European Society for Oceanists 2015 Conference

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Session Detail (parallel)

The German anthropological tradition in the Pacific

Coordinator(s)

John Morton, Anna Kenny, Nicolas Peterson

Session presentation

German ethnography of Pacific peoples might be said to have begun with the 1777 publication of Georg Forster’s account of his journey with Captain Cook, A Voyage Round the World - a work which symptomatically reached more readers in its later German translation Reise um die Welt than it did in the original English. Cosmopolitan in outlook, Forster’s ethnography paralleled Johann Gottlieb Herder’s founding of cultural particularism, and both these men were major influences on the Humboldt brothers, Adolf Bastian and others who established the intellectual traditions that shaped the thoughts of Franz Boas and his influential students in America.

In spite of the profound effect of the German ethnographic tradition on the development of modern anthropology, the work of German ethnographers of Pacific life is often not well known in the dominant world of Anglophone anthropological scholarship. Even when German ethnographies are relatively well recognised, they are sometimes not extensively read. For example, Carl Strehlow’s seven-volume magnum opus, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907-1920), remains unavailable in English to this day, while other work on Pacific peoples by German missionaries such Karl Schmidt, J. G. Reuter or Christian Keysser and anthropologists such as Richard Thurnwald, Ernst Vatter, Andreas Lommel, E.A. Worms, Helmut Petri and C. G. von Brandenstein has arguably been similarly marginalised for one reason or another. On the other hand, better known contributions by the likes of T. G. H. Strehlow, who wrote in English, have certainly borne the stamp of their Germanic roots.

For this session we are seeking papers that identify and assess the German ethnological tradition’s contribution to the ethnography of Pacific societies and cultures. A broad range of questions might be broached. What lesser known Germanic ethnographies exist in the domains of Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian and Aboriginal studies and what has contributed to their relative obscurity? What have been the long-term effects of German ethnography on the anthropology of Pacific life-worlds? What have been the implications of this ethnography for the development of contemporary Pacific identities? Does contemporary German ethnography continue to bear the traces of its own Geist, or has it completely forsaken its roots to engage more widely with dominant Anglophone traditions? We welcome contributions on all these matters and more, so long as papers retain a basic focus on ethnographic case studies, both past and present.

Paper submissions are closed

Accepted papers

Uncertain Currents: German Ethnographic Perspectives on the 18th- and 19th-Century Pacific

Rainer F. Buschmann (California State University Channel Islands)

Even before the tardy unification of their nation, German notables demonstrated a lively interest in the newly encountered worlds located in the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean. While no single monograph dedicated to this German Pacific sentiment exists, numerous articles have outlined this German intellectual history. This intellectual trajectory moves from the seminal voyage of the Forsters accompanying James Cook on his second circumnavigation to Chamisso's romantic musings on a Russian mission. The dominant Anglo-French visions of the eighteenth-century Pacific have frequently incorporated the writings of these individuals. While such narratives are not entirely incorrect, they frequently overlook countercurrents and political reversals that speak to different European renditions of this ocean. In particular, few scholars incorporate Alexander von Humboldt, who never ventured to the region, and his rather negative perception of the Pacific in their considerations. In my presentation, I endeavor to incorporate excluded ancestors into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German ethnographic considerations of the Pacific. This paper is part of a larger project that seeks to understand the interplay between German identity and colonial ideas against the backdrop of the island worlds comprising the Pacific Ocean.

Enemy Professors: Australia, Germany, anthropology, and the Great War

Shawn C. Rowlands (American Museum of Natural History)

Erin Alexa Freedman (American Museum of Natural History)

As hostilities began to manifest in Europe in 1914, a delegation of important German anthropologists attended the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Sydney. The commencement of the Great War bolstered Australia’s international self-confidence, yet rabid nationalism intersected with the discipline of anthropology in Australia and the nearby Pacific to create a climate of suspicion which saw the rejection of German ethnographers. 1914 coincides with both Australia’s support of the Empire in the Great War, as well as this meeting of the British Association, and the consequent Australian Aboriginal Life diorama at the Queensland Museum—which was to be the dominant museum depiction of indigenous people in the country for seventy years. This paper will explore the links between the Great War, the display of indigenous culture in the context of a major Australian museum, and the paralyzing effect of patriotism on the reception of international anthropology in the Commonwealth. Owing to hostility to Germany, the field of anthropology was subjected to a perversion of perspective which stifled discourse and saw local and British anthropologists dominate the disciplinary narrative. With a particular focus on Emma and Felix von Luschan, this paper will also investigate the innovative fieldwork of some German ethnographers, and how and why these have remained in relative obscurity since.

Shadows of a father, an evaluation of TGH Strehlow’s anthropological work

Anna Kenny (Australian National University)

TGH Strehlow (1908-1978) was one of the most controversial figures in Australian anthropology. He grew up on the central Australian frontier as a multilingual, speaking German, English and Aranda, an Aboriginal language. This gave a depth and ethnographic authority to his writings, especially his work on Aranda people’s language, songs and symbolism, as published in his magnum opus, Songs of Central Australia (1971). Despite the respect for his work, it has not had a great impact. His father Carl Strehlow (1871-1922) also had deep ethnographic interests in Aboriginal songs, cosmology and social life, which he published in his 7 volume work, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Staemme in Zentral-Australien (1907-1920). This immensely rich corpus is known, but not read in the Anglophone world because it is in German, Aranda and Loritja. Carl also created an Aranda-German-Loritja dictionary with circa 8000 entries that sat unpublished on TGH Strehlow's desk throughout his academic career. Carl Strehlow's work was of unimaginable value to TGH Strehlow. He could not have achieved what he did without the groundbreaking work of his father that was deeply influenced by the German anthropological tradition of the turn of the century. The shadows cast by the father's work over the son's remains a central unexamined question about TGH Strehlow's work and life in Australia. This paper investigates their contribution to central Australian anthropology, which has been of great relevance in the context of land and native title claims in Australia.

Oedipal Tales from Central Australian Anthropology: Sigmund Freud, Géza Róheim and the Strehlows

John Morton (La Trobe University)

Psychoanalysis has its origins in Germanic thought and was for a long time attractive to certain schools of American cultural anthropology that had similar geographic roots. In Australia, where anthropology's emergence and consolidation in the twentieth century were more conditioned by Anglo(-French) influences, Germanic traditions of scholarship, although present, tended to be more muted. In this paper, I look at the ethnography of Aboriginal Central Australia as it was constructed by three scholars who were, in various ways, heavily conditioned by psychoanalysis and/or Germanic notions of culture – Carl Strehlow (1871-1922), Géza Róheim (1891-1953) and Carl's son, TGH ('Ted') Strehlow (1908-1978). Each of these ethnographers, although influential in certain contexts, was in one way or another marginalised in Australian anthropology, and there are a number of cross-currents in their biographies and respective oeuvres that go some way in explaining that general situation. These cross-currents cohere around Germanic notions of 'mind' and the role of myths, legends and histories in the characterisation of Aboriginal ways of life. Here I particularly concentrate on the explicit or implicit presence of 'oedipal' narratives in the life and work of Róheim and the Strehlows, how these can be traced back to Freud, and how they came to be articulated with ethnographic accounts of the Aboriginal peoples of Central Australia.

Ronald Berndt and the German ethnographic tradition

Nicolas Peterson (Australian National University)

Although Ronald Berndt (1916-1990) trained under Elkin at the University of Sydney it is clear that his upbringing in Adelaide and early connections to the South Australian Museum as volunteer and associate, inculcated a concern with religion, mythology and the collection of interlinear texts that was surely inherited from the German tradition. In this paper I will explore the ways in which his work shows links to this tradition and how this has made it problematic for those in the social anthropological tradition to fully appreciate his truly exceptional contribution to Australian ethnography and anthropology.

On the limits of universal knowledge. Is Aboriginal “Law”, Gesetz, Recht or Pflicht?

Thomas Widlok (University of Cologne)

Participants of this panel, together with the Association that organizes the conference and the research consortium ECOPAS that is funded by the EU, all assume that there are specific forms of regional expertise in research and, arguably, that there is some value in maintaining distinct “research traditions”. This paper investigates what the basis of such an assumption is, taking German research in Aboriginal Australia as a point of departure. The first part of the paper looks at some of “the usual suspects” for generating specific research traditions, namely historical circumstances (national colonial policies, the war(s), German division after the war), institutional dynamics (the German university and research funding system), the spread of self-proclaimed “schools” (Diffusionism, Marxism) and the role of social networks (exclusion by others, gatekeepers). In the second part I discuss aspects which may have a more fundamental and more lasting impact on research and understanding, i.e. aspects that have to do with language and cognition. Taking inspiration from the work of Anna Wierzbicka I look at some of the key terms employed by German-speaking ethnographers and their English-speaking counterparts. I argue that the deep biases in research (Anglophone or other) only become visible in such a comparative perspective.

Not by Blood, but some Iron: Otto Finsch’s ethnographic imperialism in Oceania and the ways of indigenous resistance

Shawn C. Rowlands (American Museum of Natural History)

Sergio Jarillo (American Museum of Natural History)

The active role of Otto Finsch in the colonial expansion of Germany in the South Pacific in the late nineteenth century is well documented. Initially a naturalist with wide interests ranging from ornithology to botany, Finsch’s surveys demonstrate some of the links between scientific knowledge, exploration, and transcultural encounters in the German colonial enterprise. Yet, despite being instrumental in the creation of a German protectorate in the island of New Guinea, Finsch’s accounts and collecting practices are witness to his genuine interest in the cultural aspects of native populations. Finsch’s pro-imperialist sentiments belied his views on race which were against then-prevailing anthropological attitudes. His documenting of local material culture and indigenous ways of life denotes a particular sensibility to human difference and commonality in non-evolutionary terms. The fact that many of Finsch’s objects were acquired by Franz Boas for the American Museum of Natural History also indicates the relationship of his collection to the broader world of colonial anthropology.
Using Finsch’s significant Pacific collections at Museum as material evidence, this paper will examine the dialectic tensions between acculturation and resistance that pertain to colonial encounters. In particular, the paper analyses a series of objects that incorporate European/Western elements, either materially or conceptually. These objects are not simply the product of colonial misery or signifiers of the cultural submission to a foreign alterity. Instead, these mimetic objects represent an effort of appropriation aimed at incorporating that alterity within an enduring partnership, as well as an embodiment of indigenous resistance and agency.

Werner von Bulow (1848-1913): Towards a nineteenth century Samoan worldview

I'u Tuagalu (Auckland University of Technology)

Werner von Bulow came to Samoa in 1881, having fought with distinction in the Franco-Prussian War, and he died in Samoa in 1913, on the eve of the First World War. He became known as a European expert in Samoan culture through his ethnographical enquiries. Indeed, von Bulow was very sympathetic towards the native Samoan, and ambivalent towards other Europeans: he became closely associated with Mata'afa Iosefo, one of the contenders in the Samoan internecine conflicts to determine a Samoan King. He even served as an advisor to Mata'faa after the annexation of Samoa by Germany in 1900, when the Kingship was abolished and Mata'afa Iosefo was appointed Alii Sili (Paramount Samoan Chief), in spite of being highly critical of the German Administration. However, he is best remembered for his ethnographic writings, which predate Augustin Kramer's Die Samoa Inseln (1902-3). Kramer cites and uses him as an informant. Von Bulow's ethnographic interest was to express and examine "die Anschauungen der Eingeborenen" and to separate the historical accretions and foreign impositions on Samoan culture and belief system, so as to express older cultural forms; or as von Bulow puts it "die Spreu ist vom Weizen schwer zu scheiden" (a). To this end, his ethnographic writings examine Samoan myth and folktale, Chiefly genealogies, Samoan social structure, ancestor worship, totems, ancient religion and social custom. Von Bulow's articles are written in German and belong to the tradition of 'salvage' ethnography (b) and this may explain why they are not widely used by Anglophone writers. This paper aims to firstly, flesh out biographical data of his life in nineteenth century Samoa, and secondly, examine the insights that Von Bulow offers in his exploration of the Samoan worldview. References: a, Bulow, W. (1897). Samoaner Schopfungssage und Urgeschichte. Globus, 71, 375-379. p. 379; b, Steinmetz, G. (2004). The uncontrollable afterlives of ethnography: Lessons from 'salvage colonialism' in the German overseas empire. Ethnography, 5(3), 251-288, p. 64

Karl von den Steinen, a Polynesian Myth

Michael J. Koch (Taku‘ua Service)

This paper deals with the role of German Voelkerkundler Karl von den Steinen (1855-1929), the lasting effects of his published works on the various indigenous claims in contemporary French Polynesia and the so called ‘renaissance culturel’ in the remote archipelago Tehenua'enana, generally known as Marquesas Islands. The paper treats the use of non-indigenous ethnographic sources, their advantages and limits in questions of authenticity and indigeneity, as well as their use in cultural and political claims.

1879 Karl von den Steinen set out for a voyage around the world with the intention to study psychiatric wards in many regions, including Oceania. During a stay in Honolulu he accidentally met Adolf Bastian (1826-1905), the founding father of modern German Voelkerkunde. Shortly after this meeting von den Steinen stayed in Samoa collecting objects for the museum in Berlin - his first longer contact with indigenous people in the Pacific. Seventeen years later, after two further expeditions, he began a long fieldtrip to the Marquesas with the intention to fill an important gap in the collection of the Berlin museum. During his stay he also collected myths and oral history, convinced that one could not decipher material culture without these stories. His work Die Marquesaner und ihre Kunst was published in 1925-1928.

Postwar decolonization in the Pacific creates new movements, claiming indigenous self-determination and political as well as cultural identity. In French Polynesia, indigenous claims are strongly connected with the anti-nuclear movement and the struggle for independence from France. Indigenous people, in search for arguments to underline their claims in a heavily westernized society start using written sources which they find in libraries, museums and research institutions. What becomes Ancient Tahiti Society for Tahiti, will be Die Marquesaner und ihre Kunst for the Marquesas. Its precise illustrations of artwork, including of the art of patu tiki, forbidden for decades, has been revived all over French Polynesia. A whole new arts-industry has developed and many contemporary artists use von den Steinen’s work as source of inspiration. But while the images are omnipresent in French Polynesia, von den Steinen’s work on the oral traditions and the meanings of indigenous culture remain largely unknown.

Melanesian encounters, Richard Thurnwald and modern Ethnography

Marion Melk-Koch (Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen)

Richard Thurnwald (1869 - 1954) was one of the most prolific and possibly influential social scientists. More than 500 publications on a wide variety of questions concerning all areas of human societies and their organization, thousands of photographs and ethnographic objects from two of his journeys to the Pacific in the early 20th century, and manuscripts and field notes scattered over three continents are the testimonies of his lifelong interest in social structures and how they develop and change. Research among people in New Guinea for the most part unaffected by European/American influences was for him the ideal situation through which to answer questions about the specific impact which social structures have on the psyche of individuals and vice versa. He wrote and published one of the very first monographs on a Melanesian group. It mirrors the complexity of their culture and puts it in the context of European intellectual history. Thurnwald's substantial work nowadays seems to be recognized only by very few scholars, but his ideas and research in the field of ethno-sociology, economic anthropology, ethno-psychology, and legal anthropology were groundbreaking. His appreciation of the literary qualities of songs and poems in his two volume Buin publication shows his deep insight into Melanesian thinking. This paper deals not only with the reception of Thurnwald's work, but also with the influence Melanesian people had on the insights and ideas of one of the founders of modern ethno-sociology.