceremony in a lecture hall at the Charité. Gray cardboard boxes of remains were draped in white and aboriginal flags.

“These are very moving moments for indigenous people around the world,” said Ned David, a Torres Strait islander who helps lead a repatriation group and attended the Berlin ceremony. “They are bringing their ancestral remains home. There are mixed emotions, one obviously of relief, so it’s a celebration. And then the moment is tinged with sadness for what was involved with the removal of the remains.”

That same week the German Museums Association issued new ethical guidelines for museums on how to handle human remains in the face of repatriation claims from former colonies where scientists gathered skulls and skeletons under murky circumstances more than a century ago.

In a 70-page report, sprinkled with references to Kant’s concept of human dignity, a commission of lawyers and curators recommended that institutions study provenance systematically and return remains that had been collected as part of a violent conflict. They urged each individual museum to develop a policy and concluded that “there is no simple answer that can be applied equally to all collections.”

In many ways, the German association is drawing on the experiences of museums in Britain and the United States, which started facing claims for the repatriation of human remains decades ago. The Smithsonian began to repatriate American Indian bones in the late 1980s, and in 1990 the United States passed legislation to enforce the return of those remains by museums that benefit from federal funds. The Smithsonian independently returned remains to Australia in 2008 and 2010.

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