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

Abstract

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]