Germany is beginning to engage in a sustained and serious way with questions of repatriation as it relates to the country’s colonial past. Although more recent aspects of Germany’s history continue to dominate political and public discourse, awareness of repatriation is growing amongst representatives of German collecting institutions. This growing awareness, combined with increasing pressure from foreign government representatives and civil society initiatives, has led such institutions to develop relevant policies and guidelines, undertake provenance research, and in a few cases, repatriate human remains to their communities of origin. To maximise the success of future efforts, repatriation practitioners should bear in mind the decentralised nature of responsibility for legislation and administration affecting German collecting institutions, as well as the importance of third-party funding in supporting provenance research.