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Contested duplicates: disputed negotiations surrounding ethnographic doppelgängers in German New Guinea, 1898–1914
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 June 2022
Abstract
The issue of duplicates and duplication in ethnographic collection is frequently regarded as a process that begins and ends in the museum as a fundamental act of the process of curating. In contrast, this article maintains, this practice occurred all along the chain of collecting, where indigenous artefacts operated as items of exchange in the context of the colonial encounter. Using the example of German New Guinea, the article maintains that epistemological concerns, as symbolic currency both in terms of inter-museum exchange and in terms of contributing to individual and institutional prestige, guiding ethnographic intuitions had little influence on colonial resident collectors. Colonial residents, who resented the heavy hand of colonial and museum officials in Berlin, infused duplication with their own desires, which included commercial gain or the conferment of the many German state decorations. The colonized indigenous population benefited from the increasing demand for their material culture, which provided valuable items and bargaining chips in the emerging colonial exchange. Duplicates are identified as doppelgängers to explore the political tensions that emerged in connection with duplication among museum officials and European and indigenous colonial residents.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 55 , Special Issue 3: The Issue of Duplicates , September 2022 , pp. 297 - 318
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science
References
1 The Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde was established in 1873 in Berlin. From 1886 it had its own separate building.
2 Hahl's reaction was related confidentially to the Berlin museum curator Felix von Luschan by Emil Stephan, leader of the German naval expedition to New Ireland. See Emil Stephan to Felix von Luschan, 14 November 1907, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz (hereafter SBB PK), Luschan Papers (hereafter LuP), Stephan file.
3 There are vast national differences between the designations of anthropology. For instance, the common four-field distinction governing American anthropology is unique to that country only. In Germany, and many other European traditions, physical and cultural anthropology had historically divergent paths. Sociocultural anthropology developed as Völkerkunde, which united the concepts of describing a particular culture ethnography – with the comparative study of cultures – ethnology. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, museums dedicated to this study became known as Völkerkundemuseen. The term has long since fallen out of fashion for its obvious colonial connotations. I have decided to employ the more common ‘ethnography museums’ for the institutions and ‘ethnographer’ for the practitioners of this discipline. For a good overview consult Vermeulen, Han, Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography in the German Enlightenment, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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11 Felix von Luschan to Wilhelm Bode, 16 November 1906, SBB PK, LuP, Bode file, original emphasis.
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13 See also Kaiser's contribution in this issue.
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17 Quote from Karl Weule to the ethnographic institutions located in Bremen, Brunswick, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart, 1 February 1904, Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig (hereafter MfVL), copy book 1904.
18 The Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg officially emerged in the 1870s. By 1912 it was housed in an independent building.
19 Georg Thilenius to Friedrich von Lindequist, 18 March 1910, Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt, File D 2.23, Sammlungen aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten (Collections from the German Protectorates).
20 In March 1910, representatives of all prominent botanical, ethnographic and zoological institutions met at the Colonial Office to discuss an alternative to the Federal Council's decree of 1889. They agreed that all colonial officers could donate or sell their collection to a German museum of their choice. They disagreed, however, and would continue to disagree until the outbreak of the Great War, on how to proceed with collections that derived from federally sponsored expeditions. Buschmann op. cit. (6), pp. 84–6, 93–6.
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27 Friedrich Burger, Urwald und Urmenschen: Reisen und Abenteuer auf den melanesischen Inseln, Dresden: Deutsche Buchwerkstätten, 1923, pp. 20–1, 180; Georg Zwanziger, Recollections, Bundesarchiv Reichskolonialamt, R 1001/9341, p. 119, at https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/main.xhtml (accessed 13 April 2020). Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, personal communication, 27 July 2021, suggests that the word may have had originated with the missionary practice of burning artefacts – especially ritual objects – associated with the indigenous conversion process.
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30 Jacobi, Arnold, 1875–1925: Fünfzig Jahre Museum für Völkerkunde zu Dresden, Berlin: Julius Bard, 1925, p. 27Google Scholar.
31 Felix von Luschan to Albert Grünwedel, 7 October 1896, Staatliche Museen Berlin, Museum für Völkerkunde (hereafter SMB PK, MV), IB Australien/E 1131/96.
32 Felix von Luschan to Naval Admiral Eduard von Knorr, 7 August 1897, SMB PK, MV, IB Australien/E 1009/97.
33 This is how Pützstück, Lothar, ‘Symphonie in Moll’: Julius Lips und die Kölner Völkerkunde, Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1995, pp. 52–3Google Scholar, characterized Willy Foy, the director of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Cologne Ethnographic Museum. This designation could have been equally applicable to many of his colleagues.
34 Rainer Buschmann, ‘Exploring tensions in material culture: commercialising ethnography in German New Guinea, 1870–1904,’ in Michael O'Hanlon and Robert Welsch (eds.), Hunting the Gatherers: Ethnographic Collectors, Agents and Agency in Melanesia, 1870s–1930s, New York: Berghahn, 2000, pp. 55–79.
35 Hahl, Albert, Governor in New Guinea (tr. and ed. Sack, Peter and Clark, Dymphna), Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980, pp. 95–6Google Scholar.
36 Albert Hahl to Karl Weule, 1 March 1910, MfVL, Acquisition 1909/104. A little later in a letter to the Stuttgart administrator Theodor Wanner, Hahl assumed that his counterpart's main goal was to enlarge the collection of as many German museums as possible. See Albert Hahl to Theodor Wanner, 28 July 1910, Linden-Museum Stuttgart (hereafter LiMSt), Hahl file.
37 Albert Hahl to Karl Weule, 25 July 1910, MfVL, accession file 1911/14.
38 Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, Uli: Powerful Ancestors from the Pacific, Brussels: Primedia, 2021.
39 Stephan to Luschan, op. cit. (2). Hahl wisely kept direct criticism of the centralization edict out of his correspondence. His private outbursts against the Berlin museum are, nevertheless, recorded by third parties.
40 Felix Luschan to General Museum Administration, 13 August 1907, SMB-PK, MV, IB 46/E 1401/07. In this letter Luschan reports on the situation in the Stuttgart ethnographic collection that displayed, among other things, Hahl's uli and hareiga donations.
41 See, for instance, Wintle, Claire, ‘Models as cross-cultural design: ethnographic ship models at the National Maritime Museum’, Journal of the History of Collections (2015) 27(2), pp. 241–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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45 Wilhelm Wostrack to Albert Hahl, 21 August 1909, Dieter Klein Collection. The author acknowledges the kind copy of this important letter from Dieter Klein.
46 Mahler to Shipping Company Rohde and Jörgens Shipping Company, 8 October 1913, MfVL, accession file 1914/15.
47 Thompson, Alistair, ‘Honours uneven: decoration, the state and bourgeois society in imperial Germany’, Past and Present (1994) 144, pp. 171–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zimmerman, op. cit. (9), pp. 302–3 n. 68; Buschmann, op. cit. (6), pp. 53–7. The Linden Museum Stuttgart emerged as an ethnographic museum from the city's Handelsgeographisches Museum through the efforts of Karl von Linden in the late nineteenth century. In 1911, the Linden Museum officially opened its doors.
48 Higher classes of such orders were carried around the neck, leading to the metaphorical ailment of suffering from Halsschmerzen (or a ‘sore throat’). Karl von Linden alluded to this ‘sickness’ in a letter to his counterpart Karl Weule in Leipzig: ‘Obviously my blue eyes alone won't incite any potential donor to relinquish his collection to our museum; alas I soon discovered the proper cure for buttonhole illnesses, and even if I cannot assume, much like the blessed Aesculapius, a guarantee for my treatment, it is safe to say that as far as I remember most of the patients have left my clinic in good health.’ Karl von Linden to Karl Weule, 25 July 1903, LiMSt, Leipzig Museum file.
49 Franz Boluminski to Karl von Linden, 24 January 1904, LiMSt, Boluminski file.
50 On malagan and uli consult Louise Lincoln (ed.), Assemblage of Spirits, New York: Georg Baziller, 1987; and Beaulieu, op. cit. (38). Current researchers estimate that 15,000 malagan carvings were extracted out of German New Guinea, which contrasts greatly with the number of a little over 250 uli figures.
51 Edgar Walden, diary entry, 3 December 1907, SMB PK, MV, IB 71/E 888/08.
52 Felix von Luschan to Edgar Walden, 29 May 1908, SMB PK, MV, IB 71/E 1136/08.
53 Felix von Luschan to Arno Senfft, 6 August 1898, SMB PK, MV, IB Australien/E 779/98.
54 Arno Senfft to Karl von Linden, 8 December 1904, LiMSt, Senfft File.
55 Karl von Linden to Arno Senfft, 15 June 1904, LiMSt, Senfft file.
56 Arno Senfft to Felix von Luschan, 14 April 1901, SB-PK, LuP, Senfft file.
57 For such phenomena among malagan carvings consult Michael Gunn, ‘Taxonomic structure and typology in the Malagan ritual art tradition of Tabar, New Ireland’, in Barry Craig, Bernie Kernot and Christopher Anderson (eds.), Art and Performance in Oceania, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999, pp. 154–72.
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60 On the fate of Wuvulu and Aua consult Buschmann, op. cit. (6), pp. 41–7, 122–6.
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64 Fleeting observations of such ship collection spectacle can be found in works penned by visitors to German New Guinea. See, for instance, Jacques, Norbert, Südsee: Ein Reisetagebuch, Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1922, p. 142Google Scholar; Lily, and Rechinger, Karl, Streifzüge in Deutsch Neuguinea und auf den Salomonen Inseln: Eine botanische Forschungsreise, Berlin: Reimer, 1908, pp. 43–5Google Scholar; Pullen-Burry, B., In a German Colony; Or Four Weeks in New Britain, London: Methuen & Co., 1909, p. 36Google Scholar.
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66 The newspaper Hamburger Nachrichten, 4 April 1909, picked up on the Globus article and sensationalized the small, buried piece of information into a contribution headed ‘South Sea Islanders as art forgers’.
67 Küchler, Susanne, ‘Sacrificial economy and its objects: rethinking colonial collections in Oceania’, Journal of Material Culture (1997) 2(1), pp. 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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70 Vicky Barnecutt, personal communication, 8 February 2021.
71 Consult, for instance, Rebekka Habermas und Ulrike Lindner, ‘Rückgabe und Mehr: Die Restitutionsdebatte über Werke aus Kolonialbesitz greift zu kurz. Sie verkennen die Chance, die diese Objekte für eine gemeinsame globale Geschichtspolitik bieten’, Die Zeit, 13 December 2018, 19.