Baessler-Archiv – Kulturen und Künste der Welt

Titelei

Die Redaktion — 2023-01-18

Inhalt

Die Redaktion — 2023-01-18

La relación entre la comunidad Rapanui (Isla de Pascua) y el Estado chileno – Oportunidades y límites del proceso constituyente en Chile

Lena Steffens — 2023-01-18

In 1888, the Polynesian island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) was annexed by the Chilean state. Since then, the Rapanui community has been in a constant process of negotiation with the Chilean state. Central demands are self-determination and self-government, especially in relation to the territory and cultural identity of the Rapanui. This negotiation is gaining relevance and momentum in the context of the current constitutional process in Chile, which was set in motion by the social movement in October 2019 and the demand for profound sociopolitical reforms. The purpose of this article is to discuss the possibilities and limits of a new constitution with regard to the demands of the Rapanui community, taking into account the role of indigenous communities in Chile in general and in the ongoing constitutional process.

[Rapa Nui, constitutional process Chile, indigenous rights]

Schliemanns Welten – Ein Beitrag der Sammlung Ost- und Nordasien zur Schliemann-Ausstellung in der James-Simon-Galerie 2022

Henriette Lavaulx-Vrécourt — 2023-02-01

In:complete. Zerstört – Zerteilt – Ergänzt

Emma Shu-Hui Lin — 2023-02-01

Die Rolle der ethnologischen Sammlungen für Friedensdialoge im Humboldt Forum

Manfred Rettig — 2023-03-01

Experiencing handling sessions at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin: The perspective and reflection of a collection manager

Myriam Perrot — 2023-02-15

Museumskonferenz in Rio de Janeiro

Lena Steffens — 2023-02-01

Second World Music: Latin America, East Germany, and the Sonic Circuitry of Socialism

Sydney Hutchinson — 2023-02-08

Forschungsprojekte: Überblick

Die Redaktion — 2023-02-08

Autorinnen und Autoren/Authors

Die Redaktion — 2023-02-08

Instructions for Contributors

Die Redaktion — 2023-02-08

Das indianische Lederzelt im Ethnologischen Museum Berlin – Provenienz, Interpretation und Präsentation des populärsten Objektes der Berliner Nordamerika-Sammlung

Peter Bolz — 2023-02-15

The Berlin “leather tent” (hide tipi) is the most popular object in the North American section of Berlin’s Ethnological Museum. Collected around 1840 by Friedrich Köhler, valet of the French ambassador in Washington, DC, the tipi was acquired by Berlin’s Royal Museums in 1845 as part of his larger collection from North America and Hawaii. The especially richly painted cover of the tipi and its rather small size caused all kinds of interpretations and speculations about its possible religious significance. Frederick Weygold, a German-American artist who had studied the Sioux language and culture, interpreted it in 1903 as being connected to the mythical figure of White Buffalo Calf Woman of the Lakota-Sioux. Since the central design on the back of the tipi shows a Peace Pipe or Calumet, most curators were convinced that the tipi was meant as a shelter for keeping a Sacred Pipe Bundle. This article tells the story of the various interpretations of the tipi and how it was presented in the different museum locations since 1845. The author also challenges the interpretation as a sacred structure as Eurocentric and argues that the tipi has to be seen in a complete different light. Besides this, the history of the tipi also reflects the history of the museum in general and can be seen as a symbol of its eventful development from the middle of the 19th century until today.

[Painted Tipis, Plains Indian art, Frederick Weygold, White Buffalo Calf Woman, Sacred Pipe, museum history, object history, history of conservation]

Quellen zu Erwerbungen aus Südasien – Die Reisetagebücher von Ernst und Rose Waldschmidt 1932–34

Uta Schröder — 2023-01-18

At the beginning of the 1930s, Ernst Waldschmidt and his wife Rose set off on a two-year acquisition trip to Sri Lanka and India on behalf of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde. Since then, more than 400 mainly decorative art objects and textiles have expanded the Indian department of the museum. During this time, the Waldschmidts kept a detailed work diary, which is preserved together with letters and other archive material at the Asian Art Museum Berlin, as a unique source for researching the underlying ambitions and the acquisitions themselves. The aim of the article is to present these documents and to give access to some of the acquisition contexts of the Waldschmidt Collection to the public. Due to the size of the collection, the essay concentrates on the exhibited objects of the Asian Art Museum Berlin, revealing dealer contacts and acquisition strategies and trying to show the difficulties that arise while researching the provenances of larger collections.

[Ernst Waldschmidt, India, provenance, acquisition, Asian Art Museum]

How Arthur Baessler stole human remains from New Zealand

Sarah Fründt — 2023-01-18

In April 2019, ancestral remains of 109 individuals from several Berlin collections were repatriated to Aotearoa / New Zealand. This followed a request by the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa from 2010, addressed to the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, custodian of these collections at the time. The handover was preceded by our interdisciplinary and collaborative provenance research. The main goal of this research was to confirm that the remains in question were really from New Zealand, but also to shed more light on the context of acquisition. This article focuses on Berlin collector Arthur Baessler (1859–1907) who had acquired the majority of these remains when travelling to New Zealand in 1896/1897. We combine historical and anthropological investigation to clarify the provenance of the remains and to show how European collectors used the specific conditions in the colonies to collect the remains of Indigenous peoples. Our results are meant to support further research: more generally, when our findings on Baessler may be linked with other comparable collection activities in Germany and/or in the Pacific region, and more specifically to enable more local research in New Zealand to establish the right place and people for the remains to return to.

[Human Remains, New Zealand, Baessler, Provenance, Restitution]

Die Tonbandsammlung Koch aus Kiribati – Entstehungszusammenhänge, Wirkmächte und Repräsentationen

Wolfgang Kempf — 2023-01-18

The focus of this study is the historical exploration of a collection of audio documents with songs and dance chants from the Gilbert Archipelago in the Central Pacific. It is primarily concerned with the conditions under which the tape collection was assembled by the museum anthropologist Gerd Koch and his wife as part of their wide-ranging written, visual, material, and acoustic documentation of the culture and way of life on the atolls of Tabiteuea, Nonouti, and Onotoa during 1963/64. The conceptualization of the tape collection as an assemblage aims to bring the heterogeneous association of actors involved and their distributed agency into analytical focus. Here, a reconstruction of the influence of local actors from the respective island societies is of particular importance. The investigation of the contexts of emergence and efficacy specifies the possibilities and limitations that have shaped this archival tape collection in its present form. Koch’s representations, in turn, make clear his ambivalence towards the collection and point out why a comprehensive publication of the songs and dance chants was ultimately never realized.

[Keywords: Assemblage, archival tape collection, fieldwork, distributed agency.]