"Shrink head" - Buchenwald Memorial

Falsification: "Shrink head"

On 19 February 1985, the son of a former Buchenwald inmate presented the director of the memorial, Klaus Trostorff, with a "shrunken head" for the collection. His father had received the head at the end of the 1950s from someone who claimed to have taken it from the pathology department as a liberated inmate.

The picture shows a table with human specimens. On the far right is a lampshade made of human skin. To the left are pieces of tanned, tattooed human skin on the front of the table. At the back of the table, organs are displayed in preparation jars. A heart and a lung are clearly recognisable. Two shrunken heads can also be seen between the organ preparations. — 1/4

Two shrunken heads on the table with specimens on 16 April 1945. The left head is now in the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring/Maryland, the right head in the collection of the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin ©National Archives Washington

US soldiers can be seen in the pathology department. The one in front is sitting, the one behind is standing. The seated soldier inspects a shrunken head that he has picked up. The soldier behind him is also looking at the shrunken head, but is holding tattooed human skin in his hands. — 2/4

US soldiers in the camp's pathology department, April 1945. This shrunken head is now in the collection of the German Historical Museum in Berlin. ©National Archives Washington

The picture shows an exhibition wall in the 1985 exhibition of the National Memorial of the GDR. A Shrink head can be recognised at the bottom of the picture. — 3/4

Alleged "shrunken head" in the 1985 exhibition at the National Memorial of the GDR. Photo: G. Kroll. ©Buchenwald Memorial

You can see a sculpture made of animal skins and animal hair from which a real-looking shrunken head of a human being was made. The shrunken head has long black hair, a black moustache and a light-coloured braided chin beard. — 4/4

Alleged "shrunken head", presented to the Buchenwald National Memorial in 1985. ©Buchenwald Memorial

On 16 April 1945, two shrunken heads were displayed on the table with the specimens. The left head is now in the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring/Maryland, the right one in the collection of the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

For the last permanent exhibition of the National Memorial of the GDR, which opened in April 1985, it was planned to show the shrunken head in the collection of the then Museum of German History. Instead, the head that had just been taken over was exhibited. It remained on display there until the exhibition closed in 1994.

Doubts about its authenticity - the documentation of the 1985 exhibition from 1994 already lists it as a "Schumpfkopf imitation" - and the ethical stance of no longer showing human remains in exhibitions led to it being kept in the collection ever since.

Research into the provenance of the head after 2004 revealed that the original owner had not been a prisoner of the Buchenwald concentration camp, as he had claimed.

In 2023, a forensic report was commissioned which unequivocally confirmed that the artefact referred to as a ‘shrunken head’ was not a human specimen. Analysis of DNA from a hair sample revealed that the hair came from a goat. It is believed that the entire object was skilfully sewn together from various animal parts.