Exploring the Archive: Historical Photography from Latin America. The Collection of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin 9783412218423, 9783412224158

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EXPLORING THE ARCHIVE Historical Photography from Latin America The Collection of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin

For the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, edited by Manuela Fischer and Michael Kraus

Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar Wien · 2015

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Cataloging-in-publication data: http://portal.dnb.de Cover illustrations: upside left to downside right ∙ Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. ∙ The back of a carte de visite with the words “R. Castillo. Fotografia inalterable. Lima.” Photographer: R. Castillo, before 1890. ∙ “Pyramid of the Magician”, Uxmal, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1893. ∙ Zapotecan woman in traditional costume. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1876. ∙ Guató in a dugout canoe on the River Caracara, Brazil. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1910. ∙ Kutoĩbá with two dance masks. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 10 January 1909. Frontflap: Pulque transport, Mexico. Photographer: unknown. ∙ Kutoĩbá with two dance masks. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 10 January 1909. ∙ “Pyramid of the Magician”, Uxmal, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1893. Backflap: Popunha-palm and a man, probably the photographer Albert Frisch. ∙ Umotina Kodonepa in a dugout canoe. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1928. ∙ Palace of the Columns in Mitla, Mexico. ∙ Cooking pots and an Awetí grave, Kuliseu River, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. ∙ Pyramids of Mocce, Peru. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, October 1899.

© 2015 by Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie, Köln Weimar Wien Ursulaplatz 1, D-50668 Köln, www.boehlau-verlag.com © 2015 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, www.smb.museum All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Proofreading: Claudia Holtermann, Bonn Reproduction: Satz + Layout Werkstatt Kluth, Erftstadt Typesetting: synpannier. Gestaltung & Wissenschaftskommunikation, Bielefeld Printing and binding: Finidr, Cesky Tesin Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper Printed in the EU ISBN 978-3-412-22415-8

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Contents

Foreword  ......................................................................................................

7

MICHAEL KRAUS

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction  ...............................................................

9

HORST JUNKER

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection  ...........................................................................49 KERSTIN BARTELS

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material  .... 69 PASCAL RIVIALE

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century  . . .........................................................................89 STEFANIE GÄNGER

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo (1870s – 1890s)  .........................................109 MARGRIT PRUSSAT

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait  ..............129 HINNERK ONKEN

Postcards from Latin America  . . .........................................................................151 FRANK STEPHAN KOHL

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology  ...............175 ANDREAS VALENTIN

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection  .......................................................193

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Inhalt

PAUL HEMPEL

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 –  88  .....................................................................209 MICHAEL KRAUS

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil  .....................................................................245 FEDERICO BOSSERT AND DIEGO VILLAR

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso  ............................................................................281 ADRIANA MUÑOZ

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg. The exchange of photographs in the beginning of the twentieth century between Gothenburg and Berlin  ................299 MANUELA FISCHER

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay  ...........................................319 INGRID KUMMELS

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s. The Tarahumara (Rarámuri) in the photography of the sports reporter Arthur E. Grix  .... 339 FRANZ THIEL

Abel Briquet’s Photograph Collection  .................................................................361 CLAUDINE LEYSINGER

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making  . . ......................................................367 HEIKO PRÜMERS

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology  .............................................................387 Index of Peoples  . . ...........................................................................................411 Index of Persons  ............................................................................................413 About the authors  . . .........................................................................................421

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Foreword

This volume, entitled Exploring the Archive. Historical Photography from Latin America. opens up a further valuable part of the historical archive of photography held by the Ethnologisches Museum to researchers and readers interested in photography or Latin America. The book presents the results of scientific research into the background and the origin of the images held in the collection, the contexts in which they were produced and the ways in which they have been used; aspects that continue to affect the ima­ ges until the present day. This approach also promises to inform the reader about the numerous challenges that currently confront people responsible for the care of historical collections of photographs. The publication was triggered by a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft research project that enabled extensive research to be conducted and the 6,500 historical prints of Latin America to be digitised, which deepened the study of the collec­ tion. The exhibition entitled Fotografien berühren (touching photography), which was organised by Humboldt Lab Dahlem and was on show at the Ethnologisches Museum between 2013 and 2014, also resulted from the study and analysis of this collection. It experimented with novel media-based forms of communication and provided visitors with new ways of accessing old photographs by forgoing the presentation of historical original prints in favour of the construction of an actively designable archival situation. The historical archive of photography held by the Ethnologisches Museum has always been held in high regard, and this certainly becomes clear from this ­volume. Various successful photographic exhibitions have reiterated this point, and the same can be said, for example, of the catalogues Das Koloniale Auge – Frühe Porträtfotografie in Indien (The Colonial Eye – Early Portrait Photography in India), which was published in 2012 and Myanmar im Spiegel der historischen Fotografie published in 2014. It was only recently, however, that the photographic and film archive held by the Ethnologisches Museum was assigned its own department: the department for ‘visual anthropology’. Nevertheless, in the future, both the photographic and the audio collection are certain to become the focus of even more consideration as part of the Humboldt-Forum, the future domicile of the Ethnologisches Museum in the centre of Berlin.

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Foreword

This volume, with its diverse approaches to studying the museum’s historical images from Latin America, certainly contributes towards ensuring that the analysis of many of the as yet undiscovered treasures held by the department for visual anthropology will continue to be received with great interest, and makes these images more accessible to the public. Viola König Director of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, January 2015

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MICHAEL KRAUS

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

Photography has played an important role in anthropology and archaeology since its inception.1 The reproducibility of pictures and their circulation through diverse networks have resulted in the fact that multiple copies of many images exist and these can be found in different locations. Each location leaves traces on the images it conserves that need to be considered when reconstructing the histories and meanings of photographs. Current approaches to the epistemological status of historical docu­ ments no longer assume that documents provide a “representation of the past, but that they code the historical.”2 Accordingly, any analysis of archival materials must mediate between the visible and the hidden without losing sight of the function of the archive, in other words the institution that holds the object under study. This book is about historical photographs from Latin America held by the Ethnolo­ gisches Museum in Berlin. The contributions to this volume provide interpretations of the different motifs contained within these images and they retrace the contexts from which the images emerged. They also highlight many of the specific forms of indexing that have been applied and a variety of the settings in which these images were used. Thus, they interlink the varied developments, contexts and levels of meaning that have been associated with the images since their creation. These complex and sometimes contradictory relations have been clear since the early days of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde (today Ethnologisches Museum). Its founding director, Adolf Bastian, aimed to establish a “universal archive of huma­ nity”3 in which artefacts that had been collected for comparative research were to be categorised geographically and displayed side-by-side. At the beginning, the museum was conceptualised as a repository of the cultural memory of the peoples of the world. However, the sheer size of the collections arriving at the museum soon proved to be unmanageable and thus demonstrated the impossibility of fulfilling this aim. This led critical voices to demand new forms of handling and presenting the museum’s collection.4 From its very beginnings, the museum’s collection incorporated significantly more than a portfolio of ethnographic artefacts. By 1876, Bastian had already provided the museum with its first photographs from the Americas. These were images of archaeological objects from the Antilles, which he had probably been given during his travels in 1875 and 1876 (Fig. 1).5

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Michael Kraus

1 The first entry in the inventory of photographs from the Americas in the black and white positive catalogue. EMB, VIII E.

The museum also collected phonographic recordings 6 and built up an extensive library. It also archived its correspondence with dealers, collectors, individuals and researchers and this has led the museum to collect a considerable quantity of inter­ linked and complementary sources. In particular, documents and reports about ex­ peditions initiated by the museum form a valuable basis with which to interpret the museum’s collections. Two snapshots of particular moments in time illustrate how images were also ­affected by the contrast between academic interest and overcrowding, and theoretical ideas and practical needs. In 1914, Richard Neuhauss, the curator of the photographic collection belonging to the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Ur­ geschichte (BGAEU)7 stated that a new employee had begun opening old cabinets and boxes; it seems that this had not been done for a while. Doing so, however, led to the

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

rediscovery of “mountains of images”8 including more than 2,000 negatives, which were then integrated into the BGAEU’s existing collection. Neuhauss’ comments clearly demonstrate both the early value that was placed on images, which were acquired in large quantities, and the neglect of photography or rather the difficulty of adequately storing and indexing the existing holdings with contemporary resources. The changing status of photographs and their transferal from one system of catego­ risation to another within the museum is illustrated by a note written on an envelope contained within a file about the acquisition of collections from the Americas. In 1927, Werner Hopp offered the Museum für Völkerkunde a number of Colombian artefacts for sale and sent the museum photographs of his objects. He also proposed making further acquisitions for the museum during a trip to the Pacific Coast. In return, Hopp ordered photographic materials from Leisegang, a company specialised in photographic equipment, at the expense of the museum. At first, Hopp’s photographs remained attached to his letters. It was not until 7 May 1938 that this was to change: Emil Heinrich Snethlage made a note on the envelope enclosing the images stating that they had been “moved to the photographic archive”.9 This marked a turning point: until then Hopp’s images had formed part of his correspondence, however, they were now treated as independent artefacts and as such were incorporated into the archive specifically intended to hold this form of media (Fig. 2). The ambivalences and ambiguities associated with interpretations of pictorial mo­ tifs and the contexts in which historical photographs have been produced and used also apply to the archiving of the material products of photography. Their manner of utilisation, but also the status ascribed to photographs depends on shifting per­ sonal, scientific and political interests, fashions and demands, as well as on varying levels of human resources and financing. In the case of the Ethnologisches Museum, this point is reflected in the different forms of processing that the images have been subjected to, but also in their neglect during certain periods. It is also clear from the institution’s policy of acquisition: although some acquisitions were planned, more often than not the museum’s acquisition policy was dominated by sheer coincidence. This has resulted in heterogeneity of formats and motifs, but also in documentation that occasionally provides very little insightful information about the images and the way in which they have been used during the collection’s history. Furthermore, it is also reflected in the lack of commitment to appropriate forms of conservation that has characterised some periods. Despite intermittent attempts to categorise and standardise a collection if there is one description that cannot be applied to the photo­graphic archives of ethno­logical museums it is homogeneity. In her seminal book Raw histories, Elizabeth Edwards summarised this point highlighting not only

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2 Correspondence with W. Hopp and Leisegang. On the envelope, Snethlage noted that the images had been added to the photographic archive. Photographer: Peter Jacob, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 42. 1 Pars I B, E 326/1927.

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

the “universalising desire”, but also “the differentiated, and sometimes fortuitous, nature of ‘The Archive’ as a series of micro-intentions”.10 The contributions to this volume seek to trace these “micro-intentions” by providing diverse examples of image production, acquisition and usage, and wherever historical evidence exists, link these examples to further developments and interests. In doing so, this volume focuses on a selection of the collections belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin: its historical positive prints from Latin America.11

Formation of the Archive The collection of photographs presented in this volume originates from two distinct but closely connected sources and institutions: the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (BGAEU), which was founded in 1869, and the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, founded in 1873. The BGAEU aimed to study: the physical evolution and culture-historical development of mankind in the different geographical regions of the earth and throughout different periods in time, using empirical inductive methods and an interdisciplinary, absolute approach to research. Furthermore, the BGAEU had a formative effect upon the scientific climate in Berlin of the 19th and early 20th centuries with its personal connections to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University [today ­Humboldt-Universität], the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences [today Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissen­schaften], and other scientific societies and museums. In particular, the Society furthered museums in Berlin, through its relations with patrons interested in the arts and culture, to the Prussian Ministry of Culture, and its far-reaching collecting activities of archaeo­logical, anthropological and ethnographical objects.12

The founding members of the BGAEU included Rudolf Virchow, but also Adolf ­Bastian, who was to become the first director of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde. Both the BGAEU and the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde recorded their acquisitions of photographs in inventory books. As the institutions used different inventory numbers, it is still possible to differentiate between the two collections today.13 By 1873, the founding year of the museum, the BGAEU had already com­ piled a photographic collection consisting of 510 images. In 1888, two years after the official opening of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde’s new building, the BGAEU became spatially linked to the museum by moving into rented offices in the museum’s building. By that time, the BGAEU’s collection had grown to 4,049 images.

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An early indicator of the importance that the BGAEU attributed to photography is that the institution appointed a member to attend to its photographic collection. Furthermore, the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, which were published as an appendix to the annual Zeitschrift für Ethnologie and contained scientific articles as well as the minutes of the BGAEU’s meetings, regularly listed new acquisitions and statistics on the photography col­ lection. After World War II, large parts of the BGAEU’s collection were integrated into those of the Museum für Völkerkunde.14

Acquisitions In both institutions, collecting photographs as a general concern was ultimately up against a policy of acquisition led by coincidence, opportunity, and fluctuating levels of personal commitment, interest and levels of funding. This has led the collection to consist of an assortment of what appear to have been rather casually acquired individual images, but also donations and targeted acquisitions that were gained through purchase or exchange. In the late 19th century, it was not unusual to buy photographs during scientific expeditions. In his article Photographische Aufnahmen, which was published in 1875 in the influential volume Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen, Gustav Fritsch not only provided methodological, technical and thematic advice on photography, but also specifically recommended that photographs be acquired “extensively”15 while travelling in foreign countries. Fritsch argued that: “It is not necessary to be too rigorous in respect of the condition of the photographs; even copies of lightly defective plates should be acquired, in as far as they depict interesting details in sufficient clarity.”16 Thus, it should be hardly surprising that there are large differences in the quality of the collection’s documentation. In some cases, almost no information is available about a particular photograph. In general, however, information does at least exist about the ethnicity ascribed to the people in the images and the region in which the picture was taken. In addition, information also usually exists about the photographer, or at least the person who provided the image to the BGAEU or the museum. The 140 photographs and 27 postcards depicting indigenous people from diffe­ rent parts of South America sold to the museum by Paul Traeger in 1924 provide an example of a collection that in today’s terms is accompanied by comparatively poor documentation. The correspondence associated with these images is partly limited to indicating the ethnic group the people in the photographs were said to have belonged

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

3 “Baticola. Toldería in the forest of Itaquiry” (Mbyá), Paraguay. Photographer: unknown, before 1924. EMB, VIII E 4211 a.

to and the region in which the images were taken. Nevertheless, in some cases only a comment has been made on the ethnicity of the people in the photographs; in others there is nothing but a cursory reference to a modern nation-state.17 The date of the correspondence, at least, means that the images can be dated relatively to before 10 January 1924 (Fig. 3). In contrast, the images by Hans Heinrich Brüning that were acquired by the museum in 1927 are accompanied by better documentation. Brüning provided the museum with comparatively detailed lists of information about the motifs contained in the images, as well as the dates and the locations in which the photographs were taken. However, even in this case, these images were acquired on the initiative of the photographer; the museum merely accepted the offer it received (Fig. 4).18 The photographs taken during expeditions to South America that were made by researchers working for the museum or people associated and often funded by the institution represent special cases. It is not surprising that these images constitute the

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4 Extract from a list by Hans Heinrich Brüning providing information about images from Trujillo, Peru and surroundings. Photographer: Martin Franken, 2014. In Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 42. 1 Pars I B, E 627/1927.

largest batch in the collection. Moreover, in cases where these images were published during a photographer’s lifetime, they are certainly among the most well documented of the entire collection. Yet it is by no means a matter of course that these images form part of the museum’s collection. The museum’s financial contribution to expe­ ditions was compensated with ethnological artefacts. Photographs produced during the expeditions were usually owned by the photographers themselves and were used

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

5 Image of a clay pot from the Guillermo de Heredia collection. Seller: Wilhelm Bauer, before 1910. EMB, VIII E 5097.

for their own publications. This has led the Ethnologisches Museum, for example, to administer significant collections of ethnological artefacts, but very few photographs from the expeditions by Theodor Koch-Grünberg to the Upper Rio Negro or from Konrad Theodor Preuss’ expedition to Colombia. Some researchers, such as Paul Ehrenreich and Max Schmidt, actually gave prints to the museum free of charge, so it does retain extensive collections of such images. Koch-Grünberg mainly donated prints from his first, largely failed expedition to the Xingu River, which was conducted independently of the museum. In contrast, Wilhelm Kissenberth sold his images to the museum, despite the fact that his trip to the Araguaia River was one of the most expensive expeditions that the museum had funded until that time. Preuss’ collection was destroyed by bombing during World War II; that prints of unpublished images by Preuss still exist is due to their prior exchange with the museum in Gothenburg.19 That said, the primacy of the object over the image should not be understood as an unbreakable rule. In June 1897, Carl (Carlos) Holz offered to sell the museum a

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collection of  “Chilean antiquities” from Concepción and sent the museum a catalogue and photographs of his collection. However, the museum decided against acquiring the collection, and instead opted to purchase 46 of the photographs.20 Even 30 years later, photographs of artefacts were being acquired from Mexico (Fig. 5).21 Moreover, the museum also holds various images that were mainly circulated as visual aids to encourage the sale of specific collections.22

Order, rearrangements and digitalisation In 1888, almost 20 years after the BGAEU was founded, Maximilian Bartels began indexing its collection of images. The photographs had originally been stored in a cabinet containing five boxes of images categorised by continent. When there was no more space in a box, another was purchased, but no further sorting took place. After Bartels’ death, Richard Neuhauss took over the archive. He described the state of the collection in the following manner: Each of the boxes contained a wide variety of formats mixed up together, much to the detriment of the sensitive photographs. When I took over the collection in 1904, there were 23 of these boxes, and they were usually so full that numerous photographs fell out of them when they were opened. Repeated ransacking by unbidden hands meant that the original indexing system according to continent and country had been completely obscured.23

During Neuhauss’ first years in the post, 2,500 photographs were discovered “in a dusty corner of the library”; 2,000 of these were duplicates. The 500 remaining ima­ ges were integrated into the collection and the duplicates were exchanged for new photographs. Up to that point, it had been possible to borrow photographs as well as books, something that had not been particularly beneficial to the collection. This led the BGAEU’s board to decide that from then on work with the images and their reproduction by drawing or photography would only be permitted in the premises of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, where the collection was housed.24 Neuhauss’ find mentioned at the beginning of this introduction meant that the BGAEU also possessed an extensive collection of negatives. The 2,000 plates predomi­ nantly originated from Fedor Jagor’s first trip to India as well as from the estate of Carl Dammann, a photographer from Hamburg. Neuhauss removed around half of the plates due to heavy damage, but then added 1,220 plates from his own collection. A few dozen negatives from the estate of Paul Ehrenreich, who died in 1914, were also added to the collection at this time. Consequently, by 1914 the BGAEU was

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

6 The back of a carte de visite damaged after being removed from a card board. EMB, P 1407 B.

administering a collection of 2,363 negatives. A further 558 images from the portrait collection, which preserved the portraits of explorers, were listed separately.25 Neuhauss was concerned with preserving the images in the collection, and above all with improving possibilities to work with them. He particularly aimed to make it easier to compare images, while still providing the fullest possible information about the photographs; doing so meant it would no longer be necessary to undertake awkward searches of the inventory. In order to enhance the comparability of photographs, he glued the images onto standardised 33 × 42 cm cardboard. As some of the photographs had previously been glued onto card and could no longer be detached: the borders of the images were cut close to the edge of the actual photographic image and then glued together with similar images on large pieces of card. This cardboard was big enough

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7 Old archive boxes that were used to store photographs from the collection. Photographer: Martin Franken, 2014. for between 12 and 20 cartes de visite. On average, six cabinet cards could be glued onto the same cardboard; the larger images took up more space. In order to ensure that the photographs would stick to the cardboard, each one had to be held under a press for two hours.26

Although Neuhauss criticised and modified the archiving methods of his prede­ cessor, from today’s perspective, he also opted for questionable procedures that heavily intervened into the photographs’ materiality. Parts of the information about the images that was located on the back of the pictures was of course lost when they were fixed onto cardboard (Fig. 6). He also ensured that the “thousand ­differently-sized glass plates” were cut to conform “to today’s commonly used formats of 9 × 12 and 13 × 18  cm”.27 In addition to the glass negatives and the collection of portraits of explorers men­ tioned above, in 1914, the BGAEU’s photographic collection consisted of 17,950 ima­ ges; 2,333 were from the Americas, the smallest sub-section. In the same year, the inventory book belonging to the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde listed a total of 3,259 images from the Americas.28

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

There have been repeated attempts to reorganise these photographic collections since Neuhauss, and it is not without a certain irony and tragedy that the problems he outlined were regularly repeated. The boards Neuhauss made were not enough to convince some of his successors, and they have since been partially cut up, and the images have been redistributed throughout the archive. Until recently, the collection of ethnological images from South America was stored in 26 boxes. The boxes themselves had conserved much of the efforts and thinking of the past as they still exhibited a variety of indexing systems. In addition to a pure form of geographical categorisation in which some images were classified according to country, and others according to river or geographical region,29 some images were also categorised according to ethnic group, the photographer who had taken the picture, or the motifs the images depicted. In one case, the images were even sub-grouped according to outdated racial categorisations and in two others, labelling was simply restricted to specifying ‘Box A’ or ‘B’ (Fig. 7).30 Work with the images held by the archive remained rather limited for a long time. Although the volume published in 1973 by the Baessler-Archiv, which was dedicated to the museum’s centenary, includes a contribution about the film archive that had been founded in 1963,31 it does not specifically deal with the photographic collections. The photographs were – and still are – part of the museum’s regionally categorised departments, but the contributions about the departments in the anniversary volume only provided a relatively cursory glance at them.32 Since the mid-1980s, historical photographs have moved more strongly into the focus of attention.33 This is reflected at the Ethnologisches Museum by a series of publi­ cations and exhibitions that bear witness to the increased analysis and meaning of photography.34 Towards the end of the 1980s, the photographic collection from Latin America, and its images of Central and South American archaeology in particular, were subjected to comprehensive analysis and reorganisation (Fig. 8).35 The most recent attempt to reorganise the complete collection took place in the framework of a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) between 2011 and 2013 entitled Develop­ ment, digitisation and scientific research on historical photographs from Latin America.36 In addition to indexing, one of the project’s main tasks was digitalisation (Fig. 9). Since the end of 2013, the collection of historical photographs from Latin America has been made available on the Internet as part of the online database run by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: www.smb-digital.de (Fig. 10).37 Despite its benefits, digitisation also comes with limitations.38 Its standardised presentation leads to the loss of the photograph’s materiality. Some aspects of images

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8 An index card of a photograph by Teobert Maler (a new contact print). Archiving undertaken in 1990. EMB, VIII E 948. 9 Screenshot of a mask from the MuseumPlus database. EMB, VIII E 948.

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

10 Screenshot from the Internet portal of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: EMB, VIII 948. http://www.smb.digital.de/.

become difficult to make out or are no longer directly recognisable. This can include an image’s original size, traces of earlier use as well as the relation of a photograph to others on a photo board. Although the backs of images – insofar as they were printed or contained original labels – were also digitalised, they are not available on the online portal. Digitalisation was accompanied by a new way of storing the images. As primary examination of the photographs can be conducted most efficiently using the docu­ ments (files, diaries and publications) produced by the photographer or the person who sold a particular image to the museum, the collection is now mainly sorted in this manner. There are a number of exceptions, however, such as the cartes de visite or the postcards.39 Consequently, sometimes ambiguities still remain: some images are available both as prints and postcards; and in several cases, the photographer, publisher or donor behind some of the images could not be identified. However, these limitations do not dramatically restrict working with the images. As indexing and digitalising the photographs also meant developing a complete inventory of the collection, and this included integrating previously unassigned images, it is now possible to properly locate, categorise and use these photographs for research and exhibitions. Of course,

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11 “Three Chipaya women.” Photographer: Robert Gerstmann, before 1928. EMB, VIII E Nls 300.

none of this would have been possible without the effort and commitment of all the people who have worked on the collection since 1870. Accordingly, a study of the history of these photographs, an undertaking that can only ever lead to a tentative analysis, should thus neither lose sight of the periodically occurring difficulties of work within the archive nor of the labour associated with constructing, maintaining and using the collection.

The collection today In late 2013, when the project financed by the DFG was concluded, the m ­ useum’s database held 6,589 records on historical photographs from Latin America; among these, 1,216 photographs are labelled with an original inventory number from the BGAEU. ­The oldest pictures that have been identified so far are from the expedition to the Amazon undertaken by the photographer Albert Frisch in 1868.40 The most

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

12 Botanical Gardens, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photographer: Marc Ferrez. EMB,VIII E 2280.

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13 “Pupils and Teachers in front of a School-house in Jamaica”. Photographer: unknown, distributed by: Underwood & Underwood, before 1900. EMB, VIII E 3434.

recent batches dealt with during the project were produced in the 1930s. These are photographs of Brazil from 1934 by the ethnologist Emil Heinrich Snethlage as well as images from 1936 by Friede Schecker, who visited Arhuaco and Kágaba living in the Colombian Sierra Nevada.41 Consequently, the project worked on images from a period comprising nearly 70 years. In addition to images that can more or less be clearly classified as ‘ethnological’ or ‘archaeological’, the collection also includes other motifs, such as landscape and city views. As things stand, ima­ ges have been identified from 109 photographers and photo studios and around 150 ethnic groups.42 In addition to their inventory number, photographs can also be found on the online database by searching for a photographer, or an ethnic group or region; therefore, a few points about some of the most important collections administered by the archive should suffice. Some of the most extensive collections of archaeological images include those by Teobert Maler, Alice and Augustus Le Plongeon and Henry N. ­Sweet, which mainly document archaeological sites in Mexico in the late 19th century. Smaller batches of photographs of objects or of archaeological sites from the same region were taken, for example, by Désiré Charnay, and during an expedition led by Leopoldo Batres. The images by Hans Heinrich Brüning represent an important collection from Peru. In addition, the archive holds a series of photographs of objects from the collections that belonged to José Mariano Macedo, Nicolás Saenz, Emilio Montes and Lima’s Museo Alexander.43

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

14 Palace of the Columns in Mitla, Mexico. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, 1906. EMB, VIII E Nls 683 (P 15264). 15 Palace of the Columns in Mitla, Mexico. Collector: Arthur Baessler. EMB, VIII E 6506.

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In the ethnological department, large batches of images date from the explorations undertaken to Brazil by Paul Ehrenreich, Wilhelm Kissenberth and Max Schmidt. Furthermore, the museum holds a quite extensive collection of images by Erland Nordenskiöld, Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, Guido Boggiani and Friede Schecker.44 Smaller lots of ethnographic images from the 19th century held by the museum include photographs by Franz Heiler, whereas Curt Unckel Nimuendajú and Emil Heinrich Snethlage took some of the images dating from the early 20th century. Additionally, a number of images in the collection were produced by people who were rarely (if at all) involved in ethnographic research, such as the German engineer Robert Gerstmann (Fig. 11). In addition to ethnographic and archaeological images, city and landscape motifs can be found among the photographs taken by, for example, Marc Ferrez (Bra­ zil) (Fig. 12), Robert Gerstmann (Bolivia), Abel Briquet (Mexico) and Charles Burlingame Waite (Mexico). The collection that was provided to the museum by Wilhelm Joest consists, among others, of a large number of predominantly urban scenes from the Caribbean and the north-eastern mainland of South America. Further images from the Caribbean were produced by the company Underwood & Underwood (Fig. 13), and there are some photographs in the collection from films made by Universum Film AG (Ufa), such as Urwelt im Urwald, which was directed by August Brückner (Brazil 1924/1925). The photographs brought by Julius Klingbeil from Paraguay in 1888 are among the more unusual lots that make up the collection, as is a series depicting street scenes and bullfighting in Caracas that E. ­Friedel gave to the BGAEU in 1893.45 Developing a synopsis of various batches of images opens up new issues and pers­ pectives. For example, the archaeological department holds photographs of the same archaeological sites that were taken at different times and by different photographers (Fig. 14, 15). In some cases, different photographers portrayed people from the same ethnic group with varied intentions. The Ethnologisches Museum holds historical images of Krén (“Botocudos”) by Joaquim Ayres, Albert Richard Dietze, Paul Ehrenreich and Walter Garbe. Similarly, Max Schmidt visited (and photographed) Guató in 1901, 1910 and 1928 as well as Paresí in 1910 and 1927. There are also photographs of Antonio, a Bakairí and key informant to early German expeditions to Brazil, and of Luchu, another Bakairí, from 1887 and 1927 (Fig. 16, 17).46 Some photographs are also available in different formats and/or were used in diffe­ rent contexts. The collection contains images of Chamacoco and Kadiwéu by Guido Boggiani and photos of Guaraní by Richard Krone as well as prints and postcards.

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

16 Bakairí Luchu. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 321 (P 6394). 17 Bakairí Luchu. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1927. EMB,VIII E 4855.

It also contains an image by Otto Thulin labelled as depicting a “Makuxi”; however, an image by Thulin of the same person was published by Theodor Koch-Grünberg in 1923 and carries the caption “Taurepang and neighbours”.47 The importance of taking recourse to the original photograph held by the archive is best illustrated by cases in which images were altered for publication. Such images have been published as part of research to demonstrate what the author wanted the reader to see instead of what the image actually records. Images that have been adapted include combination prints published by Albert Frisch; and photographs by Paul Ehrenreich, which have clearly been retouched (Fig. 18, 19).48

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18 Group of “Botocudos” (Krén). Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, April 1885. EMB, VIII E Nls 168. 19 Photograph (Fig. 18) redrawn by Alb. Schütze, Lith. Inst. Berlin. In: Ehrenreich 1887, table 1, bottom.

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

The volume The contributions in this volume illustrate the issues set out above with recourse to a variety of different examples from the museum’s photographic collection. Horst Junker and Kerstin Bartels focus on acquisition policy, management of the collection, and conservation, which are classic issues associated with collecting and archiving. Junker traces the history of the BGAEU and particularly considers the structure of its photographic collection. His discussion begins by covering the end of the 19th century – the early days of the BGAEU – and stretches until the present. He names the key figures from the BGAEU’s beginnings, points to the growth of some of its most important collections and analyses the institution’s internal organisation as well as that of its collections. Finally, he examines the policies and self-understanding of the BGAEU in the fields of independent work and interdisciplinary cooperation. Bartels concentrates on the silver gelatin glass negative plates held by the Ethnolo­ gisches Museum that were made by Hans Heinrich Brüning between 1891 and 1913 in Peru. She explains the technically complex restoration work that these plates have undergone, and illustrates the diversity of information that only originals can offer. Additionally, Bartels’ contribution conveys an overview of current research on image restoration. Pascal Riviale and Stefanie Gänger focus on 19th century archaeological collecting in Peru and the associated trade in antiquities. Photographs that were produced as part of these practices were not least used for advertising and sales purposes. Riviale begins by reconstructing the private, political and diplomatic contexts in which individual collections were developed and negotiated. He points to the low levels of expertise that foreign collectors often had, the poor documentation that accompanied artefacts deriving from illegal excavations as well as the important role played by local collectors and dealers during this period. He also stresses the impor­ tance of these collections, which were publicised via photography, in constructing national identity. Gänger develops a detailed analysis of photographs of artefacts that belonged to José Mariano Macedo. In doing so, she links her observations about the origin of these images, the types of images taken and the photographers who took them, to a consideration of the international scientific and commercial networks in which the photos were circulated. The contributions by Margrit Prussat and Hinnerk Onken focus on specific aspects of image production as an early mass media. Prussat examines the cartes de visite held by the Ethnologisches Museum. She describes the conventions associated with this pictorial form and searches for traces of self-representation by the people depicted in the cards. She also deals with the functions and use of these images in

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the private and public spheres while referring to major producers of pictures and commercial networks. Onken emphasises aspects of the introduction and spread of the picture postcard in Latin America. As with commercial cartes de viste, the production of postcards was also oriented to buyers’ wishes. Postcards played an important role in the construction of a specific image of the indigenous population and of the Latin American continent. Onken’s reflections on the collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum also refer to the logic behind the institution’s policy of acquisition. The commercial importance of photographs also plays a role in the contributions by Frank S. ­Kohl and Andreas Valentin. In contrast to the archaeological photographs analysed by Riviale and Gänger, the circulating image no longer merely represents the object it depicts; instead, it becomes a commodity in its own right. Kohl traces the life of Albert Frisch, a pioneer of photography in the Amazon region. He re­ constructs the history of Frisch’s 1868 photographic expedition as well as the forms of presentation related to the specific method used to produce combination prints. In a similar fashion to Onken, Kohl shows that only certain motifs found their way into the museum’s collection, and as such, its documenting potential is limited to a particular construction of Latin American reality. Andreas Valentin devotes his contribution to two further professional photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, at least one of whom cooperated closely with the scientific community. Hübner undertook a photographic expedition to Peru together with Kroehle, and at the turn of the 20th century, he opened his own photo studio in Manaus, which was to become a meeting place for travellers from Europe. Furthermore, Hübner remained in close contact with scientific institutions in his former home country. Valentin argues that Hübner’s images are characterised by a discernible learning process and increasing closeness when dealing with the people he photographed.49 The contributions by Paul Hempel, Michael Kraus, Federico Bossert and Diego Villar also analyse photographs made by travellers who crossed the South American lowlands. However, the photographs they analyse were not produced by commercially active, professional photographers; these images resulted from scientific expeditions that were closely linked to the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Hempel investigates the status of photography during the second expedition led by Karl von den Steinen to the multi-ethnic region surrounding the Rio Xingu. He focuses on the role of Paul Ehrenreich, a doctor, anthropologist and photographer, who has often stood in the shadows of the expedition’s leader in treatments of this expedition. Hempel illustrates the different social contexts that constituted the photographic situation during the expedition and the way in which diverse research interests

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

are reflected in different styles of photographs, switching between the activities of collection and participant approaches. Kraus studies photographs by Wilhelm Kissenberth, an employee of the museum who was still largely inexperienced in ethnology at the start of his expedition. In addition to contemporary discussions that intersect in the advice on fieldwork provided to Kissenberth, such as the ­debate on whether intensive work in one area was more appropriate than extensively traversing previously undocumented regions, Kraus analyses the context in which Kissenberth’s images were taken and the relationship between the photographer and the people he photographed. He shows that in addition to ethnographic details, the images also exhibit aspects of social closeness and distance. Since Kissenberth only ever published a small number of works related to the expedition, Kraus deploys other archival documents, such as letters and diaries to reconstruct the context in which the images were produced. Bossert and Villar’s contribution pieces together a pic­ ture of the expeditions undertaken by Max Schmidt. The Ethnologisches Museum holds an extensive collection by Schmidt and it has only ever been published in part before. The authors analyse how photographs have been produced in the field and apply their results by focusing on Schmidt’s scientific work. Bossert and Villar’s contribution closes by reflecting on Schmidt’s epistemological and moral views and acknowledging his refined approach to the field. Adriana Muñoz analyses the close ties between the ethnological museums in Berlin and Gothenburg. She concentrates on the large volume of letters, objects and photo­ graphs that were exchanged between individual scholars and the importance placed on this contact by both museums. On the one hand, Muñoz examines the specific Swedish context of collecting, classifying and exhibiting objects and photographs, and specifically focuses on the period during which Erland Nordenskiöld directed the museum. On the other, she deepens the discussion of the histories of some of the photographs that emerged in the three preceding contributions. Manuela Fischer and Ingrid Kummels present two examples from different re­ gions in which image usage is intertwined with political context. Fischer evaluates photographs by Julius Klingbeil, who joined the colonisation project Nueva Germania (Paraguay) in 1888. This community sought a return to ‘Germanic’ values and was conceptualised as an anti-Semitic alternative to the developments taking place in the German Empire. Whereas Klingbeil produced a polemic aimed at settling his dispute with this colonisation project, his photographs demonstrate fascination with grandiose landscapes and the ‘utopias’ inspired by völkisch ‘natural ways of living’ far from the perceived dangers of modern urban life. Kummels examines photographs of the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) that were taken in the early 1930s by the sports reporter

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Arthur E. ­Grix. She analyses the imagery of the Tarahumara disseminated by re­ searchers and other people who visited the indigenous population. Her contribution establishes that the inclusion of this ethnic group into Mexican sport policy resulted in a new perception of an indigenous community in the national context; however, biologistic theories and old mechanisms of exclusion and devaluation continued to be used to explain the levels of performance attained by the Tarahumara. As for the images published in Germany, Kummels illustrates the connection between reporting and aesthetics during the National Socialist accession to power. Franz Thiel’s contribution centres on the work of Abel Briquet, a photographer whose images extend the range of the ethnological and archaeological motifs held by the museum. Briquet’s documentation of railways and industrial plants in Mexico depict aspects of the modernisation of Latin America. Furthermore, his often artfully arranged genre photographs constitute a characteristic feature of the museum’s collection. The contributions by Claudine Leysinger and Heiko Prümers mark a return to archaeological photography. Leysinger discusses images produced by Teobert Maler, a self-educated scientist who initially arrived in Mexico as a volunteer in Maximilian’s army. Fascinated by the country, Maler remained in Mexico even after Maximilian’s defeat and began decades of work making his name as an explorer and photographer of pre-Columbian Mexican ruins. His photography, which is characterised by a high level of artistic accomplishment, quickly gained considerable importance in the field of archaeology, although his early works bear witness to both archaeological and ethnographic interests. Despite the high quality of his images, Maler’s attempts to market his photographs were not particularly successful. The fact that a number of museums rejected his prints if they had already been published points to an interesting aspect of the scientific and artistic considerations behind these museums’ acquisition policies. When making decisions on acquisitions, these museums sought originality in the informational value provided by a specific image. This led them to avoid pur­ chasing original prints if the information an image carried was available elsewhere. In the final contribution, Prümers examines archaeological images from Peru that were produced during nearly half a century by the German engineer Hans Heinrich Brüning. In conjunction with diaries that belonged to the engineer, Prümers recon­ structs the contexts of Brünings’ images of four archaeological sites and compares the data obtained with later archaeological descriptions of the same locations. As many of these sites were later partly destroyed, this approach illustrates the enormous documentary value of such images, and their importance in the reconstruction of Latin American history.

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

Acknowledgements Many highly committed people have supported our work with the collection, and the preparation of this volume. Together with Manuela Fischer, my special thanks go to Richard Haas, who assisted and encouraged this publication from its very beginnings. Without him, it would not have been possible to publish in the current form. We are also very grateful to Viola König for funding the translations from the Baessler-Joest-Fonds. We would also like to express our gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which financed the project Erschließung, Digitalisierung und wissenschaftliche Recherche zu historischen Fotografien aus Lateinamerika (DFG INST 142/2 – 1), and without which image analysis and digitalisation would not have been possible. David Ebner was responsible for digitisation within the framework of this project, a task he fulfilled with reliability and great diligence. We are also very grateful to the staff of the Ethnolo­ gisches Museum who enthusiastically supported us in numerous ways. Thanks must go to the restorers Kai Engelhardt and Eva Ritz who managed the conservation aspects of the project, as well as the photographers Claudia Obrocki and Martin Franken who were constantly available to answer questions. Marie Gaida, Boris Gliesmann, Peter Jacob, Ines Seibt and Anja Zenner supported the project in all of its guises on questions of content and on organisational and technical queries. We would also like to thank Stefan Rohde-Enslin, from the Institut für Museumsforschung – SMB who advised us on issues concerning digitalisation and Karin Guggeis, Horst Junker, Paul Hempel, Frank S. ­Kohl, Katrin Specht, Gregor Wolff, Andreas Valentin and Cristina Zappa for their inspiring discussions and help on research into the photographs. Andreas Hemming and Simon Phillips undertook the translations and copy-editing. Our thanks also go to Böhlau Verlag for its farsighted support and in particular to Elena Mohr. Finally yet importantly, we would also like to express our gratitude to all of the contributors for exploring the archive and making their extensive expertise available for inclusion in this volume. Unpublished documents [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Vol. 18, 1. Januar 1897 bis 30. April 1898. Pars I B, E 847/1897 (Carlos Holz). Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Vol. 20. 15. ­August 1899 bis 31. Dezember 1900, Pars I B, E 658/1900 (Paul Ehrenreich). Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Vol. 26. 1. April 1904 bis 31. März 1905. Pars I. ­B, E 401/1905 (Max Schmidt).

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Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Kissenberth nach Südamerika. 27. Februar 1908. I B.76, E 1089/09 (Wilhelm G. ­Kissenberth). Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Koch nach Amerika. Vom 15. März 1910. Pars I B. 44a, E 182/1915 (Theodor Koch-Grünberg). Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 40. 1 Januar 1922 bis 31 Dezember 1924 Pars I B, E 681/24 (Paul Traeger). Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 42. 1. Januar 1927 bis 31. Dezember 1928 Pars I B, E 326/1927 (Wilhelm Bauer), E 961/27 (Hans Heinrich Brüning).

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Faillace, Magdalena (ed.). 2010. Grete Stern. De la Bauhaus al Gran Chaco. Fotoreportaje de aborígenes del norte argentino (1958 – 1964). Vom Bauhaus zum Gran Chaco. Fotoreportagen im Norden Argentiniens (1958 – 1964). Buenos Aires/Berlin: Ministerio de Relaciones Ex­ teriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto/Ethnologisches Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Fischer, Manuela. 2007. “Adolf Bastian’s Travels in the Americas (1875 – 1876).” In Adolf Bastian and his Universal Archive of Humanity. The Origins of German Anthropology, edited by Manuela Fischer, Peter Bolz, and Susan Kamel, 191 – 206. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Fischer, Manuela, Peter Bolz, and Susan Kamel (eds.). 2007. Adolf Bastian and his Universal Archive of Humanity. The Origins of German Anthropology. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Fischer, Manuela, Karoline Noack, and Irene Ziehe (eds.). 2008. Ungleichzeitigkeiten der Moderne. Der Studiofotograf Baldomero Alejos in Ayacucho – Peru. Anacronismos de la Modernidad. El fotógrafo de estudio Baldomero Alejos en Ayacucho – Peru. Berlin: Panama. Fischer, Manuela, and Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo. 2011. “Der zeitlose Rahmen. Fotografien aus der Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Kolumbien.” In Visuelle Medien und Forschung. Über den wissenschaftlich methodischen Umgang mit Fotografie und Film. Visuelle Kultur (= Studien und Materialien 5), edited by Irene Ziehe and Ulrich Hägele, 129 – 139. Münster: Waxmann. Fritsch, Gustav. 1875. “Photographische Aufnahmen.” In Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beob­ achtungen auf Reisen, edited by Georg Neumayer, 605 – 625. Berlin: Robert Oppenheim. Hagel, Frank von. 2008. “Portale – Kulturgut vernetzen, zeigen und erforschen.” Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz XLIV: 159 – 171. Helfrich, Klaus. 1973. “Das Filmarchiv des Berliner Museums für Völkerkunde.” Baessler-Archiv. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde XXI, N. F. (100 Jahre Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin): 395 – 401. Hempel, Paul. 2014. “Anthropologisch-ethnologische Fotografien aus dem Nachlass Paul Ehrenreich.” In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera. Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolff, 66 – 75. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Hoffmann, Beatrix. 2012. Das Museumsobjekt als Tausch- und Handelsgegenstand. Zum Bedeutungswandel musealer Objekte im Kontext der Veräußerungen aus dem Sammlungsbestand des Museums für Völkerkunde Berlin. Münster: LIT. Ihering, Hermann von. 1911. “Os Botocudos do Rio Doce.” Revista do Museu Paulista VIII, 38 – 51, est. II-VI. Kahleyss, Margot. 1989. “Der Blick in die Fremde – Aufbau eines Photoarchivs im Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin.” In Die ethnographische Linse. Photographien aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, edited by Markus Schindlbeck, 21 – 23. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Kelly, Tatiana and Irina Podgorny. 2012. Los secretos de Barba Azul: fantasias y realidades de los archivos del Museo de la Plata. Rosario: Protohistoria. Koch, Lars-Christian, and Ulrike Ziegler (eds.). 2013. Emil Heinrich Snethlage. Walzen­ aufnahmen aus Brasilien – Gravações em cilindros do Brasil (1934) (= Berliner Phono­ gramm-Archiv. Historische Klangdokumente 8). Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

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Pinney, Christopher. 1992. “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography.” In Anthropology and Photography (1860 – 1920), edited by Elizabeth Edwards, 74 – 95. New Haven: Yale University Press. Platz, Roland (ed.). 2014. Myanmar im Spiegel der historischen Fotografie. Leipzig: E. ­A. Seemann. Pohle, Hermann und Gustav Mahr (eds.). 1969. Festschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 1869 – 1969. Erster Teil. Fachhistorische Beiträge. Berlin: Bruno Heßling. Poole, Deborah. 2005. “An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race, and Visual Technologies.” Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 159 – 179. Schecker, Friede. 1940. Glückliche Savannen. Berlin: Verlag Scherl. Schindlbeck, Markus (ed.). 1989a. Die ethnographische Linse. Photographien aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde (= Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Völkerkunde, Neue Folge 48). Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schindlbeck, Markus. 1989b. “Die ethnographische Photographie in der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.” In Die ethnographische Linse. Photo­ graphien aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde, edited by Markus Schindlbeck, 17 – 19. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Schindlbeck, Markus. 2007. Expeditionen in die Südsee. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung und Geschichte der Südsee-Sammlung des Ethnologischen Museums. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Schmidt, Max. 1947. “Los Bakairí.” Revista do Museu Paulista (Nova Serie) 1: 11 – 58, fig. 1 – 56. Snethlage, Emil Heinrich. 1939. Atiko Y. ­Meine Erlebnisse bei den Indianern des Guaporé. Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann. Specht, Katrin. 2012. “‘The Repeated Ransacking of Unbidden Hands’. The Varied History of the Berlin Ethnological Museum’s Indian Photography Collection.” In The Colonial Eye – Early Portrait Photography in India, edited by Ludger Derenthal, Raffael Dedo Gadebusch, and Katrin Specht, 18 – 23. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang. Stelzig, Christine. 2004. Afrika am Museum für Völkerkunde zu Berlin 1873 – 1919: Aneignung, Darstellung und Konstruktion eines Kontinents. Herbolzheim: Centaurus. Theye, Thomas. 1985. “Eine Reise in vergessene Schränke. Anmerkungen zu Fotosammlungen des 19. Jahrhunderts in deutschen Völkerkundemuseen.” Fotogeschichte. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie 17: 3 – 20. Theye, Thomas (ed.). 1989. Der geraubte Schatten. Die Photographie als ethnographisches Dokument. München: Stadtmuseum München/Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin. Westphal-Hellbuch. 1973. “Zur Geschichte des Museums.” Baessler-Archiv. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde XXI, N. F. (100 Jahre Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin): 1 – 99. Wiener, Michael. 1990. Ikonographie des Wilden. Menschenbilder in Ethnographie und Photo­ graphie zwischen 1850 und 1918. München: Trickster. Wiener, Michael. 2003. “‘Der Ethnologe und der Mann mit Perücke’. Photographische Wirklichkeit im Wandel der Anschauung.” In Missio, Message und Museum. Festschrift für Josef Franz Thiel zum 70. Geburtstag, edited by Dieter Kramer, Mark Münzel, Eva Raabe, Achim Sibeth, and Mona Suhrbier, 97 – 104. Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck.

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Wolff, Gregor (ed.). 2014. Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera. Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Zeller, Joachim. 2002. “Kunstwerke aus deutschen Kolonien im Ethnologischen Museum.” In Kolonialmetropole Berlin. Eine Spurensuche, edited by Ulrich van der Heyden, and Joachim Zeller, 280 – 283. Berlin: Berlin-Edition. Ziegler, Susanne, 2006. Die Wachszylinder des Berliner Phonogramm-Archivs. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

List of the identified photographers, photo studios and distributors Adams, Peter H. Alviña, Luis Antunes, Humberto Saraiva Avril, Henrique Ayerza, Abel Ayerza, Francisco Ayres, Joaquim Bandelier, Adolph Bartels, Max (Maximilian) Batres, Leopoldo Bauer, Wilhelm Bazar Pathé Bischoff y Spencer Bleyer, J. Boggiani, Guido Bohls, J. Boote, Samuel Brandt, Carlos Bridges, Esteban Lucas Briquet, Abel Brüning, Hans Heinrich (Enrique) Castillo, R. ­C. Chambi, Martín Charnay, Désiré Courret, Eugenio & Co Courret Hermanos Cruz Palomino, Juan de la Cruces y Campa Dennech Dietze, Albert Richard Dubreuil, Adolphe Ehrenreich, Paul

Feltscher Foto Fernstädt, Carl (Presse-Illustrations-Verlag) Ferrez, Marc Figueroa, Agostino Fleurquin y Cia Fotografía Artística Fotografia del Puerto Fototip. Laso Frisch, Albert Garbe, Walter Gerstmann, Robert Grix, Arthur E. (Grix-Foto) Grüter, Guillermo Günther, Carl Heffer Bisset, Odber W. Helsby y Ca. Henschel, Alberto Herrmann, B. Herrmann, Wilhelm Hitte, Carl de la Holz, Carlos Hopp, Werner Hübner, Georg (Huebner, George) Imazio, Alquímedes Jahn, Alfredo Karsten, Rafael Keystone View Company Kissenberth, Wilhelm G. Klingbeil, Julius Koch-Grünberg, Theodor Kohlmann Kroehle, Charles

40

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

Krone, Richard (Ricardo) Le Plongeon, Alice and Augustus Linné, Sigvald Lutz Maler, Teobert Mancilla, M. Manoury, Eugène Marichal, E. Möller, Alfred Nadar Nehring, Carlos Nimuendaju, Curt Unckel Nordenskiöld, Erland Panunzi, Benito Petit, Pierre Perez, R. Posnansky, Arthur Rimathé, Samuel P. Rösner, Max Rosauer, Roberto Saville, Marshall H. Schecker, Friede Schmidt, Max

Schulz-Kampfhenkel, Otto Seler-Sachs, Caecilie Siza Photo Siza, Julio Augusto Snethlage, Emil Heinrich Spencer y Ca. Stegmann, Adolfo Sweet, Henry N. Thulin, Otto Traeger, Paul Ufa (Universum Film AG) Ule, Ernst Underwood & Underwood Valck, Christian Enrique Vargas, Juan D. Vargas, Max T. Veiga, Cándido Villaalba, Ricardo Waite, Charles B. Weibel, Arnold Whiffen, Thomas Zamora, Fernando

List of ethnic groups In the case of some ethnic groups, searches of www.smb-digital.de still need to be made using outdated spellings. The following list takes this into account.

Abitana (Huanyam) Aché (“Guayakí”) Achuar Ahiushiri Aikanã (?) Akawaio (Ingarikó) Amuesha Andoke Angaité Aparai (Apalai) Apiaká Apinaje Apurinã Arapaso “Araukaner” (Mapuche)

Arekuna (Aricuna) Arhuaco Arikapu Aruá Ashluslay (Chulupi) Auetí Aymara Azteken Bakairi Bari (Motilonen) Bauré “Bogotá” (?) Bororo Cabishi (Paressi) Canelos (?)

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Michael Kraus

Cashibo “Cavina” Chácobo Chama Chamacoco (Chamakoko, Tumrahá) Chané Chimane (Tsimané) Chinipis (Chulupi) Chipáya Chiriguano Chiripá (Guaraní) Chocó Chorotí Churápa Cocama (Cocoma) Conibo Desana Guajajara Guaraní Guarayo Guató Guatuso Guaymi (Ngäbe) Hiwi (Guahibo) “Huachapiris” Huari Ika (Arhuaco, “Busitaner”) Irantxe (Iranche) Itomana Itoreauhip Jamamadi (Yamamadí) Kadiwēu (Caduveo) Kágaba (Kogi) Kaingang Kainguá Kaiowa (Guaraní) Kaixana Kajabi Kamayurá “Kampa” (“Cambas”, Asháninka) Karajá (Karaja) Karijona (Hianakoto, Umaua) Katukina

Kaua Kayapó Kobeua (Kobéua, Cobeua) Kotingego (?) Krén (Botocudo, Krénak, Aimorés) Kuna (Cuna, Tules) Lengua “Makú” Makuna Makurap Makushi Mapuche Mataco (Matako) Maya Mayoruna Mbyá (Baticola) Mehinakú Miranha (Miraña) Mixteken Mojos Moré Mosetenes Munduruku Mura Nahuquá Nambikuara “Orejones” Palmella Paressi “Patagonier” Patamona Paumari Pauserna Payaguá (Payagua) Pehuenche Pilagá Piro Pororó (?) Quechua (Kechua) Quichua Ramko’kamekra (Canella, Canela) Sanapaná Selk’nam (Ona)

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Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

Sericuna Setero Shipibo Shiriana Shuar ( Jivaro) Sirionó (Mbía) Siusi Sotegaraik Suyá Talamanca Tapiete Tapirapé Tarahumara (Rarámuri) Taurepang (Taulipang) Tehuelche Tikuna (Tukuna) Toba Trumai Tsirakua Tukano Tumupasa

Tupari Tuyuca Uanana Umutina (Umotina, Barbados) Wapixana Warao Wari Waura Wayoro Wayuu (Wayú, Guajiro, Goajiro) Xavante Xerente (Cherente) Xokleng (Schokléng, Bugre) Yagua Yámana (Yagana) Yekuana (Makiritare, Majonggong) Yukpa (Motilonen) Yurakaré (Yurakare, Yuracaré) Zapoteken Zoque

Notes 1

2

3 4

There is extensive literature on the close historical links between photography, archaeo­ logy and ethnology that cannot be discussed at length at this point. Cf., for example, the works of Banta and Hinsley 1986; Edwards 1992; Krech 1984; Pinney 1992; Theye 1989 and Wiener 1990. “[die nicht mehr] von der Vorstellung einer Abbildung des Vergangenen, sondern von einer Codierung des Geschichtlichen [ausgeht]”, Ebeling and Günzel 2009, 14. For further information on the photographic archive, cf. Edwards 2001 and Poole 2005. Fischer, Bolz, and Kamel 2007. The emergence, overcrowding, reorganisation and the variety of actors and factors that influenced the institution are described in detail in Penny 2002. The number of arte­ facts held by the museum grew significantly during the colonial period. Nevertheless, even during this time not all of these acquisitions can be lumped together as ‘colonial appropriations’. Instead, a case-by-case analysis of the people involved and the regions in which the artefacts were acquired is needed. An overview of the museum’s first one hundred years is provided by Westphal-Hellbusch 1973; critical discussion of the museum’s role during colonialism can be found in Essner 1986; Laukötter 2013 and Zeller 2002. Information on acquisitions for the museum’s regionally organised departments can be found in Bolz and Sanner 2000 (North America), Hoffmann 2012 (Latin America), Kraus 2004 (Amazonia), Schindlbeck 2007 (South Pacific) and Stelzig 2004 (Africa).

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7

8

9 10 11

12

13

14 15 16

17

18

On Bastian’s trip to the Americas, cf. Fischer 2007. Today, the Ethnologisches Museum holds “2,749 originals, 13,463 copies and 14,065 galvanos, making a total of 30,277 cylinders” (“2.749 Originale, 13.463 Kopien und 14.065 Galvanos, also insgesamt 30.277 Walzen”), Ziegler 2006, 29. In 2000, the collection was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World. A large part of the BGAEU’s former photographic collection now belongs to the Ethno­ logisches Museum, which is why this example is included here. This historical development is mentioned later in this introduction and in the contribution by Junker in this volume. “Berge von Bildern”, Neuhauss 1914, 905. Richard Neuhauss was a doctor and anthro­ pologist. He also undertook scientific research trips to Oceania, served as editor of the Photographische Rundschau and published a series of manuals on photography. “Für Photoarchiv entnommen”, note by Snethlage, in EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwer­bung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, E 627/27. Edwards 2001, 4, 6 – 7. Cf. also Kahleyss 1989. In addition to the black and white prints presented here, the collection also consists of glass plates (negatives), stereoscope photographs, Ektachrome images and slides from various periods, cf. Kahleyss 1989. Lewerentz 2007, 83. For information about the photographic collection held by the BGAEU cf. the contribution by Junker in this volume. On the history and activities of the BGAEU, cf. Pohle and Mahr 1969; Lewerentz 2007; as well as http://www.bgaeu.de/. The BGAEU’s archive allocated photographs with a ‘P’ (for photographs) as well as a consecutive number that was not associated with a region or theme. In the inventory book, the images were sometimes categorised by continent using colours. In the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, photographs were primarily numbered with ‘VIII’ (followed by an original consecutive number). In 1904, the museum’s photographic collection was indexed according to region, which is why the photographs associated with the museum’s American section carry the mark ‘VIII E’ (along with a consecutive number). Schindlbeck 1989b; Specht 2012 and Junker in this volume. “in ausgedehntem Maasse”, Fritsch 1875, 612. “Man sei alsdann nicht zu rigorös hinsichtlich der Ausführung der Photographien, sondern nehme auch Copien von fehlerhaften Platten, sobald sie interessante Details in genügender Deutlichkeit zeigen”, Fritsch 1875, 612. “Guayaki, Kainguá, Baticola, Tschiripá and Tehey (on the left, the Brazilian bank of the Alto Paraná) […] Botokuden […] Araukaner […] postcards of Brazilian, Chilean and Bolivian Indians.” (“Guayaki, Kainguá, Baticola, Tschiripá und Tehey (auf dem linken, brasilian. Ufer des Alto Paraná) […] Botokuden […] Araukaner […] Ansichtskarten von brasilian., chilenischen, bolivianischen Indianern”). The purchase price was “200 G.Mark”. EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 40. 1 Januar 1922 bis 31 Dezember 1924 Pars I B, E 681/24. Brüning first offered these photographs to the BGAEU, but it handed the case over to the Museum für Völkerkunde, which then acquired the images. Cf. EMB, Akten betref­ fend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 42. 1 Januar 1927

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction

19

20

21

22 23

24

25

26

bis 31 Dezember 1928. Pars I B, E 961/27. On the evaluation of individual photographs, cf. the contribution by Prümers in this volume. On these donations, cf. EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegen­ stände aus Amerika, Vol. 20, Vom 15 August 1899 bis 31 Dezember 1900, Pars I B, E 658/1900 (Ehrenreich); EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegen­ stände aus Amerika, Vol. 26, Vom 1 April 1904 bis 31 März 1905, Pars I. ­B, E 401/1905 (Schmidt); EMB, Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Koch nach Amerika, Vom 15. März 1910. Pars I B 44a, E 182/1915 (Koch-Grünberg); cf. Koch-Grünberg 2004. The glass nega­tives of Schmidt’s photographs are now held by the Museo Etnográfico Andrés Barbero in Asunción (Paraguay); cf. Bossert and Villar 2013. On the expeditions undertaken by Ehrenreich, Kissenberth and Schmidt, and on the exchange with Gothenburg see the contributions by Hempel, Kraus, Bossert and Villar and Muñoz in this volume. The images by Kissenberth are marked in the inventory book as a “gift” (“Geschenk”); we owe the indication that they were purchased by the museum to Boris Gliesmann’s research into the receipt book. Although in a letter, Eduard Seler described the photographs as property of the museum, he also assured Kissenberth the rights to publish them. Cf. Seler on Kissenberth, 19. 04. 1909, EMB, Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Kissenberth nach Südamerika, 27 Februar 1908, I B. 76, E 1089/09. On financing the expeditions to the Amazon and the purchase of collections by the museum, cf. Kraus 2004, 108 – 129. “Chilenische Alterthümer.” The price was 1.50 Mark per photograph. EMB, Acta betr­ effend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 18. 1 Januar 1897 bis 30 April 1898. Pars I B, E 847/1897. EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Vol. 42. 1 Januar 1927 bis 31 Dezember 1928, Pars I B, E 326/1927. The photographs acquired from Wilhelm Bauer depict objects from the ‘Guillermo de Heredia’ and ‘Dr Sologuren’ collections. Cf. the contributions by Riviale and Gänger in this volume. “In jedem Kasten lagen, sehr zum Nachteil der empfindlichen Bildschicht, die ver­ schiedensten Formate bunt durcheinander. Als ich 1904 die Sammlung übernahm, fand ich 23 dergleichen Kästen vor, welche insgesamt derart überfüllt waren, dass zahlreiche Bilder heraus fielen, wenn man einen Deckel anhob. Infolge von wiederholter Durch­ wühlung von unberufener Hand war jede Sonderung nach Erdteilen und Ländern aufgehoben”, Neuhauss 1908, 97. “in einem verstaubten Winkel der Bibliothek”, Neuhauss 1908, 96. Cf. also the contri­ bution by Junker in this volume. At that time, the Museum für Völkerkunde sometimes also had to give up some of its artefacts, partly for scientific reasons, and partly due to political pressure. Cf. Hoffmann 2012. Neuhauss 1914, 907. For information about the eventful history of the collection of photography from India held in Berlin, cf. Specht 2012. On Ehrenreich, cf. the contri­ bution by Hempel in this volume. “die Bildränder bis hart an die Grenze des photographischen Bildes abgeschnitten und nunmehr die zusammengehörigen Aufnahmen auf den grossen Kartons festgeklebt. Auf einem Karton fanden vom Visitformat 12 bis 20, vom Kabinettformat durchschnittlich

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27

28 29 30

31 32

33 34

35

sechs Bilder, von den grösseren Formaten entsprechend weniger Platz. Damit die Bilder auf den Kartons sicher haften, musste jedes einzelne zwei Stunden unter der Presse gehalten werden”, Neuhauss 1908, 97 – 98. “tausend verschieden großen Glasplatten zu den jetzt allgemein eingeführten Formaten 9 × 12 cm und 13 × 18 cm”, Neuhauss 1914, 907. For a picture of a cardboard, cf. fig. 7 in the contribution by Junker. These figures also include photographs from North America. For example, “5: Andenländer I Panama u. Kolumbien”, “23: Huallaga, Ucayali, Jurua, Purus”, “30: Gran Chaco”. For example, “24: Ostbrasilien II u. Paraguay: Tupi-Guarani, Bororo, Guato u. s.w”, “12: Amazonien, Ehrenreich”, “17: Landschaften u. Städte I Südamerika: Andenländer”, “7: Amerika, Anthropologie”, “20: Volksleben Südamerikas: Weisse, Mischlinge, Neger”. The entire historical collection of photographs from South America has now been reorganised and relabelled; it is currently stored in acid-free archive boxes. Some of the original boxes have been kept to document the historical principles according to which the collection was catalogued. Consequently, these boxes have now made the transformation from an object used to store the collection to an object that forms part of the collection. Helfrich 1973. Westphal-Hellbuch 1973, 76 – 7 7. A department for visual anthropology was set up at the Ethnologisches Museum in 2009, but did not have its own post at the time of writing (late 2014) and instead was supervised by the head of the department for Oceania and Australia, Markus Schindlbeck. A regular task for heads of departments includes opening and making the photographic holdings accessible for colleagues from outside of the museum. The time required should not be underestimated, and it represents an often-neglected path through which both the museum’s artefacts and expertise influences international research. Theye 1985; Wiener 2003. Cf. for example, Schindlbeck 1989a; Fischer, Noack, and Ziehe 2008; Faillace 2010; Derenthal, Gadebusch, and Specht 2012; Platz 2014. Furthermore, contributions to the history of photography can be found in Baessler-Archiv, the museum’s annual publication. Exhibitions that deal specifically with the photographs from Latin America, have, for example, been curated by the editors of this volume. As part of the 4th European Month of Photography, Manuela Fischer, together with Ingrid Kummels and students from the Lateinamerika-Institut at the Freie Universität Berlin, developed the exhibition Fotografie als Dokument. Die Kágaba der Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Kolumbien (Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, 22 October 2010 to 20 January 2011). As part of the Humboldt Lab Dahlem, Michael Kraus curated the exhibition Fotografien berühren (Touching photogra­ phy) (Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, 16 October 2013 to 30 March 2014); for a brief description, cf. Kraus 2014b. For publications by other German institutions on Latin American photographic archives, see König 2002 (Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg); Wolff 2014 (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin). Cruz Benedetti 1990.

Exploring the Archive. An Introduction 36 37

38

39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46

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48 49

“Erschließung, Digitalisierung und wissenschaftliche Recherche zu historischen Foto­ grafien aus Lateinamerika”, DFG INST 142/2 – 1. For information about the cooperation between the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and other inter-institutional portals, cf. von Hagel 2008. In Germany, examples of online archives with extensive photographic holdings on Latin America include the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig and the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin. On Leipzig cf. Brogiato 2009 as well as http://www.ifl-leipzig.de/de/bibliothek-archiv/ archiv/bildarchiv/fotosammlung.html; on Berlin, cf. Wolff 2014 and http://digital.iai. spk-berlin.de/viewer/materials/; for examples of digitalisation projects in Latin America cf. Kelly and Podgorny 2012. Cf. the contribution by Bartels in this volume. For a discussion of the problems relating to the provision of ethnological images on the Internet, see for example, Brown 2003, 6, 35 – 37; Kraus 2015 [forthcoming]. Cf. the contributions by Prussat and Onken in this volume. Cf. the contribution by Kohl in this volume. Cf. Snethlage 1937; Schecker 1940; concerning Schecker, cf. Fischer and Oyuela-­Caycedo 2011. The 1934 wax cylinder recordings by Snethlage were recently published: cf. Koch and Ziegler 2013. Lists of the photographers and the ethnic groups can be found at the end of this introduction. Cf. the contributions by Leysinger, Prümers, Gänger and Riviale in this volume. Cf. the contributions by Valentin, Hempel, Kraus, Bossert and Villar, and Muñoz in this volume. For examples of such ‘unusual’ lots, cf. the articles by Fischer, Kummels and Thiel in this volume. On the “Botocudos” cf. Hempel 2014; Kümin 2007, 126 – 138; on Ehrenreich, cf. the contribution by Hempel in this volume. On Schmidt, cf. Bossert and Villar 2013, as well as the contribution by Bossert and Villar in this volume; on Garbe cf. von Ihering 1911. Some of the positive prints held by the Ethnologisches Museum of “Botocudos” by W. ­Garbe can also be found in the Biblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro as a series of postcards. On (Bakairí) Antonio’s career, cf. Schmidt 1947, and Kraus 2004, 362 – 371; 2014a, 42 – 50. “Taulipáng und Nachbarn”, Koch-Grünberg 1923, table 64, fig. 1. The original image held in Gothenburg is labelled “Makuxi” (Tomas William), (Inventory number 5272); the rest of the description corresponds to that provided by Koch-Grünberg. We would like to thank Adriana Muñoz for this information; cf. figure 3 in the contribution by Muñoz in this volume. On Boggiani and the postcard collection, cf. the contribution by Onken in this volume, and Lehmann-Nitsche 1904. Along with the contributions by Kohl and Hempel in this volume, cf. Kohl 2005, 69; Kümin 2007, 78 – 84, 119 – 121, 136 – 138; and Hempel 2014. Hübner also produced an extensive series of postcards; however, none of these images forms part of the collection held by the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin.

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HORST JUNKER

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

First traces The earliest traces of an interest in collecting photographic prints on the part of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 1 (BGAEU) can be found a few weeks after the society itself was founded. In January 1870 the Russian explorer Fedor Jagor presented the Society with several donations, among them “300 photographs from East Asia, together with the negative plates”.2 It was Jagor’s hope that this small collection would form the basis for what would become a “rich collec­ tion” of ethnographic images. He also made detailed suggestions for how the Society might attain this goal, proposing that it should offer “copies of these photographs” to other similar societies in exchange for other materials.3 He cited the Ethnological Society of London and its president, Thomas Henry Huxley, with whom he had in the past been involved in similar exchanges, as an example. He saw an even more promising route to expanding the Society’s photographic collection in the possibi­ lities a scholarly society of national importance had to exert influence on national research policy. Again he cited the British example: British diplomats and colonial officials were trained in scientific photography techniques and then encouraged to photograph “typical individuals from among the tribes at home in the regions” to which they were dispatched.4 A mere two months later the subject of photography was again on the agenda of a regular BGAEU meeting. In the meeting in March 1870, the anthropologist and scien­ tific photographer Gustav Fritsch discussed methodological aspects of photographing humans and human skeletal remains for anthropological purposes. Fritsch, who had participated two years earlier in a photographic expedition to the Arabian Peninsula, criticised in his contribution on photographic perspectives and camera positioning the arbitrary nature in which anthropological photographs were usually taken by the professional photographers that accompanied such expeditions, that is, on the basis of artistic criteria. Photographs taken with their artistic value in mind were often useless for purposes of  “scientific comparison”.5 He argued for the development of a catalogue of fixed criteria to ensure minimum quality requirements for anthropological photographs. This would facilitate communication between scholars and photographers

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since it would help the former to describe their needs fully and precisely in terms that photographers could understand. The Virchow student Fritsch, who was much interested in craniological studies, saw in the definition of mathematically precise camera positions and in the avoidance of manipulative optical components and effects a basis for detailed comparative studies of the anthropological “object”.6 In later years he would develop these arguments into a photometric method that made it possible to calculate the relative size of the human bodies that had been photographed. This process of the development of the methodological principles of scientific photo­ graphy, the discussion of results and their correction and refinement during the monthly meetings of the BGAEU continued into the 20th century. Two of the key players in this process have already been mentioned. A third was the anthropologist, scientific photographer and editor of the Photographische Rundschau Richard ­Neuhauss, who joined in the discussion a few years later. Initially, however, the scholars and interested layman gathered under the umbrella of the BGAEU appear to have been somewhat reluctant about following the advice of the photographic pioneers: three years after Jagor suggested creating a photographic collection, it had grown by just a few dozen images to a total of 510 photographs. This slow development raises the question of what other activities the Society was involved in during the first years of its existence.

Institutionalisation and scholarly infrastructure The BGAEU was founded in 1869 in Berlin on the initiative of the physician Rudolf Virchow and the historian Wilhelm Koner. In doing so the two scholars pre-empted the extremely slow process of the filling of a vital gap in German science policy, that is, the founding of a national umbrella organisation for the young, at the time only superficially institutionalised scholarly disciplines of anthropology, ethnology and prehistoric archaeology. On 17 November 1869, the day of the inaugural meeting, the society could already boast 120 registered members, among them the anthropologist Adolf Bastian, the geologist Ernst Beyrich, the botanists Alexander Brown and Nathanael Pringsheim, the physicians Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Raymond and Robert Hartmann, the medical historian August Hirsch, the geographers Heinrich Kiepert and August Petermann, the historian Leopold von Ledebur and the geophysicist Georg Neumayer. Renowned scholars from other European countries and overseas joined the society in the years to come, among them the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, the anthropologist Franz Boas and the prehistorian Oscar Montelius. Rudolf Virchow was elected chairman of the Society and he remained its spiritus rector until his death in 1902.

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

The monthly meetings provided a forum for ordinary and corresponding members from Germany and abroad to present their latest discoveries, research findings and theoretical contributions. A very intense and fruitful cooperation between the three represented disciplines as well as the associated natural and social sciences emerged, as can be traced in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie and the associated Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. The extensive scholarly background and social contacts of its growing membership and the generous funding it received in the form of donations and endowments made it increasingly possible for the BGAEU to promote and support scientific expeditions, field research activities and excavation projects in virtually all regions relevant to the study of human history. One of its historically most important projects for the history of the discipline was the founding of the Rudolf-Virchow-Stiftung, which was established in 1881 on the occasion of Virchow’s 60th birthday and his 25th teaching anniversary with a capital investment of 78,000 Reichmarks. This foundation funded ethnographic expeditions, archaeological and anthropological studies and above all the editing and printing of scholarly publications and the establishment of scientific collections in all of the societies core disciplines. The Ethnologisches Hilfskomitee für die Vermehrung der Ethnologischen Sammlungen der Königlichen Museen in Berlin,7 which was also founded in 1881 by BGAEU mem­ bers, was committed exclusively to promoting the interests of ethnographic research. Its members, who were mostly businessmen and members of the Jewish community included the banker and committee chairman Isidor Richter, the bankers Georg von Bleichröder, Emil Hecker and Valentin Weisbach, the entrepreneurs Carl Franke, L. ­Max Goldberger and Carl Reiss and the archaeologist and manufacturer’s son Albert von Le Coq. Membership in the committee meant the investment of at least 3,000 Reichmarks in its capital stock. It used the dividends of this capital investment to finance the purchase of ethnographic collections or ethnographic expeditions for the purpose of establishing such collections. The selection of suitable expedi­ tion members, their destinations and travel routes was left to the discretion of the Ethnologische Abteilung in the Königliche Museen in Berlin, that is, Adolf Bastian, its director and simultaneously chairman of the BGAEU. ­The Ethnologisches Hilfskomitee financed, for example, Karl von den Steinen’s expedition to Brazil and the Tilsiter collector Richard Rohde’s expedition to Argentina and Bolivia, which both took place in 1884, the acquisition in 1887 of ethnographic objects from Cuzco in Peru and the collection expedition of the Dresdner geographer Alfred Hettner through Chile, Peru and Bolivia in 1888.

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Three disciplines, one roof When the Ethnologisches Hilfskomitee and the Rudolf-Virchow-Stiftung took up their work in support of its three member disciplines under the auspices of the interdiscipli­ nary BGAEU in 1881, the city of Berlin still lacked an appropriate museum facility that might ensure the proper storage and presentation of the rapidly growing academic collections. The BGAEU had thus launched in 1872 a first initiative to construct a new museum building. This desire to found a prehistorical-ethnological-anthropological museum with an appropriately high status in the Prussian museum landscape that met the standards of existing Prussian museums was confirmed by imperial decree in the following year. The Prussian Minister of Culture and Education Falk assured the Society his support in meeting the “needs of modern science.” 8 In 1875 the Prussian Ministry of Culture and Education presented the BGAEU a first detailed plan for a new museum that would house the existing prehistoric, ethnological and anthropological-osteological collections as well as offices for scholars working with these collections, a library, an auditorium, restoration facilities, a galvanoplastic workshop and a photo studio. After a decade of wearying discussions between the Society in the person of its executive board, that is, Rudolf Virchow, Adolf Bastian and Ernst Beyrich, and the Prussian authorities on the financing, location, size, exact facilities and concept for the future museum building, the Königliches ­Museum für Völkerkunde finally opened in 1886 in the southern Friedrichstadt near the Potsdamer Platz (Fig. 1). This museum was later split to form todays Ethnologisches Museum, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Another BGAEU initiative was dedicated to European Ethnology and the founding of a Museum für deutsche Volkstrachten und Erzeugnisse des Hausgewerbes, today the Museum Europäischer Kulturen of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The organising committee included, beside Rudolf Virchow, the BGAEU members Albert Voß, a prehistorian and student of Virchow, the anthropologist Wilhelm Schwartz, the banker Alexander Meyer-Cohn and factory owner Hermann Sökeland. Initially funded and organised by a ‘friends association’ in 1889, the Prussian state took over the institution and its collections in 1904. In 1894 the BGAEU began what would be unsuccessful talks to establish a Deutsches Kulturgeschichtliches Central-Museum to house, study and exhibit relevant prehistoric, anthropological-osteological and ethnographic collections. The initiative was never­ theless rejected by the Prussian Ministry of Culture and Education, which cited, among other things, the existence and mandate of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

1 Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde zu Berlin. The rooms belonging to the BGAEU were in the third floor. The museum and the BGAEU both used the auditorium. Photographer: unknown, before 1905. Landesbildstelle Berlin.

The building in which the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde was housed soon proved not up to the challenge of meeting its mandate, on the one hand because of the flood of artefacts that arrived from all corners of the world and the resulting expansion and rededication of its facilities that followed the diversification of the concomitant research activities, on the other because the gross area and the functio­ nality that the BGAEU had found to be necessary in 1872 had not been adequately reflected in the construction of the building in the first place. The cooperation agreement signed in 1888 between the Königliche Museen and the BGAEU fore­ saw that the Society would be provided rooms in the building of the Museum für Völkerkunde against the payment of rent. In return, the Society gave the Königliche Museen its ethnographic and prehistoric collections. The anthropological-osteo­ logical collection, which was not represented adequately in the plans for the new building, remained in the hands of the Society, as did the specialised and rapidly growing library collection and the photographic collection, which was formally a part of this library. The BGAEU executive was able to draw on museum staff when

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organising its monthly meetings and for completing various routine tasks. The spatial and organisational integration of the BGAEU into the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde as outlined in the agreement signed in 1888 was an effective and sustainable step in facilitating the cooperation between and the fruitful linking of the two institutions that persisted unchanged until 1945.

From cardboard box to image archive This was especially true for the Society’s archive and library and the attached photo­ graphic collection, which was housed on the third floor of the museum building. These facilities, which were funded solely by the Society, were open not only to the Society’s members but to all interested individuals from Germany and abroad. The obligations that arose from this mandate to make these resources available to the public were met by the Society with the help of many volunteers from among its membership. To improve access to the photographic collection, which by 1888 had grown to a total of 2,421 individual photographs and 1,628 photographs collected in series and kept in appropriate albums, the BGAEU decided to prioritise the cataloguing of the collection. The physician Maximilian Bartels was commissioned to take the necessary preparatory steps. Bartels devised a bound directory with a fixed classification scheme in which all the photographs were registered – independent of discipline and pro­ duction technique (Fig. 2, 3). The data in the directory included a catalogue number, the donor, and information on the photograph’s location as well as a description of the image itself,9 which now as then was vital for the further scientific analysis of the photograph. Information on the scientific discipline for which the photograph might be relevant – in the categories anthropology, ethnology, prehistory, pathology and natural history, a geographical region and ‚various‘ – rounded off the image-­ related data. The name of the photographer was not recorded, except if their names appeared under “remarks”.10 This is hardly surprising considering that early scientific photography was still all about the content of image, which in turn served exclusively as a verification of observations, cognitive processes and theses. The question of the authorship of the scientific photographs found in museums and archives only emerged decades later when the photograph stepped out of the shadows to itself become an object of collection and finally of exhibition. A cursory look at the list of the photographic collection curators appointed by the BGAEU would suggest that the collection, typologising, ordering and cataloguing of photographs was primarily done by scholars with a natural science background. The

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

2 The BGAEU’s catalogue of its photographic collection. It was compiled by the institution’s first curator, the medical doctor and anthropologist Maximilian Bartels (1843–1904). EMB: Archive.

anthropologically trained Virchow student Maximilian Bartels curated the collection until his death in 1904. The doctor, anthropologist and scientific photographer Richard Neuhauss continued Bartels‘ work after his death. Neuhauss was followed after his own sudden death in 1915 by the anthropologist and ethnologist Felix von Luschan. He in turn was followed in 1924 by the physician Wilhelm Langerhans, who died in 1942. The surgeon Arthur Hintze then took over for a final short period. The respective curators of the ever growing collection did no less than classify and catalogue the sum total of representations, phenomena and facets of the entirety of humankind and cultural history as could be caught on film and developed continuously the requisite criteria for doing so. The most important collectors and donors to this photographic collection may be mentioned at this point. Like Fedor Jagor and Gustav Fritsch, Rudolf Virchow too challenged the Society’s members to each contribute to the development of a photographic collection. During his lifetime he himself acquired a great number of scientifically interesting photographs for the collection. Virchow’s estate also included a convolute of photographs of considerable size that thus fell into the hands of the

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3 Frontispiece of the BGAEU’s catalogue of its photographic collection. The classification system used to register new acquisitions of photographs was based on the format of a photograph, geography and scientific allocation. EMB: Archive.

Society. His example was followed by others, in particular members like Richard Andree, Maximilian Bartels, Adalbert Bezzenberger, Paul Ehrenreich, Gustav Fritsch, Otto Hauser, Fedor Jagor, Wilhelm Langerhans, Abraham Lissauer, Felix von Luschan and Richard Neuhauss. They all left the BGAEU photographic collections as gifts during their lives or as bequeathments upon their deaths. Previously they had often used these images to illustrate their lectures held during the monthly meetings of the Society or used them in comparative material studies, the results of which they published, for example, in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

Latin America in pictures Under reference number 519 of the catalogue of the photographic collection of the BGAEU can be found the first photograph identified as coming from Latin America. It shows an artificially deformed human skull, draped over a cast iron wheel. The both anthropologically and archaeologically interesting object was found during the construction of the Oroya Railway in the Peruvian Andes. The author of the photograph is identified in an imprint on the cardboard of the albumen print as “V. ­L. Richardson y Campa”; the photograph’s donor is identified in the catalogue as English ethnologist and photographer Jones H. ­Lamprey. The construction of the Oroya Railway began in 1870 and took almost 40 years to complete. When exactly the photograph was taken is not noted, neither in the directory nor on the image itself. The reference numbers in the catalogue entries provide, unfortunately, only very limited information on when a photograph was made. The BGAEU came into the pos­ session of about eight hundred photographs (catalogued between P 6405 and P 16202) with the estate of Rudolf Virchow in 1902, many of which were years, even decades old. This huge convolute of photographs was split by the BGAEU archivists into more manageable lots and catalogued in stages. The consequences can be illustrated using an example. An albumen print depicting a ceramic idol from Venezuela (reference number P 16122) that the photographic collection received as part of ­Virchow’s estate and had already been printed in 1875 in the Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 11 was only catalogued around 1925 (Fig. 4). Ergo, at the time of their first cataloguing in the photographic collection of the BGAEU, some photographs may have already been 50 years old or older; the circumstances of their production could thus all too often no longer be retraced. While the photographs in the convolute left to the Society by Rudolf Virchow only rarely have a Latin American provenience, the anthropologist and ethnologist Paul Ehrenreich left the BGAEU several photographic collections of Latin American origin, including one of 82 mostly architecture-related photographs from Mexico taken by a variety of photographers. The author of several images is the American photographer Charles Burlingame Waite (C. B. ­Waite), who at the beginning of the 20th century travelled through Mexico and took about three and a half thousand photographs. Pre-Columbian buildings and museum exhibits were just as much subject of his interest as were everyday scenes and the costumes and clothing of the indigenous population (Fig. 5). Waite’s gelatine silver prints from the years 1901 and 1904 were clearly bought to complement Ehrenreich’s own photographs from his stay in Mexico in 1906. After being donated to the photographic collection, this

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4 Photograph from the estate of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). The picture depicts a figurine from Lago Valencia, Venezuela. Atelier: Ferdinand AndersPaltzow, Halle a. d. Saale, probably earlier than 1885. BGAEU, P 16121 (EMB, VIII E Nls 652).

convolute of photographs was catalogued under the reference numbers P 15239 to P 15265 and P 15282 to P 15336. Another Latin American collection in the photographic collection of the BGAEU goes back to the ethnographer Wilhelm Joest. A collection of well over one thou­ sand photographs, it was left to the BGAEU after Joest’s death and was catalogued under the reference numbers P 3671 to P 5225. The photographs are for the most part without information about the respective photographer. Some few, however, can be identified as being the work of the French photographer Eugène Courret. Architecture photography is also a focus of this collection, as are representations of the indigenous population. The regional references in the collection include the Caribbean and the north-eastern mainland of South America as well as Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Chile.

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

5 “Delivering mutton in Mexico”. Photographer: C. B. Waite, before 1903. EMB, VIII E Nls 628 (P 15245). 6 A photograph from the estate of Wilhelm Joest (1852-1897). The title “Indian coolies in a suburb of Port of Spain, Trinidad” was added later. Photographer unknown, probably before 1880. EMB, VIII E Nls 787 (P 4981).

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Consolidation and historicisation The growth in the size of the photographic collection of the BGAEU decreased notice­ ably after the First World War. This seems paradoxical at first glance considering that photography had made a great deal of technical progress since the late 19th century. Cameras had become smaller and the decrease in the costs of photographic material had led to a rapid popularisation of photography in Europe, North America and East Asia and to a massive increase in the raw number of photographic images on the market. The BGAEU did not, however, benefit from these developments. This is because after the turn of the century it had increasingly lost its key role in the Ger­ man ethnological, archaeological and finally in anthropological research to university institutes and museums. Although state and municipal budgets for social sciences research and teaching dropped significantly after 1914 and never again reached their pre-war levels, the Society did not have the resources to influence in any significant way the changing socio-political environment in Germany. The Society’s financial resources, which were held in several foundations, experienced a dramatic reduction due to hyperinflation in 1922 and 1923. The financing of international research activi­ ties and the purchasing of ethnographic collections was no longer possible to the degree that it had been in the past. This was accompanied by declining membership numbers. The number of corresponding members – who formed the backbone of activities for the acquisition of scientific photographs – fell from 96 in 1922 to 19 in 1935. The forced exclusion of all remaining members of Jewish descent in 1938 led to the BGAEU’s disappearing into irrelevance as scholarly association on the eve of the Second World War, especially since ongoing research activities became limited to the local context. War losses The Museum für Völkerkunde was first damaged in an air raid in 23 November 1943, which lead to many rooms on the third floor of the building being abandoned by the BGAEU. ­The academic library – 15,879 books and 5,183 offprints – were evacuated in the early summer of 1944 to Schloss Witzmitz in Plathe in Pomerania. It remains un­ clear whether parts of the Society’s photographic collection were evacuated together with the library. No reliable records exist to date on where exactly the photographic collection was evacuated to or what losses it occurred. It is possible that the collec­ tion was evacuated and then returned to the western sectors of Berlin or that it was stored or even bricked up in the vast basements of the Museum für Völkerkunde or the adjacent “Völkerkundemuseum II”, today’s Martin-Gropius-Bau. It is here that director

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte and presiding BGAEU chairman Wilhelm Unverzagt moved the Society’s offices in 1944. In the spring of 1945, Unverzagt orga­ nised the transport of a large part of the museum’s collections to the salt mines of central Germany, which in turn landed for the most part in the Allied Art Collecting Points in Celle and Wiesbaden and from where they were returned to the western sectors of Berlin between 1956 and 1958. This is not the place to go into detail on the damage inflicted by the National Socia­ lists and more so the Second World War on the scientific disciplines united in the BGAEU. ­The Allied authorities prohibited the BGAEU, like all scholarly associations in Berlin, from continuing its activities after 1945. After a failed initial application, the BGAEU was permitted to reconstitute in 1950 and acquired its non-profit status in 1963. The close spatial association in 1944 of the BGAEU with the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte under Wilhelm Unverzagt continued into the postwar period and con­ tinues to the present day. In 1960 the archive of the BGAEU, including what was left of the photographic collection, was moved to the Langhans Building of Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, where it was supervised for more than three decades by the prehistorian and museum curator Gustav Mahr. In the course of the relocation of the directorate and the scientific management of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in 2001 it had to give way there and was housed in the nearby archive and library in the building Spandauer Damm 19, where it profited from a small increase in surface area. In 2012 it followed the archives of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte into the newly built Archäologisches Zentrum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin where it is currently located. The photographic collection of the BGAEU had reached ca. 36,000 images by the end of the Second World War. It contained prints and negatives of various kinds and typographic reproductions. The prints were in their majority of the albumen paper kind, followed by those developed using gelatine silver and collodion processes. Other printing techniques such as platinum printing were rare. The negatives were dominated by gelatin dry plates (glass negatives) of various formats. The bulk of the so-called individual images, that is, photographs that were not part of albums or photographic series, had been pasted onto a stable 33 × 42 cm cardboard backing, numbered, titled and provided with a more or less accurate caption (Fig. 7). The titles for the individual images were based closely on the usual terminology of the discipline the photograph was associated with. They included geographical and geopolitical classifications com­ bined with archaeological, ethnographic or anthropological terms. By the end of the Second World War, over 22,000 of these individual images had been catalogued in the volumes of the handwritten directory of the photographic collection. There is no exact data today on how many of these have survived. Estimates range from 12,000

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7 Seven photographs from the German expedition to Pilcomayo. Photographs were archived by placing them onto 33x42cm cardboard until the 1940s. Photographer: Wilhelm Herrmann, 1906/07. EMB, VIII E Nls 50 (P 15068 – 15074).

to 16,000 images held in four institutions in Berlin: beside the BGAEU itself, the Ethnologisches Museum (former Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde), the Museum für Asiatische Kunst and the Museum Europäischer Kulturen. A fifth institution, the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte had already returned its entire inventory of photographs – that is, those that could be attributed to the photographic collection – to the BGAEU.

Permanent loans in the service of the museums Substantial parts of the photographic collection of the BGAEU found their way into the collections of four mentioned institutions shortly after the Second World War. Records do not exist on how this came to be, nor does data on the people involved or their motives. Until clear documentary evidence can be found, it will remain unclear whether this was a redistribution of the material legacy of what at the time was a dis­ solved BGAEU or a permanent loan on the part of a reconstituted BGAEU for research purposes, as older and retired staff members in the respective institutions reported in the 1990s. The Society maintains the position that the entire photographic collection

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

is to this day the property of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. The fact that previously, only small and discipline-specific parts of the photographic collection and never the entire photographic collection were left to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin supports this argument, as does the fact that none of the institutions involved can produce a document suggesting the opposite to be the case. Thus, the stocks of the BGAEU photographic collection held in the mentioned museums must be seen as permanent loans provided to the institutions and their em­ ployees for scientific use. The executive board of the BGAEU most recently repeated its claim to ownership of the photographic collection in a letter to the President of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and Director General of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin dated of 24 January 2001, at which time staff members of the Deutsches Centrum für Photographie project were evaluating the historical photographic collections of all the member museums of these two institutions for the purpose of making a selection for eventual acquisition. In his many years as archivist, the already mentioned Gustav Mahr can be credited with the successful conservation and cataloguing of the written and photographic heritage of the BGAEU, often under very difficult financial and organisational con­ ditions. His successor, the prehistorian Annette Lewerentz was given the opportunity, thanks to a grant from the Volkswagen-Stiftung in Hanover, to reorganise, restructure and recatalogue the archive in the period 1997 – 2000, including the documentary ma­ terial relevant to the photographic collection. That said, the project’s budget did not allow for doing the same with the photographic collection itself. The initiator of the Volkswagen project, the prehistoric archaeologist and at the time BGAEU chairman Bernhard Hänsel thus applied in 2000 to the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin for funds to secure and reconstruct the historical photographic collection. Unfortunately, the application was denied. Not to be deterred, the BGAEU executive decided in 2003 to finance the ­archiving, digitisation and eventual conservation of the photographic collection out of its own budget. To this end, the BGAEU concluded agreements for various parts of the collection with a number of subcontractors. This project, which was estimated to take ten years, was coordinated and supervised by the author, who took on the position of honorary society archivist in 2001 and held it until 2012. During the first four years of the project the focus was on the photographs in the possession of the Society itself. The scientific focus of these ca. 2,900 images is on prehistoric archaeology, physical anthropology, medicine and cultural history. In 2007 the focus shifted to a convolute of 796 photographs held by the Museum Europäischer Kulturen. This was the first time that the BGAEU was able to examine and catalogue

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work with a part of the collection housed in one of the other institutions holding it. Three similar projects followed between 2008 and 2011 in cooperation with the Ethnologisches Museum. In 2008 the focus was on a collection of 518 photographs of North American provenance, followed in the next year by 216 photographs on Latin and South American archaeology and ethnography. The final two years were spent processing 1,860 photographs on ethnography, anthropology and the history of science in Oceania and Australia. The project was completed, at least preliminarily, in 2011 with the archival annotation, digitisation and technically appropriate storage of 547 photographs from the BGAEU collection held in the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. The extensive preparations necessary for organising the move of the archives of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte and the BGAEU to the Archäologisches Zentrum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin have prevented further work on the photographic collections since the summer of 2011. The result of these recent efforts by the BGAEU to document and conserve its photographic collection are about 6,000 high-resolution, colour-calibrated digital master images and 7,000 working images that can be used for research, publica­ tion and public relations purposes. This data was provided to the institutions using them on optical disk drives (ODD) or external hard disk drives (HDD), including contact sheets concordance lists and other tools. The metadata on the photographs was collected per image on the basis of the image database software Augias-Archiv. Individual solutions based on Microsoft Access were found for the participating institutions among the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin that do not have access to the Augias-Archiv software. Certified ageing resistant and chemically neutral storage technology was applied wherever photographs had been previously held in problematic conservation environments. In accordance with its mandate, the BGAEU provided these services and the necessary technology to the museums free of charge. It has so far invested ca. 35,000 euros into the project. More than half of this sum was spent on the “externally held” photographic collection, that is, those parts of the BGAEU collection held in the Ethnologisches Museum, the Museum Europäischer Kulturen and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. These include the above-named, scientifically and historically significant photographs on the archaeology, ethnography and cultural history of Latin America. Regularly donations on the part of its members have made it possible for the BGAEU to ensure the regular funding of the work on the photographic collections as well as a needs-based provision of the necessary material resources in the period 2003 – 2011. The volunteer work of individual members in the design of the various sub-projects allowed the Society, despite the comparatively small budget, to realise

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

this complex project while taking into account all relevant disciplinary specificities. Should this interplay of volunteer work, interdisciplinary expertise and financial support continue in this 15th decade of its existence, the BGAEU should have little problem completing this project to digitally preserve and catalogue the last part of its photographic collections held in the Ethnologisches Museum by 2020. The geographic focus will shift from America, Europe and Oceania to Africa and Asia. The disci­ plinary framework will, however, remain unchanged. Historical photographs from ethnological, physical anthropological and prehistoric archaeological contexts have all been considered without distinction, their historical and biographical aspects were given particular attention in the interpretation of individual motifs. With projects like this, the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte has been able to continue into the 21st century a tradition of interdisci­ plinary scholarly cooperation and the creation and promotion of synergies that existed already 140 years ago – for the benefit of scholarship and research in the affiliated museums and institutions of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and beyond.

Unpublished documents [Archiv der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (Ar. BGAEU)] BGAEU-ADE 61: Mitteilung des preußischen Kultusministers Paul Falk an die BGAEU, Rudolf Virchow. 27. 12. 1873

Bibliography Andree, Christian. 1969. “Geschichte der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethno­ logie und Urgeschichte 1869 – 1969.” Mitteilungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 3 (Festschrift 100 Jahre BGAEU), 71: 9 – 140. Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (ed.). 1994. 125 Jahre Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 1869 bis 1994 (Materialsammlung zu Ausstellung im Museum für Völkerkunde, 1994). Berlin: Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. Billeter, Erika. 1981. Fotografie Lateinamerika 1860–1983. Bern: Benteli. Fritsch, Gustav. 1870. “Über zwei Methoden der Erstellung von Abbildungen in der neueren Anthropologie.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 2: 172 – 174. Gaethgens, Thomas W. 1992. Die Berliner Museumsinsel im Kaiserreich. Zur Kulturpolitik der Museen in der wilhelminischen Epoche. München: Deutscher Kunstverlag. Hartmann, Robert. 1870. “Untersuchungen über die Völkerschaften Nord-Ost-Afrikas. Teil III.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 2: 86 – 122.

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Jagor, Fedor. 1870. “Über das Sammeln von Photographien fremder Rassen.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 2: 147 – 148. Junker, Horst. 2004. “Zur Dokumentation archäologischer Sammlungen und Archivierung von Quellenmaterial am Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte. Die Zeit von 1829 bis 1945.” In Das Berliner Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte. Festschrift zum 175-jährigen Bestehen (= Acta praehistorica et archaeologica 36/37), edited by Wilfried Menghin, 415 – 471. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Junker, Horst and Gundula Lidke. 2010. Rudolf Virchow als Anthropologe und Prähistoriker (Sammlung von Ausstellungstexten zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung im Langenbeck-­ Virchow-Haus Berlin, 2010 und im Neuen Museum Berlin, 2011/12). Lederbogen, Jan. 1986. “Fotografie als Völkerschau.” Fotogeschichte. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie 6(22): 47 – 64. Lewerentz, Annette. 2000a. “Die Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte und ihre Bedeutung für die Berliner Museen.” Mitteilungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 21: 111 – 127. Lewerentz, Annette. 2000b. “Der Mediziner Gustav Fritsch als Fotograf. Dokumentation seiner anthropologisch-ethnografischen Untersuchungen in Fotografien der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.” Baessler-Archiv N. F. 48: 271 – 309. Lewerentz, Annette. 2004. “Rudolf Virchow und die Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. Einfluss auf den Aufbau prähistorischer Sammlungen des Berliner Völkerkundemuseums bis 1902.” In Das Berliner Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte. Festschrift zum 175-jährigen Bestehen (= Acta praehistorica et archaeologica 36/37), edited by Wilfried Menghin, 103 – 121. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Neumayer, Georg (ed.). 1875. Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen. Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse der Kaiserlichen Marine. Berlin: Verlag von Robert Oppenheim. Schindlbeck, Markus. 1989. “Die ethnographische Photographie in der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.” In Die ethnographische Linse. Photo­ graphien aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, edited by Markus Schindlbeck, 17 – 19. Berlin: Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Völkerkunde Berlin N. F. 48. Schmidt, Marjen. 1994. Fotografien in Museen, Archiven und Sammlungen. München: Kunstbücher. Steinmann, Ulrich. 1964. “Die Entwicklung des Museums für Volkskunde von 1889 bis 1964.” In 75 Jahre Museum für Volkskunde zu Berlin 1889 – 1964, edited by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 7 – 48. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Theye, Thomas (ed.). 1989. Der geraubte Schatten. Die Photographie als ethnographisches Dokument. München: Stadtmuseum München/Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin. Theye, Thomas. 2004. Ethnologie und Photographie im deutschsprachigen Raum. Studien zum biographischen und wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Kontext ethnographischer und anthropolo­ gischer Photographien (1839 – 1884) (= Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XIX, Abt. B, Ethnologie, Bd. 65). Frankfurt am Main u. a.: Peter Lang Verlag.

The Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and its Photograph Collection

Unverzagt, Mechthild. 1989. “Materialien zur Geschichte des Museums für Vor- und Früh­ geschichte zu Berlin während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, zu seinen Bergungsaktionen und seinen Verlusten.” Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz 25: 313 – 385. Westphal-Hellbuch. 1973. “Zur Geschichte des Museums.” Baessler-Archiv. XXI, N. F. (100 Jahre Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin): 1 – 99. Ziehe, Irene and Ulrich Hägele (eds.). 2006. Fotos–‘schön und nützlich zugleich’. Das Objekt Fotografie. Münster: LIT.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11

Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory.

“300 Photographien sammt den negativen Platten”, Jagor 1870, 147.

“reichen Sammlung”, “Copien dieser Photographien”, Jagor 1870, 147. “[…] typische Individuen der in ihrem Gebiet vorkommenden Volksstämme”, Jagor 1870, 148. “der wissenschaftlichen Vergleichung”, Fritsch 1870, 172. Fritsch 1880, 173. Ethnological Committee for the Propagation of the Ethnological Collections of the Royal Museums in Berlin. “Bedürfnisse der heutigen Wissenschaft”, from a communication of the Prussian Minister of Culture and Education Paul Falk to the BGAEU, Rudolf Virchow, 27 December 1873. BGAEU-ADE 61, Ar. BGAEU. “Nummer”, “Geber”, “Karton-Mappe”, “dargestellter Gegenstand”. “Bemerkungen”. Virchow 1875, 42.

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Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

The Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin has preserved in its photographic archive a very important collection of 190 silver gelatin glass negatives 1 taken by Hans Heinrich Brüning in the course of his almost 50-year stay in Peru. According to Brüning’s notes that accompany the collection, the photographs were taken between 1891 and 1913.2

The photographic negative and its potential as a research source Each and every photographic negative is immanently significant and unique. While the reproducibility in photography – a term predominantly associated with positive images 3 – has become part of its very nature and the question of original and copy has become redundant, the negative is always unique, always an original with unique characteristics. It was the negative that was in the camera and with the photographer where and when the photograph was taken. The negative bears the traces of the process of its exposure and carries in it the clues that make it possible to reconstruct the praxis of the respective photographer before, during and after the moment of actual exposure. This article will show how diverse the information is that can be elucidated alone from the physical object, focussing, in doing so, on Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives and their material value as a research source. The physical presence of the photographs make it possible to draw conclusions about Brüning’s approach to photo­ graphy that printed or digital copies of these photographs cannot make. The paper would like at the same time to suggest that research activities in the faculties of social science and humanities and those in applied research on conservation science move closer to one another, inspire one another in their research, verify their respective hypotheses and formulate new ones. That this is possible and extremely productive can be seen in the cooperation between the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin (in the following: HTW Berlin) and the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. Moreover, it would be desirable if in general, photographic negatives could find more resonance and attention among scholars instead of, as is most often the case, being seen as a simple preliminary stage for a positive image and being reduced to eking out a precarious existence in the museum archives. The global trend to the

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1 Landscape; transmitted light. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning. EMB, glass plate neg. 466.

digitisation of such collections will only exacerbate this marginalisation. Once digi­ tised, there will be even less need to examine the original negatives and so to reveal their nature and the fine clues they contain.

The silver gelatin glass negatives of the Brüning collection The HTW Berlin currently holds 62 of Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives from the period 1893 to 1913 for study. These can be roughly divided into two phases: seven­ teen photographs from an earlier phase from 1893 to 1895 and 27 from a later phase from 1903 to 1913. The remaining 17 glass negatives are not datable, neither based on information on the objects themselves nor on clues in Brüning’s lists. Fifty-one of the photographs are landscape shots of archaeological sites (Fig. 1), the remaining eleven are group portraits of the indigenous population (Fig. 2). The large 18 × 24 cm negatives are fascinating in terms of their aesthetic and docu­ mentary qualities as well as their potential as historical source material because they reveal many of the individual steps of Brüning’s photographic praxis. Already the

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

2 Group portrait; transmitted light. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning. EMB, glass plate neg. 483.

choice of the relatively large format and the associated large format camera (also: plate camera), the choice of the perspective that emerges out of the choice of the camera position and the focal length of the lens provide vital data on the creative repertoire of a photographer even before the picture is taken. The relatively short focal lengths that Brüning used with normal and wide-angle lenses ensure per se for a broad depth of field. This allows for identifying finest details in much of the recorded image. This is certainly a conscious decision on Brüning’s part so as to achieve a maximum of documentary value. It is also interesting to note that a man with a horse, a single man or a single horse can be found in every landscape shot. Brüning clearly placed them in the image just before taking the photograph at the least for the purpose of providing some form of scale (Fig. 3).4 Similarly remarkable, if only for aesthetic reasons, are the rock ledges, stones, boulders, etc. in the foreground of the landscape shots that also provide for a certain feeling of depth (Fig. 4). But the landscape shots also reveal a technical inadequacy of the photographs. Approximately every ninth landscape shot is vignetted so that the image in the centre appears in a circle that becomes lighter towards the edges until all definition disappears (Fig. 5). Brüning used an inadequate

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3 Horse used as a scale reference in the image; transmitted light. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning. EMB, detail of glass plate neg. 466. 4 Example of depth effect achieved by means of a foreground object; transmitted light. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning. EMB, glass plate neg. 255. 5 Vignetted image corners masked by retouching; transmitted light. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning. EMB, glass plate neg. 260.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

6 Retouched lint and dust; transmitted light. EMB, glass plate neg. 466.

lens in these cases; the field of view was too small for the negative format. Brüning was surely aware of this problem in his optical equipment since the specific recordings were made in July 1903 and on three days (6, 8 and 20 November) in 1904. The skilled and careful manner in which Brüning worked can also be seen after the respective photograph was taken. The silver gelatin glass negatives were chemically developed with a great deal of skill and in part chemically toned. Underexposed negatives with low density were intensified, overexposed negatives with high density were reduced chemically. The actual chemical development and correction process in the darkroom was thus concluded. But Brüning did not stop there. He reworked the finished silver gelatin glass negatives carefully or let someone rework them for him,5 retouching them with a pencil or liquid colours to mask irritating details such as dust or lint (Fig. 6). Above all, the large area retouchings mostly applied with opaque red gouache paint stands out. Only one of his early photographs (no. 522 taken on 29 January 1893) is retouched using black lacquer. Two other glass negatives have been retouched using grey-black and red colour. Approximately every third landscape has been retouched in such a way.

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7 Retouched vignetting in the upper half of the image; transmitted light. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning. EMB, glass plate neg. 471. 8 Retouched upper part accentuates a particular part of the image; transmitted light. Photographer: Kerstin Bartels. EMB, glass plate neg. 473.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

The large area retouchings had two purposes. First, Brüning wanted to mask the round vignetting, the bright ring of which would, from an aesthetic point of view, outshine the focal point of the positive and reveal the use of an inappropriate lens (Fig. 7). From a technical point of view, this bright ring would raise the contrast of the image unfavourably and would thus lead to a loss of tone value and thus to a loss in image detail. Secondly, Brüning wanted to emphasise some details, especially on the image horizon. Here Brüning accentuated the contours of the most important elements of the image by masking what he probably considered as meaningless areas such as the sky (Fig. 8). Brüning also provided the majority of his negatives (46 to 62; 16 are unsigned) on the image side with his signature that varied over time. He signed the early recordings from 1893 to 1895 directly on the image side of the plate either by hand using brown ink or he probably transferred his signature from a piece of (presumably glassine) paper. These signatures read both a cursive “Brüning” or an “EBrüning” (sic!, no punctuation), the “E” presumably standing for “Enrique”, the Spanish variant of his first name. From 1903 on he used a black ink stamp exclusively on the image side reading “HE.BRÜNING” in capital letters. About half of the examined selection of glass negatives is signed in the lower left hand corner, the other half in the lower right hand corner. The early recordings are, however, all signed in the lower left hand corner. The oldest glass negative of those examined, titled “Nr. 522‚ Templo del Sol‘” and dated 29 January 1893 is interesting. Compared to the other negatives it has a distinctive very large handwritten signature in brown ink as well as the date “Januar 29–1893” scratched into the edge of the plate (Fig. 9, 10). The site where the photograph was taken was also noted at the edge. The fact that he was the photographer of this image appears to have been very important for him in this case because the signature is on the one hand so large by comparison and because he signed using the irreversible technique of scratching the image layer, which he did on no other glass negative. All glass negatives were also provided with an image number, applied consistently by hand on the image layer, in the early period (1893 – 1895) in brown ink and later in black. The glass negatives of the early period are also dated, although very inconsistently. Sometimes the month and year are given in Spanish – “Marzo 1895” – and sometimes in German – “Januar 1893”. Most plates present the exact date – “Oct.21.1894”, “Mayo 16 de 1895” or “Julio 28.95” – and two even provide the time – “Julio 15 de 1895. 4h 30 p.m”. The glass negatives after 1895 are not dated anymore on the physical objects and can only be dated by relating them to the accompanying lists.

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9 Signature in the right hand corner, titled and dated at the right margin; transmitted light. Photographer: Kerstin Bartels. EMB, glass plate neg. 522. 10 Date etched into the image layer; reflecting light. EMB, glass plate neg. 522.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

Some aspects of the history and technology of Brüning’s photographs When Brüning began to photograph in northern Peru, “brome silver gelatin dry plates” were the material of choice for taking high-quality, tone and detail rich photographs using plate cameras. Even though both the paper roll film and, as of 1889, the transparent roll film (nitrocellulose) had been introduced to the market by George Eastman in Rochester, and much lighter and easier to handle hand-held cameras in 1888,6 these much smaller negative formats could not yet compete in terms of image quality with the large glass negatives. The fact that Brüning con­ tinued over a period of 20 years until the year 1913 to use the large format, the very fragile glass negatives and the correspondingly large and heavy camera equipment in Peru underlines the high personal standards he had in terms of documentary value and image quality. Glass had been used since the introduction of the wet collodion process by ­Frederick Scott Archer in 1851 as support for the collodion layer in the photographic positive-negative process,7 which in turn was introduced in 1840 by William Henry Fox Talbot on the basis of paper negatives and paper prints. In 1871 the silver gelatin dry plate process was introduced by Richard Leach Maddox. The industrial pro­ duction of these plates by the Eastman Dry Plate & Film Company began at the end of the 1870s in the United States and in the early 1880s in Europe, especially in England and Germany. The silver gelatin glass negative process was popular in the period from 1880 to 1940, until flexible nitrocellulose films and smaller negative formats were preferred. The term “dry plate” was supposed to distinguish the new technology from the older and more elaborate wet collodion process and at the same time point to its benefits: It saved the photographer the effort of in-situ sensitising the plate and thus of transporting the concomitant equipment for wet chemical sensitisation prior to exposure and the immediate developing after exposure. Rather, the cassettes of the plate camera could be fitted in the dark beforehand and simply be inserted into the camera and exposed in the field. The sealed cassettes could then be transported back or, if necessary, be refitted with an unexposed plate using a darkroom tent or bag. The exposed plates could be stored in the original three-part, light-tight black cardboard boxes until they could be wet chemically developed, fixed in the darkroom, washed, dried and, if necessary, toned, reduced, intensified, lacquered or retouched. As a result, a temporal disassociation of exposure and development and fixing of the silver image in the darkroom could take place.

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Silver gelatin glass negatives as cultural heritage Due to the long period in which silver gelatin glass negatives were used, an untold number of glass negatives are preserved today worldwide as cultural heritage in the collections of museums and archives. Many of the photographic images reveal typical silver gelatin photograph degradation, such as fading, yellowing or silver mirroring. The usual damage that fragile glass objects suffer over time – breakage, cracks and chipping – as well as the loss of pieces of broken plates is a problem as well. Abrasion of the image layer by glass chips and powder is also an issue.8 Finally and most significantly, in addition to these common measures of ageing and degradation, for nearly 20 years a serious trend that threatens the preservation of glass negatives generally is to be observed: the flaking or delamination of the image layer from the glass substrate, ranging from minute fragments and flakes to larger pieces up to the entire image layer. Cooperation agreement between the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin and the HTW Berlin As professor for the conservation of photographic heritage, I was contacted in 2007 by the Ethnologisches Museum with the information that the glass negatives of the Hans Heinrich Brüning collection were showing striking signs of an in­ creased delamination of the image layer. The whole collection was at risk of being lost forever. The HTW Berlin began in 1994 a diploma program (after 2005 a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree program) in the Conservation and Restoration of Photographs, Film and Video as part of the program on Conservation and Restoration/Excavation Technology and the study focus area of “Audiovisual and Photographic Heritage”. The emphasis here is on specific material properties and degradation phenomena as well as conservation and restoration techniques for the conservation of individual objects or even whole collections. For photographs this means being able to identify the various negative and positive processes from ca. 170 years of photographic his­ tory, the materials or mostly layered material composites used, the various chemical, physical as well as biological degradation processes that these can be subject to and, finally, to be able to coordinate and perform conservation treatments. For helping the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin to maintain Brüning’s glass nega­ tives, a cooperation agreement was concluded in 2008. The goal was to explore the phenomenon of delamination and to develop approaches for their conservation.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

The Brüning collection An initial evaluation of 190 silver gelatin glass negatives of the Brüning collection verified that the majority had first signs of delamination on the edges of the glass plates. These delaminated zones of a few millimetres breadth were successfully re-adhered after the exposed glass surface was cleaned.9 Thus, 140 glass negatives of the Brüning collection could be conserved over the last four years by our students and returned to the museum. The condition of the negatives will nevertheless have to be checked at regular intervals in the future. The state of ten of the glass plate negatives proved more alarming. They were suffering from massive delamination, which, once it begins, continues und could lead to total loss of the image layer. Peculiar, most often sickle or crescent-shaped but also filigree or worming cracks emerge (Fig. 11). These crack patterns have been identified in the image layers of silver gelatin glass negatives in various collections in many different climate zones around the world (Fig. 12). The crack patterns and forms are all very similar (at least superficially) and thus suggest that this is a problem intrinsic to the physical properties of the different materials, a result of the different reactions of the image layer and the glass substrate to the constant exchange with a fluctuating climate. The gelatin as the binder for the silver image in the image layer is highly hygroscopic (if it is not subsequently hardened or coated) and thus continues to react to variations of temperature and relative humidity with minimal increases and decreases in its volume. The glass, however, hardly reacts physically; it is still today one of the few materials that is hardly effected by climatic changes. This fact was, of course, known to the developers of the process in the 1870s, so that from the very beginning, adhesive layers were applied to the glass surface or the glass surfaces were prepared in advance, before they were coated with the silver gelatin emulsion. These adhesive layers and preparations beforehand were improved continuously and a certain degree of competition emerged between first, the photo­ graphers and later, the dry plate manufactures; their exact composition and their mode of application were well-kept secrets. How quickly the cracks spread or new cracks emerge once the process of delami­ nation has begun could be observed and documented in the course of the last four years since the glass negatives of the Brüning collection found their way into the archive cabinets of the HTW Berlin – to be removed infrequently for intermittent study. Some cracks spread a few millimetres; in one case ca. 2cm. New cracks emerged in some image layers.

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11 Crack shapes and forms in a seriously delaminated negative, reflecting light. Photographer: Kerstin Bartels. EMB, glass plate neg. 504. 12 Detail of half-moon and sickle-formed cracks from a reference collection; reflecting light. Photographer: Kerstin Bartels. Sammlung Louis Koch, Fockemuseum Bremen.

Profile and goal of the project The challenges of this research project are complex. The goal, for one, was to identify the basic principles and interactions that lead to the delamination of the image layer. But it was also a goal to develop approaches for re-adhering and consolidating in a sustainable manner the image layer to the glass surface so that these most important photographs of Brüning can be maintained for the future. Photo conservators from around the world have been examining various aspects of the delamination of image layers on glass plates since the mid 1980s. 10 Three diploma theses written in our department have in the past focused on the delami­ nation process and possible conservation measures.11 Three of our MA-students involved in the project will present a detailed summary of the state of research in their master’s thesis. Initially, our study focussed on identifying the causes of the delamination. Therefore historical studies of the production of silver gelatin glass negatives and particularly of the adhesive layers between the glass and image layer have been conducted as well as analysis and conservation tests were carried out. A sustainable solution to the problem of delamination has not yet been identified. To date, neither have the reasons for delamination been sufficiently studied nor could successful conservation techniques for consolidating large silver gelatin flakes be developed.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

Test series for the consolidation of image layer fragments From the very beginning of the project, tests were carried out in our conservation laboratories where the use of various water-based consolidating agents were tested in different concentrations and using different application methods (liquid, aerosol). So far, no satisfactory results of sufficient optical and re-adhesion quality could be obtained. Firstly, the results are optically insufficient. Fine air inclusions remain if viewed in reflected light as light spots and if viewed in transmitting light appear as turbid-milky spots. When copying a positive or after digitisation, the image quality would be reduced because the air pockets would refract the light intensified, making the image details appear less dense, that is, tonal range and image detail would be reduced. Secondly, larger flakes could not be re-adhered smoothly and free of distortion to the glass surface. Fine curled zones remain in the transition areas between the re-adhered flakes and the intact, original areas that after the necessary drying process under weight can be seen as fine wrinkles. Additionally, the flakes can not be accurately re-adhered in their original position. That is to say, the size of the flakes no longer conform in size to the areas where they flaked off so that fine, transparent lines appear when the flakes are too small or dark lines emerge in the case of overlapping margins. The source of this problem can be found in the highly hygroscopic nature of gelatin. The application of water-based consolidants swells both the gelatin of the intact, original image layer along the margins and the gelatin of the flake that is to be re-adhered. The affected areas take up water molecules and their volume increases, i. e. it swells and enlarges. In the transition areas to the untreated areas wavy distortions emerge. In addition the flakes also become somewhat larger and no longer fit exactly into the space on the glass surface. But the use of a water-based consolidant (here gelatin) is a conscious decision because of their optical and physi­ cal properties. Most of the shortcomings described above could be circumvented by the use of a consolidant with a non-aqueous solvent with appropriate optical qualities.12 But then the natural movement in the structure of the gelatin of the treated areas would be prevented, new tensions would be created and thus new cracking would appear. It is thus a conscious decision to privilege the similarity of optical and physical criteria in favour of the otherwise in the field of conservation important criterion of reversibility.

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Basic research by master’s level students Since the start of the project, parallel studies have been carried out in order to under­ stand the fundamental relationships between the cause and course of delamination and the characteristic crack shapes that emerge. This issue is too specific and too complex to be broken down into individual research questions that students could address and investigate in the context of semester projects. Instead, research questions were developed that addressed part of the complex whole and could be investigated in a combination of master’s level semester projects and the subsequent theses. Thema­ tically, these are grouped as follows: 1. Glass corrosion and delamination Is delamination a consequence of a corrosion process of the glass substrate? How advanced is the glass corrosion and in what state is the degradation of the surface? Is the volume of crystallised alkali salts that migrated from the inner glass structure to the surface responsible for the delamination of the image layer? Is there a correlation between the initial emergence of the crack formation and a specific volume of glass corrosion residue? 2. Cracking as a result of production and / or ageing; classification of crack patterns Is the cracking a result of the production or processing or of material fatigue in the gelatin and / or a possible adhesive layer? How are the cracks with their shapes and courses formed? Which non-destructive analysis methods can be used for answering these questions? 3. The relationship between image layer coatings and delamination Is the image layer coated? Is the cracking of the image layer possibly a result of an anterior cracking of the coating layer? Is the craquelé due to ageing? Is only the coating layer affected by cracking and the underlying image layer is still intact? Is the cracked coating layer transferring the cracks to the underlying image layer?

Summary of interim results 13 1. Glass corrosion between glass substrate and image layer of historical silver gelatin glass negatives – mechanisms, consequences and possible conservation treatments (working title, Lena Münzner)

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

13 Microgram. 16x enlargement reflecting light, image layer side, iridescent glass corrosion, corrosion residue can be clearly seen on the glass plate and the image layer. Photographer: Lena Münzner. EMB, glass plate neg. 490. 14 Microgram. 16x enlargement, reflecting light, image layer side, delaminated image layer as a result of intermittent corrosion residue. Photographer: Lena Münzner. EMB, glass plate neg. 530.

Glass corrosion of glass negatives occurs on both sides of the glass. While corrosion on the glass side has no acute consequences for the image layer,14 corrosion on the image-layer-side has a direct chemical and physical impact on the latter. A visual examination of the negatives showed different degrees of glass corrosion. These include some quite large, milky opaque phenomena, iridescent phenomena and some spots where the increased accumulation of localised corrosion residues had resulted in the image layer flaking from the substrate glass (Fig. 13, 14). Especially the flaking results in enormous mechanical and physical stress for the image layer. The flaking of the image layer from the glass substrate and the mechanical strain on it could trigger or expedite cracks emerging in the image layer. It can also be assumed that a large-area-glass-corrosion causes a reduction in the adhesive quality of the image layer to the glass substrate, creating tension in the transition areas between good and reduced adhesion and thus expedite the emergence of potential cracks. The goal of the thesis is to verify these hypotheses and develop conservation treat­ ments for dealing with this phenomenon. In doing so, a classification of corrosion in terms of severity and chemical analysis are necessary in order to determine and evaluate the glass corrosion mechanisms and their effects on the image layer. Other questions that follow from the mentioned phenomenon include: As of what degree of glass corrosion does an irreversible threat to the image layer (i. e. cracking) emerge, that is, at what point is the removal of the image layer from the glass substrate expedient and acceptable in the sense of restoration ethics? To what

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extent does the corrosion residue influence the image layer chemically and mechani­ cally? Is it possible to remove corrosion residue that has migrated into the image layer? How can the image layer be safely removed from the glass plate? How is one to deal with the image layer after its removal? Should it be re-mounted on a substrate for archiving purposes or can the image layer be archived separately? What kind of substrate materials might be used for remounting the image layer? 2. Investigation of the causes for the delamination of image layers and their cracking in historical silver gelatin glass negatives (working title, Jessica Jantč) The delamination and cracking of gelatin image layers on glass substrates is a common problem in many photographic collections. To date it is still an understudied phenomenon in the conservation of photographic heritage. The different cracking formations in particular have so far not been studied, catalogued or described in any detail. The focus of this study is thus the description and analysis of the various manifestations of cracked image layers of silver gelatin glass negatives. In doing so glass negatives from four collections were documented, including four silver gelatin glass negatives from the Hans Heinrich Brüning collection (Fig. 11). In addition to the classification of the cracking patterns, the image layers were exami­ ned for possible causes of delamination and cracking. An X-ray fluorescence analysis identified sulphur, calcium and chromium and mercury in the images no. 504 and no. 539. This indicates the intensification of the silver image due to mercury (II) chloride, which was already been mentioned in early literature as a cause of delamination.15 A series of experiments will be performed in which industrially manufactured dry plates will be processed by different means and silver gelatin glass negatives will be self produced with various adhesion-improving systems. A total of 30 specimens will be exposed to extreme climatic fluctuations in relative humidity in a climatic chamber so as to initiate a reduction in adhesion. It is to expect that the results might vary significantly depending on the processing and adhesion system. So far, the indus­trially manufactured negatives fixed with an “acidic fixer” and a mercury intensification present first signs of a delamination at the edges. A not yet verified hypothesis is that the temperature during the drying of the ­image layers during its production process as an important factor in the different crack patterns since more or less developed crystalline structures in the gelatin emerge depending on the temperature. Thus, it is assumed that an image layer dried under high temperatures forms mostly amorphous regions other crack formations than image layers with crystalline arrangements in the gelatin that were dried more slowly at lower temperatures.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

3. Effects of aged coatings on silver gelatin glass negatives and possible conservation treatments (working title, Jessica Schreiber) Oftentimes, silver gelatin glass negatives such as those in the “Hans Heinrich Brüning collection” were treated after development with transparent lacquer or varnish layers. These layers served to protect the image against mechanical damage and climatic influences. They were also used as substrate for retouching.16 The main component of such coatings were natural, organic binding materials such as resins or vegetable and animal-based glues.17 Synthetically produced nitrocellulose (cellulose lacquer) was also used as a protective layer on the image layer.18 These coatings are subject to ageing processes such as oxidisation due to the in­ fluence of light, relative humidity, temperature and harmful gases in the atmosphere and emanating from materials in immediate proximity. Natural resins or gum arabic are prone to yellowing. Another form of age-related alterations is the formation of the so called craquelé, a net of numerous cracks of varying sizes on the surface of the coating.19 Based on the possible alterations that may occur in such protective layers, the following questions may be asked: What age-related phenomena occur in the varnish and what are their causes? At what point in the ageing and/or degradation process will the coating layer harm the underlying image layer? How do these threats affect the image layer? In order to conserve endangered or already degraded image layers, the question arises, which controllable conservation technique allows for the removal of the coating layer without risking further damage to the image layer?

Conclusion A significant part of the silver gelatin glass negative collection of Hans Heinrich Brüning could be returned to the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin in a conserved con­ dition. Ten glass negatives with more severe delamination must wait for an advanced treatment until the reasons for and the effects of delamination have been clarified. Only then can measures for their conservation be developed. If it turns out that significant glass corrosion is responsible for the delamination of the image layer, the very thin and very fragile image layers will have to be removed from the glass substrate. How this is to be done must be tested in further test series. Essential for the preservation of all silver gelatin glass negatives in general is a regu­ lated and monitored climate in the storage facilities 20 that – as far as possible – exclude fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity. Once they have set in, the cracks

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in the image layers spread at an alarming rate and may lead to a complete loss of the image. A great deal could be done for preserving entire collections of glass negatives simply by optimising the archive climate. The preservation of glass nega­tives with cer­ tain indicators requires further conservation science studies in order to maintain their given state as long as possible. Only then can they be preserved as cultural heritage and only then will they be able to provide further information as research source material.

Bibliography Albright, Gary E. 1997. “A tentative method for consolidating gelatin dry plates.” In Topics in Photographic Preservation, vol. 7, edited by Robin E. ­Siegel, 36 – 37. Washington D. C.: American Institute for Conservation, Photographic Materials Group. Bortfeldt, Maria. 2000. Die Schichtübertragung, ein Restaurierungsverfahren für Cellulosenitratund Celluloseacetatnegative. Diploma at the HTW, Berlin. Eder, Josef Maria, and Henricus Lüppo-Cramer. 1930. “Verarbeitung der photographischen Platten, Filme und Papiere.” In Ausführliches Handbuch der Photographie, vol. 3.2 (6th ed.), 296 – 304. Halle a. d. Saale: W. ­Knapp. Gustavson, Todd. 2009. Camera. A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital. New York: Sterling Innovation. Jantč, Jessica. 2013. Untersuchung der Ursachen für die Ablösung von Fotoschichten und deren Rissbildung an historischen Glasnegativen. Master’s thesis at the HTW, Berlin. Mutter, Edwin. 1962. Kompendium der Photographie. Die Negativ-, Diapositiv- und Umkehr­ verfahren, vol. 2. Berlin: Verlag für Radio-Foto-Kinotechnik. Norris, Debra Hess et al. 2005. “The Conservation Treatment of Original Coatings on Photo­ graphs: Issues and Current Practice.” In Coatings on Photographs, edited by Constance McCabe, 12 – 21. Washington, D. C.: American Institute for Conservation, Photographic Materials Group. Pedersen, Karen Brynjolf et al. 2005. “Coatings on Black-and-white Glass Plates and Early Film.” In Coatings on Photographs, edited by Constance McCabe, 108 – 131. Washington, D. C.: American Institute for Conservation, Photographic Materials Group. Pfeifer, Stefanie. 2007. Die Abbauerscheinungen an einer Gelatinetrockenplatte und ihre restauratorische Behandlung. Diploma thesis at the HTW, Berlin. Protze, Sabine. 2001. Das Problem sich ablösender Gelatine-Emulsion als typische Erscheinung an historischen Glasplatten-Negativen. Diploma thesis at the HTW, Berlin. Schmidt, Fritz. 1901. Photographisches Fehlerbuch. Ein illustrierter Ratgeber für Anfänger und Liebhaber der Photographie, I. ­Teil. Negativ-Verfahren (2nd ed.). Wiesbaden: O. ­Nemnich Verlag. Schmidt, Fritz. 1922. Kompendium der praktischen Photographie (14th ed.). Leipzig: Seemann. Wagner, Sara S. 1989. “A Preliminary Study: Consolidation of Gelatin Glass Plate Negatives with Organosilanes.” In Topics in Photographic Preservation, edited by Robin E. ­Siegel, vol. 3, 69 – 85. Washington D. C.: American Institute for Conservation, Photographic Materials Group.

Hans Heinrich Brüning’s silver gelatin glass negatives as research source material

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

11

12 13

14

15 16 17

This is the technically correct term. The process and the associated products are referred in the historical literature among other things as “dry plate” and “gelatin dry plate”, in more recent literature as “glass plate negative” and colloquially as “negative plate” or, as Brüning does, simply as “plate.” Brüning made these lists with notes on the individual photographs. Cf. Prümers in this volume. With the exception of the direct positive processes such as daguerreotype, ambrotype, pannotype, tintype, diapositive and polaroid processes. Cf. Prümers in this volume. It is not clear if Brüning did so himself. Gustavson 2009, 133. Actually since the introduction of the albumin on glass process by Abel Niépce de St. Victor in 1847 although it was still not very light sensitive and thus did not catch on. Cf. Gustavson 2009, 28 and Mutter 1962, 21 – 24. Brüning himself pointed to this in 1927 when he wrote that the plates had suffered during storage and transportation; cf. Prümers in this volume. Re-adhered with heated gelatine 3% in distilled water, type B, alkaline cow bone/ macerated gristle, high bloom value, produced by Fa. Gelita AG, Eberbach (Germany). To summarise here the state of research would go too far. Three of our MA-students are involved in the project and will present a detailed summary of the state of research in their upcoming theses. The earliest articles of conservators focussing the phenomena of delamination are: Wagner 1989, 69 – 85; Albright 1997, 36 – 37. Pfeifer, Stefanie: Die Abbauerscheinungen an einer Gelatinetrockenplatte und ihre restau­ ratorische Behandlung, Diploma thesis written at the HTW, 2007; Protze, Sabine: Das Problem sich ablösender Gelatine-Emulsion als typische Erscheinung an historischen Glasplatten-Negativen, Diploma thesis written at the HTW, 2001. Bortfeldt, Maria: Die Schichtübertragung, ein Restaurierungsverfahren für Cellulosenitrat- und Celluloseace­ tatnegative, Diploma thesis written at the HTW, 2000. Such as, for example, an ethyl-methacrylate copolymer dissolved in ethylacetate. The students Jessica Jantč, Lena Münzner und Jessica Schreiber examine these hypotheses in their master’s theses and summarise their interim results as of winter semester 2012/13 here briefly. Jessica Jantč finished her master’s thesis titled Untersuchung der Ursachen für die Ablösung von Fotoschichten und deren Rissbildung an historischen Glasnegativen in April 2013. Although it must also be considered that with the glass corrosion of the glass side of the negative the refractive index changes so that the optical image quality is reduced in transmitted light. Schmidt 1901, 93. Schmidt 1922, 263 – 264. Coatings on the basis of natural resins such as dammar, mastic, sandarac, colophony or schellac dissolved in alcohol added lavender, turpentine or castor oil. Coatings on

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18 19 20

the aqueos basis of vegetable or animal glues, for example gum arabic and gelatin. Cf. Eder, and Lüppo-Cramer 1930, 297. Pedersen et al. 2005, 108 – 131. Norris 2005, 16. In accordance with ISO-Norm 18918: 2000 (2005), 18°C and 30 – 40% relative Humidity must be maintained +/- 2°C und +/- 5% relative Humidity. I would not suggest d ­ eviating under 35% relative Humidity since according to our observations the gelatin in the image layer already begins to shrink at this humidity.

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Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

From curiosity to ethnography During the colonial period, European nations had very limited access to the territories conquered by the Spanish crown in the Americas. This was particularly true for the Viceroyalty of Peru, in spite of historians being very interested in indigenous cultures. Little more was known about them than what some Spanish chroniclers and mestizo scholars had written, and only occasionally were these texts ever translated into French, English, German or Dutch. During the eighteenth century, however, travellers began bringing pre-Columbian artefacts to France as examples of  “the industry of the ancient Peruvians”; these artefacts were subsequently exhibited in the cabinets of curiosities of a handful of privileged people.1 Only in rare cases do we know the circumstances under which these objects were acquired but, with a few exceptions, it seems unlikely that the travellers themselves dug up these antiquities. Letters by the naturalist ­Joseph Dombey for example show that with the exception of a few excavations that he organised in Pachacamac and Chancay, the majority of the objects he gathered in Peru were either bought from or given to him by Peruvian scholars and collectors. Had these objects been plundered from graves by people looking for valuable items, as had happened since the early days of colonisation? Did they stem from some of the excavations aimed at documenting archaeological sites that took place during this time, such as the excavations commissioned by the Bishop of Trujillo, Martinez Compañon? Or were they ‘ancestral souvenirs’ that had been kept by certain noble indigenous families? The artefacts probably stemmed from a combination of these methods. Dombey, for example, wrote that he was sending Count d’Angivilliers a chest “full of vases found in the tombs of the old Peruvians and an item of clothing from the family of the Incas”;2 he had in fact bought the piece of clothing from the “family of a cacique” who had possessed it for many years.3 Around 1825, the independence of Peru and the opening of the country’s borders to non-Spaniards enabled the great economic powers to permanently establish themselves and exert increasing influence. These new diplomatic and political conditions provided the large European and North American scientific institutions with the opportunity to explore hitherto little-known territories and collect abundant information. Indeed,

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the side-effects of this inventory of the New World on both anthropology and the history of civilisations should not be forgotten.4 As part of this scientific and commer­ cial exploration – sometimes underpinned by colonial ambitions–‘the natural history of man’ (as anthropology was then known) was re-examined. A series of new racial classifications was proposed, and this continually provoked fresh debate. History as a discipline was also evolving and began to employ archaeology and ethnography as tools to study the Americas and their ancient civilizations. From then on, the ‘hunt’ for scientific artefacts intensified during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mobilising a large number of different players, both officially commissioned explo­ rers, and many amateurs and volunteers. This explains why a surprising number of museums, in Europe as well as in the United States, received donations – in a more or less voluntary and coherent fashion compared to the rest of their collections – of so many ethnographical and archaeological objects from the New World and in particular from Peru.5 Whether due to lack of time or knowledge of the territory, travellers who were sent to Peru as explorers to collect data on indigenous cultures – among many other areas of study – gladly approached local scholars and collectors. Alexander Brongniart, the director of the ceramics museum in Sèvres, asked the natural historian Alcide d’Orbigny, who was preparing to depart for South America, to gather specimens of ceramic art for his museum from all the regions d’Orbigny was intending to travel through.6 In his travel report, d’Orbigny confesses how unsuccessful his own excava­ tions had been and mentions that he acquired some of the objects from other people to complete his collection. It is very clear that d’Orbigny resorted to this method during his stay in Bolivia, but less so with regard to the antiquities he collected in Peru. Yet, considering the geographic origin of some of his objects (Peru’s northern coast) and the short time d’Orbigny spent in Peru (a few weeks between April and May 1830 and then again in August 1833), it seems unlikely that he excavated these objects. It is far more likely that he bought them from the dealers or collectors he met during his stay. In 1843, Francis de Castelnau, one of the first explorers to be accredited by the Service des missions scientifiques et littéraires of the French Ministry of Education, was asked to conduct a large expedition to South America. Initially, he was to concentrate on geography and natural history. However, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, a learned society devoted to the humanities, also asked Castelnau to study artefacts belonging to ancient Andean civilisations, a field far from his area of expertise. Once on his way, he did what all travellers with little knowledge of the country do: he consulted local scholars and collectors for information and useful drawings for his publications.

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

In fact, he mentions some of his acquaintances in his travel report. The contributions of local collectors, however, become blatantly clear in the volume titled Antiquités des Incas et autres peuples anciens recueillis pendant l’expédition. The text contains pictures of objects drawn by Manuel Ferreyros and Auguste Lemoyne, the French minister pleni­ potentiary in Lima and by Alarcon and de Romainville in Cuzco.7 Romainville was a French citizen who had established himself in the ancient Inca capital. He married María Ana Centeno, a Cuzqueña, whose name would recur frequently in Castelnau’s work. In fact, one wonders whether the collection Castelnau saw and which he attri­ buted to de Romainville, was not actually a collection that ­Romainville’s wife had started. Whatever the case, María Ana Centeno was held in high esteem throughout her life, even outside of Peru. One of the most famous explorers, Ephraïm G. ­Squier, a North American, stopped in Cuzco after his archaeological trip to Peru in 1863 and did not fail to visit Centeno. It was in her ‘museum’ that Squier disco­vered a particu­ larly strange artefact: a skull showing signs that a trepanation had been performed on it. María Centeno was kind enough to entrust him with this skull so that he could have it examined by North American anthropologists.8 His account and the drawings in his travel report had a great impact and were widely published by the international academic press at the time. In Lima, some weeks earlier, Squier had become acquainted with the infamous Colonel La Rosa, a man originally from Trujillo, who was fiercely devoted to pillaging pre-Hispanic tombs. La Rosa’s excavations were not conducted for pleasure, nor out of an interest in archaeology; they were not even conducted for his personal collection. His sole aim with the objects he found was commercial. Squier tells us in his book that Colonel La Rosa accompanied him to Trujillo to guide him in his archaeological research and to oversee possible discoveries.9 In the wake of the Spanish conquest, pillaging of archaeological sites had become common practice and some discoveries continued to make treasure seekers dream. One of the most well-known organisations dedicated to pillaging archaeological sites was the Compañia anónima Huacas del Inca 10 founded in 1887, although there were many others. For a long time the huaqueros (tomb raiders) focused on objects made of precious materials. From the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, this practice changed. Objects made from less valuable materials (cloth, ceramics, wood and leather) were now sought after by enthusiasts, as they could command equally high prices. At the same time, a new type of explorer appeared; one who was almost exclusively dedicated to archaeological and ethnographical studies. Charles Wiener is a good example of these new archaeological explorers. Wiener, much like Castelnau a few decades earlier, was officially commissioned by the French government’s Service des missions scientifiques, but this time the purpose of his expedition was specifically to research pre-Columbian civilisations.11 Although

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he had a sound academic background, he must have been aware of his ignorance of the terrain and his relatively limited financial and logistical resources; but this young explorer managed to rally around him many people whose skills and goodwill were to serve his ends. As soon as he arrived in Callao in February 1876, the news of his coming and the goals of his mission were announced in the press: Mr Charles Wiener, professor of history at a French institution, has been tasked by his government with the exploration of some of the South American republics, to visit their monuments and study their traditions […]. Furthermore, he is authorised to send to the Louvre Museum any antiquities and other curiosities that he acquires during his scientific journey to our continent […]. We hope that he may fulfil his goals.12

This appeal to national pride worked wonders. Thanks to his talent of persuasion and his letters of recommendation, Wiener could count on the goodwill of engineers, scholars and hacendados during his entire trip to Peru. He was received with hospitality, provided with advice and even granted material support. The press also ensured him publicity: Professor Ch. Wiener, a distinguished French archaeologist […] is currently visiting the [ruins] of Pativilca, where thanks to the generosity of Mr Canaval, the owner of the haciendas of ­Paramonga, of Upaca etc. he was able to send to the Louvre, in Mr Canaval’s name, a pre­ cious collection of Peruvian antiquities which will help to shed light on our unknown past […]. If other generous Peruvians like Mr Canaval were to step up to support Mr Wiener’s goals, we would soon see the names of intelligent and patriotic Peruvians united in the great Louvre Museum and acclaimed as people who helped enrich the collection of Peruvian antiquities in the most beautiful museum in the world.13

The main input for Wiener’s archaeological research and the book he was to publish later, however, came mainly from a number of scholars and collectors (both Peruvian and French citizens). We know, for example, that Antonio Raimondi provided him with advice and documents 14 and that Frédéric Quesnel and Abel Drouillon offered him nearly half of the objects Charles Wiener brought back with him to France. Moreover, Wiener also contacted another famous collector, Dr José Mariano Macedo, for his help: Dr Macedo’s museum is constantly being visited by cultured and intelligent people […]. The illustrious head of the French scientific mission, Mr Weigner [sic] is currently studying and photographing [antiquities]. Dr Macedo can rightly be proud of his collection. We know that he has also offered Mr Weigner a number of his objects.15

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

Wiener used these photographs taken at Macedo’s museum for the engravings that abundantly illustrate his travel report Pérou et Bolivie published in Paris in 1880. After reading the book, Macedo observed with disappointment that he had been given very little credit and had barely been quoted. He especially regretted that the places of origin of many objects in his collection had been wrongly named in the book.16 Although the knowledge of amateur Peruvian archaeologists and collectors, which was often empirical and not particularly academic, was frequently put to use – not to say exploited – by foreign explorers, the Peruvian authorities rarely did much to motivate and sustain any form of domestic archaeology. Here too, it should be noted that the initiative taken by individuals was the dominant force and even in those cases where governments did start projects, these projects often relied on the support and participation of private individuals.

Scientificity and the creation of a national heritage Shortly after independence, the new governmental institutions passed decrees to protect what thereafter would be considered national patrimony. Obviously, this also included the sites of ancient pre-Columbian civilisations.17 The decree banned the export of antiquities and article two declared that contraband discovered leaving the country was to be handed over to the Museo Nacional. This museum, however, was only established in 1826, and in a very rudimentary form.18 Its first director, Mariano Eduardo de Rivero, academically and institutionally isolated, did all he could to keep the museum alive. He published the results of his scientific investigations in a journal edited by Nicolás de Piérola (Memorial de ciencias naturales y de industria nacional y extranjera) and then outside of Peru.19 His publications on archaeology were concerned with the observation of historic sites, monuments and various objects that he had discovered either during his travels through Peru or which had been shown to him by collectors.20 Overall, though, for the most part of the nineteenth century and with the exception of the initiatives by Rivero and a few others, it is clear that neither the archaeological sites nor the Museo Nacional were held in particular esteem. Sites known for the treasures they potentially harboured were frequently pillaged by Peruvian huaqueros or by travellers. Archaeology was far from a main priority for subsequent governments. The Museo Nacional was transformed into a natural history museum by a supreme decree issued by President Orbegoso in 1836 and slowly fell into a long phase of inactivity. Explorers and travellers rarely described the museum positively. George Carleton, a North American cartoonist, made fun of the museum, albeit in a kind way, in his travel account published in

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the form of a cartoon.21 Not only did the museum rarely receive new objects, but numerous cases of theft and embezzlement of precious objects also occurred.22 Despite regular protests published in the press, the museum continued on its path of slow decline. During this time, the museum at Cuzco was experiencing a similar fate. This ‘museum-library’ had been inaugurated with much ado in Cuzco on 28 July, 1848 and embodied all the promises of development and access to modern civilisation that were aspired to by the Cuzco elite. Unfortunately for Cusqueños, this academic institution dedicated to the city’s patrimony also became a victim of public apathy: it fell into decline and was then forgotten. Without doubt this state of affairs owed much to the more general conditions prevailing within Peruvian society at the outset of the Republican era when for a long time the institutional fabric remained very fragile. The teaching of ancient Peruvian history only began in universities towards the end of the century. Public research institutions were almost non-existent and the network of learned societies was also rather fragile. Accordingly, the vast majority of institutions with an interest in archaeology and in promoting archaeological activities disappeared very quickly. Only two societies, the Amantes del Saber and the Club Literario (both created around 1872 – 1873) were able to maintain their activities for several years. The latter organisation was divided into ten sections, each with a specific focus of activity. Its seventh section was called Bibliografía y arqueología (Bibliography and archaeology). In June 1873, it published the following statement, in which the organisation expressed its desire to facilitate research into national history: The President has developed a project to ask the people of Lima who are in possession of historic documents or antiquities, to list the items in their collections. These lists will be made up into a catalogue which will be permanently available to all those requesting information on these topics, particularly writers and explorers.23

As these examples show, there was a certain desire to bring together archaeological remains not only to provide research material for Peruvian and foreign academics, but also to increase Peru’s reputation abroad. The aim was to show that the country had a great historic legacy and that it was capable of preserving and displaying this heritage. To compensate for the lack of state institutional support, initiatives were frequently private. In 1862, José Dávila Condemarín founded a museum based on his private collections, which included old master paintings and a number of rare objects as well as Peruvian antiquities.24 This museum was to be open to the public. Its inauguration on 1 August 1862 had all the official character of an important

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

1 Ceramics from the collection belonging to Dr José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-25.

public event and was attended by the president and the entire government. Much later, in 1876, the collector José Mariano Macedo also opened a museum, which was described in an article praising the quality of his collections and that of the museum’s visitors: We can guarantee that the countless rare objects making up the collection we are referring to will leave no person unmoved […]. During the last couple of days, numerous experts have visited Dr Macedo’s museum of antiquities and all have expressed their complete satisfaction. Among these people were the German ambassador to Peru, Mr Lührsen, and the leader of the archaeo­ logical mission to Peru from the Académie d’archéologie in Paris [sic], Mr Wiener. […] Please note that entry to Dr Macedo’s collection of paintings and Peruvian antiquities is free of charge.25

Certain intellectuals and publicists were well aware that these large collections were part of the national heritage. Faced with the rising demand for archaeological arte­ facts from explorers and foreign collectors, voices began to be raised, affirming that these private collections were an integral part of the nation’s heritage and therefore worth protecting. In another article lamenting the inertia of the Museo Nacional, the author wrote:

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Museums and libraries alike mark a people’s degree of civilisation […]. Starting with our museum, we could create one for archaeology and a second one for natural history. Both could be considerably enlarged and enhanced by acquiring Mrs Centeno’s museum in Cuzco and Mr Condemarín’s art gallery, both containing priceless archaeological treasures.26

A noteworthy event in the cultural history of Republican Peru took place on 28 July, 1872. In Lima, a large number of private collectors participated in the opening of a grand exhibition organised by the municipality. The dynamics of this event led President Manuel Pardo to found the Sociedad de Bellas Artes by decree on 17 November 1872. This organisation was to manage the Palacio de la Exposición that would henceforth house the collection of the former Museo Nacional, which had been completed by various donations and private initiatives. In 1875, Francisco Bahamonde obtained a supreme government resolution authori­ sing him to excavate in Ancón and to exhume “huacos and other objects” in order to exhibit them in the Museo Nacional.27 To a certain degree, this fulfilled the request made by Agustín de la Rosa Toro to the government in 1873; Toro was a pedagogue renowned in Peru and president of the archaeological section of the Club Literario. He had asked for permission to present Peruvian artefacts in one of the rooms belonging to the exhibition palace as he had hoped to gather objects by asking for the support of his fellow citizens in Lima.28 This, however, says nothing about whether these projects were successful. In fact, beyond their declared intentions, many of these initiatives do not seem to have been successful. The Sociedad de Bellas Artes, for example, had planned to organise an “archaeological competition’ at this same location. It seems the idea was to ask the country’s art lovers and collectors to send a selection of antique objects and display them in the exhibition palace. The museum had planned to inaugurate the exhibition on 25 December, 1874; yet on 25 November, the organisers used the daily newspaper El Comercio to announce to potential participants and visitors that, considering the amount of time required to send and install objects from the different corners of the republic, the opening had been postponed until 2 May, 1875. It is not clear whether the event then actually took place. Another exhibition organised by the municipality of Lima in 1877 was apparently more successful. On 2 June, 1877, the press announced an “exhibition of art and interesting artistic and archaeological objects”. Among the members of the commission that received these objects were two well-known collectors: José Dávila Condemarín and José Mariano Macedo.29 Naturally, the ex­ hibition opened its doors on July 28, Peru’s National Day. Among the prize-winning exhibitors were the German minister plenipotentiary with his “archaeological objects

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

2 Mummy bundles from the collection belonging to Emilio Montes. Photographer: Luis Alviña, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 685 b.

from the Orient, Europe and Peru”, Tomás Gadea 30 for his “collection of huacos” and pieces from the private collection belonging to José Dávila Condemarín that were presented at the final show.31 Organised in the capital, these exhibitions were probably very important for those who wished to have their collections admired or, more prosaically, who wanted for one reason or another to appeal to the public. Meanwhile, world exhibitions were an even more crucial challenge. After 1851, when the first great international fair took place in London, these events had a great impact. Over the years, these universal exhibitions met with ever greater success.32 In Paris, in 1867, Peru was hardly represented (except through a few private exhibitors). It was not until the 1876 World Fair in Philadel­ phia that Peru showed any real interest in being represented with its own pavilion. National archaeology, it seems, was an important feature at the pavilion.33 Only one exhibitor’s name is known: William Colville, probably a British trader famous for his large stationer’s shops in Lima and Callao. However, it is possible that other

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3 Pavillon of Peru at the Paris Exposition in 1878. In: L’exposition de Paris. Journal hebdomadaire 26 (1878).

collectors participated in this show. Several collectors attended the 1878 World Fair in Paris, notably Emilio Montes. His participation was highlighted in the newspaper El Comercio.34 Unfortunately for Montes, his collection appears to have arrived late in Paris and was, it seems, sent back to Peru without ever having been unpacked!35 It is unclear whether Nicolás Saenz, who also sent a collection of archaeological and ethnographical objects to be exhibited in Paris,36 was luckier. Nevertheless, a large number of pre-Columbian antiquities did find their way to Peru’s pavilion at the World Fair in Paris, with its strong focus on archaeology. The facade of the pavilion was an imitation stone construction from the time of the Incas, and decorated with a frieze inspired by the monuments of Tiahuanaco. This ‘indigenous’ stamp was emphasized by two figures, one on each side of the entry to the pavilion, dressed like pre-conquest Quechua warriors. Visitors looking for something new surely found the pavilion delightfully exotic, but it was probably a bit too exotic for the members of the Peruvian elite living in Paris, who were furious to see themselves identified with Indian antiquities.37 This mini-scandal reverberated as far afield as Peru, where Arosemena Quesada, one of the officials in charge of organising Peru’s pavilion at the World Fair, had to defend himself against accusations:

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

We have also been criticised because we sent Peruvian antiquities to the fair. These objects, however, were given by individual exhibitors; it was their free choice. Our government was asked to send these kinds of objects for a special section at the World Fair; that is why we accepted them. Moreover, at the World Fair in Philadelphia our collection of Peruvian antiquities received a prize.38

These international exhibitions were as much a demonstration of the might of the great industrial powers as a place for younger nations to present themselves; they were huge open-air theatres and enormous commercial fairs. Everything, or nearly everything, including archaeological artefacts, was put up for sale after the fair had been concluded. Perhaps these collections of antiquities were also sent to show the cultural grandeur of the ancient Incan Empire, but without doubt they were also sent from Peru to tempt European collectors and to be sold on the spot at a good price.

Commercial temptation We have seen that from the early years of Peruvian independence, travellers were keen to buy indigenous archaeological objects, whether as souvenirs or as material to be studied by scholarly institutions. Without doubt, certain people very quickly became aware of the commercial value of these antiquities and organised the export of objects from illegal excavations. In the great capitals of the European continent and the United States, this led collections of objects made from precious materials, or those that were especially remarkable due to their form or decoration, to be regu­ larly offered for sale. In his report on his explorations, Ephraïm Squier states that he remembered seeing a large number of objects for sale in London from the ruins of Chimú (Chan-Chan), Moche and the Viru Valley, which had been sent by Mr La Rosa and entrusted to a certain Mr Ferris. Ferris then sold the artefacts, partly to the British Museum and partly to George Folsom, who gave them to the Historical Society in New York.39 Other similar testimonies exist that give us an idea of how frequently this probably happened. In one of his letters to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Théodore Ber wrote that he once saw a collection of antiquities from the region of Moche in the shop of a Parisian merchant who did business with Peru. Ber described the collection as “the richest and most varied and surprising collection of items” he had ever seen.40 The ceramics brought back in 1882 by Abel Drouillon, a pharmacist and former French vice-consul in Trujillo, came from this same part of Peru and was subsequently sold by the dealer Eugène Boban.41 As suggested earlier, World Fairs were an ideal opportunity for publicity. Charles Wiener reported that

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Colville, after displaying his collection in Philadelphia in 1876, went on to offer it for sale in Paris in 1878.42 The same author states that Emilio Montes wanted to take advantage of this World Fair to find a buyer for his own formidable collection, but that the circumstances – the late arrival of his collection and its subsequent return home – stopped him from successfully completing his project.43 In 1892, a new exhi­ bition was inaugurated in Lima with a focus on archaeology. A report on the event published in the Peruvian press clearly shows the two tendencies the large Peruvian collectors were torn between. On the one hand was their patriotic pride in owning a collection that foreign museums longed to have, but on the other was the temptation to sell this collection to the highest bidder: Mr Nicolás Saenz and Dr Manuel A. ­Muñiz must have invested considerable efforts to organise this section of this monumental exhibition […]. The Peruvian section of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, the largest of its kind in the civilised world, cannot compare with the splendid section of the 1892 exhibition where the best Peruvian collections have been united in an exceptional manner. Montes’ collection is worth more than 100,000 Soles, the great collection owned by Saenz about the same, plus Ortega’s collection, etc.44

In all probability the author is not being ingenuous by emphasizing the financial value of these collections first and foremost – even if it is only to make the reader with little knowledge of such matters understand that this exhibition is more than an old collection of huacos. In fact, after 1870, to a certain degree some of these collections had become nationally important. One of the first, the collection belonging to Emilio Montes, was described in a lengthy article illustrated by a photograph engraved in the cultural review El Correo del Perú,45 the same magazine that later published an article on the collection that had belonged to María Ana Centeno,46 and one year later, in 1876, an article on the Macedo collection.47 Each time the author praised the richness and variety of these collections and deplored the fact that they were at risk of leaving the country. A new article on the ‘Centeno museum’ (this time upon the publication of a catalogue), appeared in La Patria in 1876, hammering home the point by warning that this collection was about to be sold abroad and that it was desirable that the state buy the collection for the Museo Nacional.48 Some of these articles were also probably aimed at increasing pressure and thereby the bids by potential buyers for these numerous collections, in particular those of foreign collectors or museums. In fact, although some of these collections were presented as being on the verge of leaving the country, they usually only ever did so several years later. José Mariano Macedo took his collection to France and put it up for sale in Paris in 1881. In spite

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

4 Ceramics from the collection belonging to Nicolás Saenz, Lima. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E 589 p.

of advertising by Macedo himself, his collection took some time to sell.49 Appa­ rently, the museum in Berlin soon showed interest, but signing the contract still took time, probably due to negotiations over the price.50 The deal was near to conclusion when Adolfo Romainville y Centeno (María Ana Centeno’s son?) wrote to Adolf Bastian in 1886 and offered to buy Centeno’s famous collection. They closed the deal in September 1887.51 In France the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro did not have sufficient funds for such acquisitions, but a letter from its curator Dr Hamy provides evidence that in 1883, Charles Wiener, who had returned to Peru, was negotiating with Emilio Montes to buy his collection of antiquities.52 This deal, however, came to nothing. During another World Fair in Chicago in 1893, Montes’ son finally sold the collection to the Field Museum in ­Chica­go.53 Among the large collections that stayed in Peru we should clearly mention the collection belonging to José Lucas Caparó Muñiz that was bought by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco in the early twentieth century.54 This was a time when Peruvian archaeology was becoming increasingly institutionalised thanks to a number of organisations such as the Instituto Histórico, the Sociedad Geográfica de Lima, the universities of Lima and Cuzco and the Museo Nacional.

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5 Photograph of the collection belonging to Emilio Montes. Photographer: unknown, before 18 January 1873. EMB, VIII E 704.

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

Conclusion In its beginnings, archaeological research in Peru relied to a large extent on the work of explorers and amateur contributors with very little knowledge of the country and its ancient history. These people therefore generally had no knowledge of the terrain in which they were supposed to work. This meant they made frequent recourse to local scholars and collectors for information, solid data and even artefacts that they then triumphantly shipped to Europe or the United States. Peruvian collectors were probably flattered to contribute to scientific endeavours that tended to highlight and glorify their pre-Hispanic past, which represented a significant part of their national identity. However, with increasing pressure from foreign collectors and museums to acquire ever more archaeological artefacts,55 many Peruvian collectors, perhaps also discouraged by the lack of national scientific institutions and the absence of interest by successive governments, yielded to commercial temptation and sold their collections abroad. It was only in the early decades of the twentieth century that Peru began to systematically take charge of its national heritage. The country institutionalised archaeological research and passed corresponding legislation to prevent the further export of pre-Columbian remains. The integration of this national archaeology into a globalised world had long been in the preparing. Unpublished documents [Archives nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine] Letter from Macedo to the administration of the Louvre (7 septembre 1881), Archives des Musées Nationaux, A21. Letter from Hamy à Saint-Arroman (Paris, 25 avril 1883), F/17/3846/2. [Archivo del Ministerio de Fomento, Dirección de Obras Públicas] Catalogo de la colección Montes, legajo 40 – 110. Catalogo de los objetos que remite Nicolás Saenz a la exposición universal de París por conducto de la comisión nombrada al efecto por el Supremo Gobierno, legajo 40 – 510. [Archivo Nacional de la Nación, Lima] Testamento de José Mariano Macedo, Actas notariales Juan Ignacio Berninzon, protocolo 99, fol.382 – 385, Lima, 28 de diciembre 1889. [Archives du laboratoire d’Anthropologie biologique du Musée de l’Homme/MNHN, Paris] Lettre de Théodore Ber au Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Lima, juin 1879. [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Acta betreffend die Erwerbung der Sammlung des Dr. Macedo, Pars I B. ­Litt., E 236/86.

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Bibliography Ávalos de Matos, Rosalía and Rogger Ravines. 1974. “Las antigüedades peruanas y su pro­ tección legal.” Revista del Museo Nacional XL: 363 – 439. Bauer, Brian S. and Charles Stanich. 1990. Killke and Killke-Related Pottery from Cuzco, Peru, in the Field Museum of Natural History (= Fieldiana. Anthropology. New Series, 15). Field Museum of Natural History: Chicago. Carleton, George W. 1866. Our artist in Peru [fifty drawings on wood]. Leaves from the sketchbook of a traveller during the winter of 1865 – 6. New York: Carleton. Castelnau, Francis de. 1854. Expédition dans les parties centrales de l’Amérique du Sud. 3e partie. Antiquités des Incas et autres peuples anciens recueillis pendant l’expédition. Paris: P. ­Bertrand. Catalogo del Museo de la Señora Centeno, Cuzco. 1876. Lima: Imprenta de la Merced. Catalogue d’objets archéologiques du Pérou de l’ancien empire des Incas. 1881. Paris: Imprimerie hispano-américaine. Coloma Porcari, César. 1994. Los inicios de la arqueología en el Perú ó “Antigüedades peruanas” de Mariano Eduardo de Rivero. Lima: Instituto Latinoamericano de Cultura y Desarollo. Gänger, Stefanie. 2014. Relics of the Past. The Collecting and Study of Pre-Columbian Anti­quities in Peru and Chile, 1837 – 1911. Oxford Studies in the History of Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hamy, Ernest-Théodore. 1905. Joseph Dombey, médecin, naturaliste, archéologue, explorateur du Pérou, du Chili et du Brésil (1778 – 1785), sa vie, son œuvre, sa correspondance, avec un choix de pièces relatives à sa mission. Paris: E. ­Guilmoto. Hoffmann, Beatrix. 2007. “Posibilidades y limitaciones para la reconstrucción y recontextuali­ zación de la colección Gretzer del Museo Etnológico de Berlín.” Baessler-Archiv 55: 165 – 178. Raimondi, Antonio. 2007. Minerales del Perú. Introducción y notas por Luis Felipe Villacorta Ostolaza. Lima: UNMSM. Ravines, Rogger. 1989. “El museo del Doctor José Dávila Condemarín.” Boletin de Lima, 61: 5 – 10. Riviale, Pascal. 1993. “Les antiquités péruviennes et la curiosité américaine dans les collections françaises sous l’Ancien Régime.” Histoire de l’Art 21/22: 37 – 45. Riviale, Pascal. 1996. Un siècle d’archéologie française au Pérou (1821 – 1914). Paris: L’Harmattan. Riviale, Pascal. 2000. “L’œuvre archéologique d’Alcide d’Orbigny.” In Alcide d’Orbigny à la découverte des nouvelles républiques sud-américaines, edited by Philippe de Laborde Pédelahore, 363 – 396. Paris: Atlantica Transhumances. Riviale, Pascal. 2010. “Entre exotisme et pragmatisme: l’Amérique latine dans les premières expositions universelles en France (1855 – 1889)”. In Exotiques expositions. Les expositions universelles et les cultures extra-européennes, France, 1855 – 1937, edited by Christiane ­Demeulenaere, 64 – 75. Paris: Archives nationales/Somogy éditions d’art. Riviale, Pascal. 2011. “Europe rediscovers Latin America: collecting Artefacts and Views in the First Half of 19th Century”. In Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World, edited by Peter Mancall and Daniela Bleichmar, 254 – 268. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

Riviale, Pascal and Christophe Galinon. 2013. Une vie dans les Andes: le journal de Théodore Ber (1864 – 1896). Paris: Ville de Figeac/Gingko éditeur. Squier, Ephraïm G. 1877. Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas. New York: Harper and Brothers. Dr Saffray. 1876. “Exposition de Philadelphie. Les antiquités péruviennes.” La Nature 182: 401 – 407. Schroeder-Gudehus, Brigitte and Anne Rasmussen. 1992. Les fastes du progrès. Le guide des Expositions universelles, 1851 – 1992. Paris: Flammarion. Tello, Julio and Mejía Xesspe. 1967. Historia de los museos nacionales del Perú (1822 – 1946). Lima: Museo Nacional de Antropología y Arqueología & Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (= Arqueológicas, 10). Wiener, Charles. 1880. Pérou et Bolivie. Paris: Hachette.

Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

Riviale 1993. Letter sent from Lima, 11 December, 1778. Count d’Angivilliers was the superintendent of the Bâtiments du Roi department. Unfortunately for Dombey, this exceptional artefact was confiscated by the Spaniards and is today preserved in the Museo de América in Madrid. Hamy 1905, 41. Riviale 2011. Riviale 1996. Riviale 2000. Castelnau 1854. Squier 1877, 456. Squier 1877, 117. Riviale 1996, 391. Riviale 1996, 138. “El señor Charles Wiener, profesor de historia en uno de los institutos oficiales de Francia, ha recibido de su gobierno la honrosa comisión de explorar algunas repúblicas sud-americanas […]. Esta autorizado asi mismo por enviar al Museo del Louvre las antigüedades ó curiosidades que pueda obtener durante su científica permanencia por este continente […]. Deseamos que aqui llene su objeto”. “Comisionado explorador para Sud-América”, El Comercio, 25 February, 1876. “El profesor Ch. Wiener, distinguido arqueologo francés […] se halla en la actualidad visitando las [ruinas] de Pativilca; de donde, mediante la benevolencia y generosidad del Sr Canaval, proprietario de las grandes haciendas de Paramonga, de Upaca, etc., ha conseguido remitir al museo del Louvre y en nombre del Sr Canaval una preciosa colección de antigüedades peruanas que contribuirán a ilustrar la historia oscura de nuestro pasado […]. Si como el Sr Canaval hay otros tantos peruanos generosos que protejan las miras del Sr Wiener, pronto tendremos reunidos en el gran museo del Louvre los nombres de peruanos inteligentes y patriotas que contribuyan a enriquecer

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14

15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25

26

la colección de antigüedades peruanas que posee el mas hermoso museo del mundo.” “Arqueología”, El Comercio, 4 July, 1876. Luis Felipe Villacorta Ostolaza published the letters sent by Wiener during his travels in Peru to Raimondi in a new edition of the book by Raimondi Minerales del Perú, Lima, UNMSM, 2007. “El museo del Dr Macedo es continuamente visitado por personas ilustradas e inteli­ gentes […]. Actualmente ocupa el ilustre y científico comisionado francés Sr Weigner [sic] de estudiar [las antigüedades] y mandar se fotografien muchas de ellas. El Dr Macedo puede vanagloriarse justamente por su obra. Sabemos que este ha obsequiado al Sr M. ­Weigner varios objetos.” La Opinión nacional, 8 May, 1876. In the introduction to the catalogue of his collection Macedo diligently listed the mistakes in Wiener’s book (Catalogue d’objets archéologiques du Pérou… 1881, IV-VII). Macedo also – unsuccessfully – attempted to trace the artefacts he had forwarded to the Louvre through Wiener and for which he did not receive the thanks he was entitled to receive (letter from Macedo to the Louvre administration, 7 September, 1881. Archives nationales/Archives des musées nationaux, A21). Supreme decree n° 89. Lima, 2 April, 1822, quoted in Ávalos de Matos and Ravines 1974, 373. Tello and Mejía Xesspe 1967, 3. Coloma Porcari 1994. In particular, the names of Manuel Ferreyros, Pio Tristan, José Dávila Condemarín are prominent. Carleton 1866, 50. Tello and Mejía Xesspe 1967, 38. “Habiendo manifestado el presidente la necesidad de pedir a las personas que se hallan en Lima documentos historicos y antigüedades nacionales, una lista de ellos, para formar un catálogo que se tendría siempre a disposición de cuantos individuos solici­ tasen informes y datos de este genero, particularmente los escritores y los viajeros.”, El Comercio, 25 June, 1873. El Comercio, 11 August, 1862; Ravines 1989. “Podemos asegurar, desde ahora que no habrá persona alguna a quien no cause una muy grata complacencia al observar el sin número de objetos curiosos que contiene la colección a que nos referimos […]. En estos días han visitado muchas personas, competentes en la materia, el museo de antigüedades del Dr Macedo y todas han dado muestras de la mas completa satisfacción ; el ministro del Imperio alemán, el Sr Lührsen, y el Sr Wiener, comisionado de la Academia de arquelogía de París [sic], se cuentan en este último número […]. Para terminar, advertiremos que el Dr Macedo franquea gratuitamente la entrada a sus salones de pintura y antigüedades peruanas.” “Colección de antigüedades peruanas”, La Opinión nacional, 13 April, 1876. “Los museos como las bibliotecas acreditan el grado de civilización de los pueblos […]. De nuestro museo podían hacerse dos. Uno de antigüedades históricas y otro de historia natural. Uno y otro podrían aumentarse y embellecerse considerablemente. Podrían

Archaeological collections in Peru and their international influence during the nineteenth century

27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34

35 36

37 38

39 40

41

42 43 44

comprarse el de la Sra Centeno del Cuzco y la pinacoteca del Sr Condemarín que contiene tesoros de arqueología inestimables.” El Nacional, 31 January, 1869. El Comercio, 12 June, 1875. El Comercio, 20 September, 1873. El Comercio, 2 and 20 June, 1877. Possibly this same Tomás Gadea, a first instance judge in Huaylas province, donated a collection of pre-Columbian objects to the former Museo Nacional in 1862, Tello and Mejía Xesspe 1967, 41. El Comercio, 20 and 24 August, 1877. Moreover, following this exhibition, the photogra­ pher Castillo was awarded a silver medal, a fact mentioned on the back of the pieces of card onto which his photographs are glued. Some of these photographs showing artefacts from the Macedo collection can be seen in the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. It is believed between 11 and 15 million visitors came to see the Paris World Fair in 1867 and over 16 million in 1878, Schroeder-Gudehus and Rasmussen 1992, 76. Saffray 1876. El Comercio, 11 May, 1878. One of the photographs conserved in Berlin shows the objects belonging to him, and is signed by Montes in Lima on 21 June 1878, probably shortly before the collection was sent to France. The manuscript of the catalogue for this collection (Lima, 24 May 1878) can be found in the Archivo del Ministerio de Fomento, Dirección de Obras públicas, legajo 40 – 110. Wiener 1880, 278 “Catalogo de los objetos que remite Nicolás Saenz a la exposición universal de París por conducto de la comisión nombrada al efecto por el Supremo Gobierno”, Archivo del Ministerio de Fomento, Dirección de Obras públicas, legajo 40 – 510. Riviale 2010, 72. “Se critica también, que se haya mandado a la Exposición antigüedades peruanas. Estos objetos han sido remitidos por expositores particulares, que eran muy libres para hacerlo, y si se ha protejido el envio, ha sido porque el gobierno recibió una invitación para la remesa de objetos de esta clase, para una sección especial que debiera establecerse en la Exposición. Ademas, en la Exposición de Philadelfia merecieron un gran premio las colecciones que de aqui se remetieron de estas antigüedades.” El Comercio, 15 June, 1878. Squier 1877, 116. “la plus riche, la plus variée, la plus surprenante que j’eusse jamais vue.” Letter from Théodore Ber to the natural history museum of Paris (Lima, June 1879). Archives du Laboratoire d’anthropologie biologique, Musée de l’Homme/Muséum national d`Histoire naturelle (cited in Riviale 1996, 394). Cf. Riviale. “L’anthropologue et le marchand: la relation Hamy-Boban”, soon to be published in Histore(s) de l’Amérique latine, 2015. Part of this collection of Mochica ceramics is in the Musée-château of Boulogne-sur-Mer. Wiener 1880, 54. Wiener 1880, 278. “Grande ha sido la labor que en el laborioso e inteligente arreglo que esta sección han tenido que desplegar los Sres Nicolás Saenz y Dr Manuel A. Muñiz en esta monumental

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45

46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53 54 55

instalación [...]. La sección peruana del mueso etnográfico de Berlín que es la mas rica del mundo civilizado, no puede compararse con esta espléndida sección de la Exposición de 1892, tanto por el número de objetos, cuanto por la circunstancia muy especial de hallarse reunidas las mejores colecciones existentes en el Perú, tales como las de Montes que se valorizan en más de 100.000 soles; la magnífica de Saenz, de valor parecida, la de Ortega, etc.”, “La Exposición”, El Comercio, 10 December, 1892. This exhibition is also described in details in a lengthy letter by Théodore Ber to Hamy, cited by Riviale and Galinon 2013, 173 – 177. “Antigüedades peruanas”, El Correo del Perú, February 11, 1874. The Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin owns a photograph that was used for an engraving to illustrate this article. This particular print has a dedication signed by Montes (Cuzco, 18 January, 1873) to Herman Göhring, a German engineer, who was planning the layout of a road along the Río Urubamba. El Correo del Perú, 3 September, 1875. El Correo del Perú, 27 February, 1876. The same article was published previously in the newspapers La Opinión nacional on 12 February 1876, and El Comercio on, 16 February 1876. La Patria, 23 November, 1876. Macedo asked his friend Pacheco Zagarra to present a set of photographs of his artefacts at an American Studies meeting in Madrid. These were probably the same photographs as the copies held by the museum in Berlin. “Museo Macedo. Ceramica Americana”, Actas del congreso de americanistas, 4ª reunión (Madrid, 1881). Madrid, imp. De Fortanet, 1883, 322 – 330. From 1882 Théodore Hamy speaks of this as a closed deal (“La collection péruvienne du Docteur Macedo”, in Revue d’Ethnographie, volume I, 1882, 68 – 71 and 543). In reality, however, the deal was only concluded around 1887. It is interesting to note that having sold this first collection, Macedo, when writing his will in 1889, indicated that he owned “a select collection of Incan antiquities”. He wished a catalogue of this collection to be sent to the director of the museum in Berlin “to allow him to make an offer to buy the collection”. Archivo General de la Nación, Actas notariales Juan Ignacio Berninzon, protocolo 99, fol.382 – 385. Lima, 28 December, 1889. EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung der Sammlung des Dr. Macedo, Pars I B. ­Litt., E 236/86. Letter from Hamy to Saint-Arroman. Paris, 25 April, 1883, Archives des Musées Nacio­ naux, F/17/3846/2. Bauer and Stanich 1990, 2 – 3. Gänger 2014. For example, Wilhelm Gretzer’s impressive archaeological collection built up during this period. Hoffmann 2007.

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STEFANIE GÄNGER

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo (1870s – 1890s)

In 1890, the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin acquired a series of twenty-­ nine photographs of pre-Columbian antiquities pertaining to the collection of José Mariano Macedo (1823 – 1894) from a vendor by the name of Julio Ludowieg. The photographs are kept to this day among the Ethnologisches Museum’s collection of historical photographs from Latin America. The story of their making, the networks of exchange that moved them around, and their acquisition by the museum essentially elude us. This paper seeks to reassemble the photographs’ ‘lives’ before they entered the Museum.1 It studies the photographs’ social existence as objects, rebuilding the story of their making through the history of photography and collecting in the city of Lima in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it reconstructs their movement – their possible owners and trajectories – between the time of their making and their sale to the museum in 1890. With few archival records left in the museum to inform us of their history, we are confined to the marks history has left on the photographs themselves: the contents they convey, of course, but also the faded inscriptions that determined their forms of communication and validate their value as historical docu­ ments 2 as well as their materiality and physical presence – the traces of the ways in which they have been stored or displayed, their dimensions, stains, blunted corners, and presentational forms.3

The Making. Photography in Lima and Cuzco, 1870s–1880s The photographs entitled “Objects from the Dr Macedo Collection” are without exception representations of ‘antiquities’ – man-made artefacts associated with the pre-Columbian past of Peru. Each of the photographs shows a particular material type of pre-Columbian antiquity, as was common in archaeological exhibitions, atlases, and catalogues at the time. Of the twenty-nine pictures, twenty-five display assemblages or single sculptured ceramics. Of the remainder, two photographs show minuscule precious metal pins and figurines laid out on cloth;4 another depicts three larger, woven textiles and a last photograph displays three small textile fragments with geometric drawings. The photographs represent but a fragment of Macedo’s

Stefanie Gänger

possessions: by 1881, Macedo owned around two thousand pre-Columbian antiqui­ ties that formed one of Lima’s most salient and largest archaeological collections. The photographs still impart, however, a faithful vision of the significance of the elaborate and colourful sculptured ceramics among Macedo’s possessions. Macedo exhibited a marked preference for antiquities from Peru’s north coast, a space with a long tradition of sculptured ceramics, with stirrup bottles and other closed forms depicting both religious and genre themes.5 Over 1,200 entries in Macedo’s 1881 collection catalogue describe ceramics from coastal sites: from Cajamarca, from Ancón or Pachacamac near Lima, and from Lambayeque, Casma, and Chimbote on the very north of the country’s coastline. Only very few additions came from the Andes, from Recuay, or from Puno and Cuzco in the southern highlands.6 The important share of busts of humans, animal figurines, and representations of flora among the photographs echoes Macedo’s fondness of the aesthetically appealing and his manifest preference for the figurative. The twenty-nine photographs today in Berlin thus provide a close glimpse of a nineteenth-century Lima antiquities collection, of its owner’s taste and visual habits. Even though all of the twenty-nine photographs depict antiquities that once belonged to Macedo, there is evidence that the images were taken by different photo­graphers, in different places, and, so it will seem, on a number of different occasions. Occasional handwritten captions or overprints, sometimes on the back of the photo­graphs or on the white cardboard frame that hems the images, reveal scattered fragments of intelligence about the images’ making and purpose. Without exception, each of the twenty-nine photographs carries an embossed or printed logo on the front that indicates, or at least provides a clue as to the photographic studio where Macedo had the photographs taken. The majority – twenty-four – of the photographs that lie in the museum’s archives carry overprints that point to the Lima photographer Rafael Castillo – one of the principal photographers in the thriving photographic market that had surfaced in Peru after the opening of the first studio in Lima in 1842.7 Even these twenty-four images seem, however, to have been taken on different occasions. Eleven of the photographs by Castillo are uniformly mounted on tawny cards and carry a plain inscription in capital letters – “R. ­CASTILLO” on the left-hand side of the frame, and “LIMA” on the right. One of the images depicts twenty-one minuscule precious metal pins and figurines laid out on cloth, another shows three larger, woven textiles arranged next to one another; and nine photographs display select pieces or assemblages of sculptured anthropomorphic and zoomorphic ceramics.8 The reverse of these eleven photographs carries another imprint that reveals the approximate date and purpose of their making:

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

1 A single stirrup-bottle with human heads sticking out of it. The photograph carries an imprint on the back that reads “Silver Medal EXPOSITION OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1877”. Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-18.

“Exposition 1877. Silver Medal EXPOSITION OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 1877”.9 Ever since Peru’s first national exhibition in 1869, photography had figured among the exhibits in the country’s national and municipal expositions next to the industries and arts.10 Castillo indeed exhibited four panels with photographs (cuatro cuadros fotografías) at Lima’s Municipal Exposition in 1877 and was awarded a silver medal in the competition for the best exhibits – with, so it will seem, his photographs of Macedo’s antiquities.11 The remainder of the photographs taken by Castillo differs from the ones exhibited in 1877, most notably in the colour of the cardboard and the overprint. Three of the photographs carry a stylish red engraving that reads “Retrato Imperial R. ­Castillo” on top of the “R. ­CASTILLO” and “LIMA” captions.12 These photographs adhere to creme-coloured cardboard, in some cases marked with a “Calle de Baquijano, 268” on the back: Baquíjano Street 268 was the address where Castillo opened his own photographic studio in 1874.13

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2 Twenty-three ceramics arranged on a credenza from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. The photograph carries a stylish red engraving that reads “Retrato Imperial R. Castillo”. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-1.

Nine of the Castillo photographs carry a faint grey overprint “R. ­Castillo Fotógrafo”, centrered on the lower rim of the cardboard.14 Even though all of the nine pictures with the grey overprint were probably taken on the same occasion – the make-shift dresser with tiers the antiquities stand on is draped in the same way – the photographs vary in the shades of their sepia colour: they were either exposed to different lighting conditions during exposure or had been deposited, displayed or handled differently, since their production. One of the photographs taken by Castillo breaks ranks with the remainder: it carries the plain inscription in capital letters – “R. ­CASTILLO” and “LIMA” – that characterizes the photographs exhibited at the 1877 Lima Exposition. The cardboard does not exhibit the same tawny colour, however, and in contrast to the other sets of ceramics displayed, the thirteen sculptured ceramics on this last photograph do not stand on shelves or a dresser: a thematic arrangement, these figurines representing human sleepers lie or recline, with their eyes closed, next to and on top of each other.

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

3 Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-11.

The photographs taken by Castillo can be dated approximately. While the making of the photographs exhibited in 1877 can be narrowed down to a few years, it is less obvious how long after the opening of Castillo’s studio in 1874–that is, how long before their sale in 1890–the other photographs were taken. Most evidence indicates that the photographs were made between 1874 and 1880. We know Macedo had Castillo visit his museum and that he had at least one hundred and twenty of his antiquities photographed by Castillo during the late-1870s.15 The photographs in Berlin are a testi­ mony to and perhaps the last remainder of this large assembly of pictures that Macedo ordered to capture the pride and “delight of (his) life”: his archaeological collection.16 Other circumstances would likewise warrant the conclusion that the photographs were taken before the outbreak of the War of the Pacific in 1879: the war, involving Peru, Bolivia and Chile, and the Chilean occupation of Lima (1881 – 1883) in particular, caused decisive ruptures in Lima’s antiquarian and photographic landscape. While Rafael Castillo was recruited for the reserve army in 1880, Macedo, afraid to see his

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4 Thirteen figurines representing people sleeping or resting. Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-21.

possessions fall into the ‘hands of the enemies’, took his collection to Europe in 1881 to sell it to the highest bidder:17 in 1884, the Berlin Ethnological Museum acquired the bulk of the collection. Even though it is unlikely, we cannot entirely preclude the possibility that some of the photographs by Castillo were taken after the war had ended. Castillo returned to Lima after the war and operated his studio for another decade from 1883 onwards.18 Upon his return from Europe, Macedo formed a smaller, second collection of 319 antiquities, based on the duplicates he had retained from the first collection and on further acquisitions. Macedo has left no pictorial catalogue of his collection – there is no register that would enable us to unambiguously match particular antiquities on the photographs with specimens from either the first or the second collection. Some of Castillo’s photographs may thus have been taken during the mid- or late-1880s; it is possible that the two men resumed their collaboration after the end of the War of the Pacific. Although Castillo appears to have been Macedo’s photographer of choice, five of the photographs were not taken by Castillo. One of the photographs carries a red label that reads Retratos Album, with the Peruvian coat of arms interposed between the words ‘Retratos’ and ‘Album’ and an imprint underneath the label, with the name

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

5 Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. The inscription reads: “RETRATOS ALBUM. Luis Alviña. Ffo Cuzco– Puno”. Photographer: Luis Alviña, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 684.

and locality of the photographer. This enables us to identify their maker as Luis Alviña, an Argentine photographer who established himself in Peru’s southern highlands from the 1870s and remained Cusco’s principal photographer into the early twentieth century.19 The photograph shows a set of around sixty miniscule carved zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines aligned in rows. Both humans and animals appear to be of Incan imperial origin: some of the human figurines are recognizable as male members of the Incan elite by their large golden ear spools, or tulumpi 20 and the ani­ mals are predominantly camelids, emblematic of Incan ritual contexts.21 Although he was born in Ayaviri and raised in Cuzco, Macedo had left the southern highlands in 1845 to study medicine in Lima – years before he took to collecting antiquities, sometime between 1858 and 1861.22 By the time the picture was taken – sometime after the opening of Alviña’s studio in the 1870s and the sale of the photographs in 1890 – Macedo remained in the Peruvian capital except for journeys ‘inland’ and to Europe. The photograph may have been taken in Cuzco before, or at the same time

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6 Three textile fragments with geometric drawings fixed on brown cloth. Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-26.

as, the sale of the set of figurines to Macedo. Although Macedo sometimes excavated antiquities, he acquired most of his collection by purchase, through a vast network of acquaintances, friendly collectors, and “careful and knowledgeable” merchants spread all over Peruvian territory. Cuzco represented but one market – if one of the liveliest – for antiquities in Peru at the end of the nineteenth century.23 Of the four remaining photographs, three depict sculptured ceramics: one shows nineteen predominantly anthropomorphic ceramics arranged on a shelf, another photograph depicts two ceramics scenes – one modelled and one in bas-relief – and a third image is of two bulbous bottles with bas-reliefs. The fourth image captures three small textile fragments with geometric drawings fixed on cloth: we know from Macedo’s 1881 catalogue that he collected small textile fragments “of different shapes, dimensions and colours”, and that he kept them sometimes in bundles,24 sometimes fixed on white cloth.25 The photographs do not carry labels specifying the address of the studio or the name of the photographer, but the filigrane black overprint Retratos

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

Album with the interposed coat of arms is structurally – if not in colour and style – consistent with the one that appears on Alviña’s photographs.26 Still, it might be precipitate to rush to the conclusion that Alviña really was behind all five images: the majority of the ceramics on display are of coastal origin. It is unlikely that Macedo would have acquired them from the southern highlands. The provenance of these four images therefore remains elusive.

Collection, Documentation and Display. The Purposes of Archaeological Photography The early years of photography in Lima after 1842 coincided with a period of economic growth and political stability under President Ramón Castilla (1845 – 1851, and 1855 – 1862) which followed the expansion of guano exports. Lima’s wealthy middle and upper strata received the new invention with enthusiasm.27 It was this same affluent class that sustained a network of collectors who, like Macedo, owned, displayed, and sought to understand the meaning of pre-Columbian antiquities in Lima at the time.28 During the 1870s, Lima was an important centre for the collection and study of pre-Columbian antiquities and photography on the South American continent. In Peru, archaeology and the art of photography matured simultaneously, as they did elsewhere, in the nineteenth century and often converged in contemporaries’ minds and efforts.29 Photographs of Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities had been distributed from the earliest days of photography, and some of the first well-known photographs of Mesoamerican ruins date back to the 1857 sojourn of Claude-Joseph Le Désiré Charnay.30 The North American diplomat Ephraim George Squier is said to have made the first attempt to use the camera to record the pre-Columbian material culture of Peru in 1864 and 1865.31 Squier owned, upon his return from Peru, a personal collection that contained fifty photographs of ‘ancient Peruvian pottery’ and two-hundred photographs of ruins. While some of the photographs in Squier’s collection are signed “E. G. S. ­Phot.”, attesting to Squier’s authorship, a few are from sets which, according to Keith McElroy, were available from local commercial studios at the time of Squier’s visit to Lima.32 While Limeños usually commissioned and acquired photographs of friends and relatives, ‘celebrities’, historical landmarks, great works of art, rural landscapes, urban street scenes or scientific ‘curiosities’,33 there was also a market for photographs of antiquities in late-nineteenth century Peru. Even though photographs of antiquities constituted but one, and probably a minor, segment of their studios’ production, both Alviña and Castillo had experience in the photography of antiquities that would have

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recommended them to Macedo. Alviña had photographed the antiquities pertaining to the Cuzco collector Emilio Montes, one of Macedo’s contemporaries and acquain­ tances.34 Before he opened his own studio on Baquijano Street, Castillo had worked in Villroy L. ­Richardson’s photography studio – the very studio that took the ‘excellent photographs’ of ancient sites and antiquities that illustrated Thomas Hutchinson’s well-known 1873 travel report Two Years in Peru with Exploration of its Antiquities.35 By the time Macedo photographed his antiquities, there was a market and an audience for archaeological imageries in Peru, the Americas and Europe. The format to which the photographs had been cast lent itself to a variety of purposes. Their dimensions and their mounting on hard cardboard allows us to identify the photo­ graphs as what was commonly called cabinet or album card format in Lima – Tarjeta Gabinete or Tarjeta Álbum. Cabinet cards ideally measured 10.8 × 16.5 centimetres and the twenty-nine photographs of Macedo’s antiquities are mounted on cards that measure between 10.6 × 16.1 up to 10.7 × 16.4 centimetres.36 Photographs exist materially in the world and the few millimetres that are missing on them may well have worn away in the space of the nearly one and a half centuries they have been touched, transported, and handled. The cabinet or album card format became common in the 1870s in Lima: it was about twice the size of a carte de visite, and it displaced that smaller format, which had been prevalent on the Lima market since 1859.37 Unlike cartes de visites, the larger cabinet cards meant a better-quality image that could be used and effectively displayed on wooden cabinets or in exhibitions. They could also, however, lead the peripatetic lives of their predecessor, the carte de visite and be kept in albums – repertories of the photographs an individual or a family chose to retain and cherish – exchanged or bequeathed to acquaintances. Moreover, only a little thicker and heavier than paper, cabinet cards still travelled effortlessly: they were light enough to be sent with one´s correspondence across the Americas or the Atlantic. The twenty-nine photographs differ considerably in their aesthetics. Some of them appear to have been made with care and with an evident concern for their visual appeal. On the Retratos Album images or the photographs made for the 1877 Lima Exhibition, the objects are select, they are neatly laid out and carefully illuminated. These photographs create an ‘aura of cultural value’ around particular antiquities, isolating them and photo­ graphing them against a contrasting background in even light.38 Other photographs in turn depict large assemblages arranged on shelves, less intended to single out beauty or form, but rather, to display a collection in the way it would have been arranged at Macedo’s home, or, to allow the viewer to comprehend many pieces at a glance. In some of the photographs, particularly the ones with the grey “R. ­Castillo Fotógrafo” overprint and with the red “Retrato Imperial R. ­Castillo” engraving, the arrangement

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

7 A rope evidently holding the background drapes in pl ace is ill-concealed and the antiquities standing on a table with a blemish and scuffed edges. Objects from the collection belonging to José Mariano Macedo. Photographer: R. Castillo, Lima, before 1890. EMB, VIII E 683-4.

of the antiquities has a make-shift character: the antiquities are placed on what seem to be ladders or scaffolds, with a cover draped over the constructions, they stand on tables with stains and scuffed edges, and bundles of rope hanging from the ceiling or the wall are but ill-concealed. They are reminiscent of the early photographs archaeologists in the field remitted as illustrations in letters and field reports – with the finds on them ‘arranged, trophy-like, on wooden scaffolds with black covers’.39 It is evident that the twenty-nine photographs served divergent purposes. Macedo had some of them made, or allowed them to be made, to be looked at, admired, and displayed, in an exhibition, as he did in 1877, on a cabinet or in an album – perhaps his own, perhaps that of acquaintances with an interest in antiquities. Some of the more sophisticated photographs may also have served to ‘advertise’, to mediate and prepare the ground for the sale of the collection. The late-nineteenth century was the time of the world’s great collecting museums, study collections that grew – like Macedo’s and other Lima antiquaries’ private museums – through the acquisition

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of select artefacts or entire, smaller collections on a market “based on international networks of communication and exchange.”40 Photography played a major role in the marketing of ethnographic objects,41 and Macedo, like scholars, antiquities dealers, and museum directors all over the world used photographs to advertise his collection when he was looking for a buyer in Europe. In 1881, he dispatched “photographs and a very detailed catalogue” from Paris – where he had taken up a temporary residence – to Berlin, so the director of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde could gain a clearer impression of the collection’s contents and see whether they could “come to an under­ standing”  with him.42 When Macedo’s heirs pursued the sale of his second collection in 1894, about two months after Macedo’s demise, they followed his example and accompanied their offer to Berlin’s Ethnological museum with ‘a parcel containing forty-seven photographs’ of antiquities from the collection.43 Other photographs were probably made with the more pragmatic ends of documenta­ tion and visualization. The evident traces of improvisation and the want of sophistication in some of the photographs are incongruent with the lavish and elegant background arrangements usually associated with Castillo’s photographs: it seems as though they had been taken in a rush, and with little concern for their aesthetic appeal – perhaps to be slipped into Macedo’s correspondence before the departure of a steamer or the post. The photographs may indeed be copies of images Macedo had initially had made for communication across large distances: their purpose was not to please, but, solely, to visualize a thing from afar. Macedo maintained a steady correspondence about Peruvian archaeological matters with scholars in Berlin, Philadelphia or Paris and he sometimes included photographs of a piece that particularly puzzled or intrigued him as a basis for discussion.44 Photographs were imperfect renderings of the originals, as Macedo was well aware – the photographs of ‘the mysterious khipus of the Incas’, he suggested, his correspondent ought to examine with a magnifying glass to appreciate the colours and distance of the knots 45 – but they allowed museum directors, collectors and scientists from the Americas and Europe to enter in conversations about the meaning, age, or interest of the same antiquity, when neither they nor the objects were in the same place. Because they were multipliable and replaceable, photographs sometimes also travelled in circuits that resembled or followed those taken by the antiquities, art or etnografica they represented. In 1889, Macedo remitted a head bust – “the head of a Chinese man modelled in clay”, as he described it – to the Berlin Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde on a Kosmos line steamer. He hoped it “would arrive intact”, but sent a photograph of the same artefact on a parallel journey in the letter announcing the arrival of the head bust to ensure that at least its rendering would reach its destination.46 Photography was one of the most important technological innovations that rendered ruins and

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

antiquities ‘translatable’ and ‘portable’ in the second half of the nineteenth century and that allowed for the unprecedentedly dense and vibrant Americanist networks of the late-nineteenth century – a community that revolved around the study of America’s pre-Columbian material culture.47 Despite the initially divergent reasons Macedo may have had for the making of these photographs, the copies in Ludowieg’s possession at least came to share a com­ mon destiny sometime between the mid-1870s and 1890. The at least two different photographers and cities involved in the making of these photographs, the distinct arrangements and displays, the divergent purposes, and the dissimilarity in the labels even in the photographs by Castillo, make it quite certain that the photographs were taken on diverse occasions, over a period of several – up to thirteen – years. The fact that all of these photographs still came to the Berlin Königliches Museum für Völker­ kunde through one and the same vendor suggests that they represented part of a collection of photographs – that either Julio Ludowieg or another, previous owner, selected and gathered them together over time. We know of numerous collections of photographs of antiquities that date back to the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century – in the hands of individuals, ethnographic museums or archaeological socie­ ties in Europe and across the Americas. 48 Several collectors of antiquities in Peru seem to have collected photographs – of their own or of others’ antiquities. Ludowieg himself owned the said assemblage of photographs, but apparently also a collection of antiquities – according to Julio C. ­Tello from the Chicama Valley, sold to a European museum in 1884.49 Macedo also owned photographs of antiquities, which he listed in his catalogue next to his own antiquities.50 The photographs of Macedo’s antiquities may have been freely available for pur­ chase from commercial studios like Castillo’s or Alviña’s: perhaps Ludowieg acquired them together with other photographs on the market in archaeological images in late-nineteenth century Lima. It is also conceivable, however, that Ludowieg re­ ceived the copies from Macedo himself, either directly, as a gift or in exchange for photographs of his own collection, or through an intermediary, a common friend or acquaintance. Like Macedo, who was one of Lima’s most eminent physicians and a professor for anatomy at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos,51 Ludowieg was a member of the new class of professionals that gained power and influence in the second half of the nineteenth century and that merged with Lima’s established families. Ludowieg was the owner of Ludowieg y Cía., one of the most powerful commercial firms in Peru after 1872 and a representative of special agencies of Lima’s insurance companies, the Banco Alemán Transatlántico and the Banco Popular:52 he was, like Macedo, an ‘old patron’ of the Berlin Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, a

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man who could afford to bestow from time to time antiquities upon that institution.53 Both were part of the same, close-knit network of literate, cosmopolitan, and wealthy citizens who had the leisure and the means to pursue grand collections of antiquities and photographs as an affirmation of their taste and scientific curiosity.54 Given their affine interests and social prominence in 1870s-Lima, it would have been difficult for Ludowieg and Macedo not to be, at least distantly, acquainted. Ludowieg may well have been among those Limeños who came to ‘admire his treasures’, when Macedo opened his collection in his private residence on Plaza Bolívar to a select public in 1876.55 Antiquaries in Lima bartered and exchanged antiquities – Macedo sometimes sold, sometimes bestowed them upon other collectors 56 – and it is quite possible that photographs travelled along the same veins.

Coda. Historical Photographs in the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum In 1890, Ludowieg sold the twenty-nine photographs of antiquities from Macedo’s collection to the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde. Upon their arrival in Berlin, they merged with a growing collection of photographs from Latin America. The systematic use of photography within cultural institutions, major museums and galleries, began as early as in the 1840s: institutions like the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, the British Royal Anthropological Institute or the ‘Archaeological Survey of India’ built collections of archaeological and ethnographic photographs to document existing collections, as ‘reference’ photographs of objects too large to be moulded, or because they pursued the commercial sale of copies.57 Institutions in Peru soon followed suit: by the 1890s Lima’s Sociedad Geográfica collected, like other learned societies around the world, photographs of pre-Columbian ruins and antiquities for research and display 58 and by 1908, the archaeological section of Peru’s re-founded Museo National exhibited photographs next to antiquities.59 The Berlin Museum was one of the institutions in the world that most systematically pursued photography during the 1890s: not only did the institution acquire photographs, as in the case of Ludowieg’s collection – it employed skilled photographers and was “the only [ethnographic museum] prepared to exchange photographs of its contents” with other institutions.60 Upon their transfer from Lima to Berlin, the photographs thus entered another expanding repertoire not too distinct from the collections they had left behind in Lima: one that brought together antiquities and their photographic renderings in the same space, and one that grounded in, and existed for purposes of, exhibition and display, commerce and scholarship, and the far-flung networks of exchange and communication that bound Europe and the Americas together at the time.

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

Unpublished documents [Memorandum Histórico, Lima] Macedo, José Mariano. 1880. Memorandum Histórico, Lima, Colección Manuscritos de José Mariano Macedo. [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Acta betreffend die Erwerbung der Sammlung des Dr. Macedo, 1882 – 1887, Pars I B. ­Litt. J: Letter from José Mariano Macedo to Adolf Bastian, París, 3. 10. 1881. Letter from José Mariano Macedo to Adolf Bastian, París, 21. 7. 1881. Letter from, José Mariano Macedo to Adolf Bastian, París, 7. 1.1882. José Mariano Macedo. 1882. Catálogo de la colección de Antigüedades Peruanas del Dr. José M. ­Macedo, E 453/82. Letter from José Mariano Macedo to Adolf Bastian, París, 14. 10. 1888, E 1032/88. Letter from José Mariano Macedo to Adolf Bastian, Lima, 6. 6. 1889, E 650/89. Letter from Carlos Macedo Morales to Adolf Bastian, Lima, 15. 10. 1894. E 1398/94.

Bibliography Achim, Miruna. 2007. “Science in Translation: The Commerce of Facts and Artifacts in the Transatlantic Spanish World.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 8(2): 107 – 115. Adam, Hans Christian. 1979. “Photographie auf Forschungsreise – Reisende Photographen im 19. Jahrhundert.” In In unnachahmlicher Treue. Photographie im 19. Jahrhundert – ihre Geschichte in den deutschsprachigen Ländern, edited by Heinz Langholz, 115 – 128. Köln: Museen der Stadt Köln. Alexandridis, Annetta and Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer. 2004. Archäologie der Photographie. Bilder aus der Photothek der Antikensammlung Berlin. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Barthe, Christine. 2007. Le Yucatan est ailleurs: Expéditions photographiques (1857 – 1886) de Désiré Charnay. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly/Actes Sud. Benavente, Adelma, Natalia Majluf and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. 2001. “Cronología.” In La recuperación de la memoria. Perú 1842 – 1942, edited by Natalia Majluf and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, vol.1, 312 – 331. Lima: MALI/Fundación Telefónica. Bruhns, Karen Olsen. 1994. Ancient South America. (= Cambridge World Archaeology). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carranza, Luis. 1895. “Memoria que el Presidente de la Sociedad Geográfica de Lima, Dr. D. ­Luis Carranza, presenta á la Junta General, en su última sesión de año.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Lima 5(1 – 3): 58 – 65. Ceruti, Constanza. 2004. “Human Bodies as Objects of Dedication at Inca Mountain Shrines (North-Western Argentina).” World Archaeology 36(1): 103 – 122. Dean, Carolyn. 1999. Inca Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco. Duke: Duke University Press. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2001. Raw Histories. Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford/ New York: Berg.

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Edwards, Elizabeth. 2011. “Photographs: Material Form and the Dynamic Archive.” In Photo Archives and the Photographic Memory of Art History, edited by Costanza Caraffa, 47 – 56. Berlin/München: Deutscher Kunstverlag. Edwards, Elizabeth and Janice Hart. 2004. “Introduction: Photographs as Objects.” In Photographs Objects Histories. On the Materiality of Images, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, 1 – 15. London/New York: Routledge. Gänger, Stefanie. 2014. Relics of the Past. The Collecting and Study of pre-Columbian Antiquities in Peru and Chile, 1830s–1910s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gootenberg, Paul. 1993. Imagining Development. Economic Ideas in Peru’s “Fictitious Prosperity” of Guano, 1840 – 1880. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hamber, Anthony. 2008. “Archives, Museums, and Collections of Photographs”. In Encyclo­ pedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, vol. 1, edited by John Hannavy, 64 – 69. New York/London: Routledge. Hutchinson, Thomas J. 1873. Two Years in Peru, with Exploration of its Antiquities, 2 vols. London: Sampson Low, Marston Low & Searle. Jackson, Verónica. 2001. “Glosario de términos fotográficos”. In La recuperación de la memoria. Perú 1842 – 1942, vol 1., 302 – 311, edited by Natalia Majluf and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. Lima: MALI/Fundación Telefónica. Macedo, José Mariano. 1881. Catalogue d’objets archéologiques du Pérou de l’ancien empire des Incas. Paris: Imprimerie Hispano-Americaine. Macedo, José Mariano. ([1878] 1945). “Cartas a Albin Kohn.” In Vida y Obras de José M ­ ariano Macedo (1823 – 1894), edited by Sociedad Peruana de Historia de la Medicina, 112 – 117. Lima: Sanmartí. Majluf, Natalia and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden. 2001. “El primer siglo de la fotografía, Perú, 1842 – 1942.” In La recuperación de la memoria. Perú 1842 – 1942, edited by Natalia Majluf and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, vol. 1, 20 – 133. Lima: MALI/Fundación Telefónica. McElroy, Keith. 1977. The History of Photography in Peru in the Nineteenth Century. 1839 – 1876, (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan). McElroy, Keith. 1986. “Ephraim George Squier: Photography and the Illustration of Peruvian Antiquities.” History of Photography 10 (2): 99 – 123. Penny, Glenn H. 2002. Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Podgorny, Irina. 2008. “Portable Antiquities: Transportation, Ruins, and Communications in Nineteenth-Century Archaeology.” História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos 1(3): 577 – 595. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Quiroz, Alfonso. 1993. Domestic and Foreign Finance in Modern Peru, 1850 – 1950. Financing Visions of Development. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Retter, Yolanda. 2008. “Peru.” In Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, vol. 2, edited by John Hannavy, 1063 – 1065. New York/London: Routledge. Serena, Tiziana. 2011. “The Words of the Photo Archive.” In Photo Archives and the Photo­ graphic Memory of Art History, edited by Costanza Caraffa, 57 – 7 1. Berlin/München: Deutscher Kunstverlag.

Picturing Antiquities. Photographs of Pre-Columbian Objects from the Collection of José Mariano Macedo

Sociedad Peruana de Historia de la Medicina. 1945. Vida y Obras de José Mariano Macedo (1823–1894). Lima: Sanmartí y Ca. Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew. 2006. “Introduction.” In Antiquity & Photography. Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites, edited by Claire L. ­Lyons et al., 2 – 22. Los Angeles: J. ­Paul Getty Museum. Tello, Julio C. and Toribio Mejía Xesspe. 1967. “Historia de los museos nacionales del Perú.” Arqueológicas. Publicaciones del Instituto de investigaciones antropológicas (10). Uhle, Max. 1877. Catálogo General de la Exposición Municipal inaugurada el 28 de Julio de 1877 siendo alcalde del concejo provincial de Lima el Sr. Dr. D. ­Pedro J. ­Saavedra. Lima: Imprenta de El Nacional. Uhle, Max. 1885. “E. ­Ethnologische Abteilung.” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preußischen Kunstsammlungen 6, XI. ­Berlin: G. ­Grothe’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Uhle, Max. 1908. Inventario de los muebles y enseres del Museo de Historia Nacional. Lima, Archivo del Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia. Colgante 2000 – 2028. Wertheman, Arturo. 1892. “Ruinas de la fortaleza de Cuelap.” Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica de Lima 2(4 – 6): 147 – 153. Wiener, Charles. 1880. Pérou et Bolivie. Récit de voyage suivi d‹études archéologiques et ethnographiques et de notes sur l‹écriture et les langues des populations indiennes. Paris: Librairie Hachette.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7

8 9

10

Elizabeth Edwards reminds us of the ‘sociability of objects’, Edwards 2011. Serena 2011, 65 – 66. Edwards and Hart 2004. EMB, VIII E 683 – 15 and VIII E 684. On the characteristics of north coast ceramics, cf. Bruhns 1994, 131. The catalogue described over two thousand pieces in 1,574 entries; 1,209 of the entries designate ceramics. Macedo, Catalogue d’objets archéologiques du Pérou de l’ancien empire des Incas. While the earliest photographers active in Peru during the Daguerreotype era (1839–1859) were generally from France or the United States, Peruvian-born photographers such as Castillo increasingly entered the market from the mid-1850s. McElroy 1977, cited in Retter 2008. EMB, VIII E 683 – 15, VIII E 683 – 18, VIII E 683 – 19, VIII E 683 – 2, VIII E 683 – 20, VIII E 683 – 22, VIII E 683 – 23, VIII E 683 – 25, VIII E 683 – 28, VIII E 683 – 29, VIII E 683 – 30. In the Spanish original, the inscription reads Exposicion 1877. Medalla de Plata EXPOSICION DE ARTE Y ARQUEOLOGIA 1877. FUE INAUGURADA EL 28 DE JULIO POR EL EXMO. S.GENERAL DON MARIANO I. ­PRADO, PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA SIENDO ALCADE PROVINCIAL EL S. ­DOCTOR DON PEDRO. ­I. SAAVEDRA. The work of Natalia Majluf and Luis E. ­Wuffarden provides a comprehensive history of the early history of photography in Peru, Majluf and Wuffarden 2001, 40.

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The photographs were exhibited on the second gallery, see (1877), Catálogo General de la Exposición Municipal inaugurada el 28 de Julio de 1877 siendo alcalde del concejo provincial de Lima el Sr. Dr. D. ­Pedro J. ­Saavedra (Lima: Imprenta de El Nacional). McElroy writes Castillo “claimed a prize in the Lima Exposition of 1877 (silver)”. McElroy 1977, 417. 12 EMB, VIII E 683 – 1, VIII E 683 – 4. 13 The same address appears on the following photographs: EMB, VIII E 683 – 1, 2, 4, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 35, 28, 29, 30. The chronology published in Natalia Majluf ’s and Luis Eduardo Wuffarden’s history of photography includes a useful chronology that mentions the date when Castillo opened his studio. Benavente et al. 2001, 319. 14 EMB, VIII E 683 – 3, VIII E 683 – 5, VIII E 683 – 6, VIII E 683 – 8, VIII E 683 – 7, VIII E 683 – 10, VIII E 683 – 11, VIII E 683 – 12, VIII E 683 – 14. 15 When a catalogue of his collection – the Catalogue d’objets archéologiques du Pérou de l’ancien empire des Incas – was published in Paris in 1881, Macedo took advantage of the foreword to point out mistakes in the 1880 archaeological travel report Pérou et Bolivie by the French traveller Charles Wiener. According to Macedo, Wiener had failed to indicate that one hundred and twenty of the engravings of ceramics he had printed in his book were but copies of photographs “Monsieur Wiener had had make at my home (fit prendre chez moi) by Monsieur Castillo, a photographer”. For Wiener’s report, cf. Wiener 1880, V. 16 He told Adolf Bastian, the director of Berlin’s Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, that archaeology had been the “delight of his existence”. The Spanish original reads: ‘la arqueología de mi país que sabe U. que ha sido y es el encanto de mi existencia.’ José Mariano Macedo (1888), Carta a Adolf Bastian, París, 14 de Octubre, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J, E 1032/88. 17 José Mariano Macedo, Carta a Adolf Bastian, París, n. d., EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J. 18 Benavente et al. 2001. “Cronología”. 19 Majluf and Wuffarden 2001, 37. 20 The practice of piercing and elongating the lobes to differentiate nobles from com­ moners persisted as late as 1600 despite its prohibition in the second council of Lima (1567 – 1568). Dean 1999, 127 – 128. 21 Assemblages recovered from high-altitude shrines demonstrate that the figurines were usually part of the spectrum of Inca imperial offerings. See Ceruti 2004. The material is not recognizable on the photographs, but the figurines were either made of gold, silver or Spondylus shell. 22 Shortly before the sale of the collection, Macedo wrote to Bastian that it had taken him ‘twenty years to form my collection’. José Mariano Macedo (1881), Carta a Adolf Bastian, París, 3 de Octubre, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J. ­Macedo stated this to Albin Kohn in a letter dating back to 1878. Macedo ([1878] 1945), 112. 23 Macedo assured Adolf Bastian that even the merchants from whom he purchased things – Mr Pasta, Mr Mativorena, Mr Risar, Mr Reyneya or Mr Landazuri – were 11

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24 25 26 27 28

29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43

careful and knowledgeable, and that they would “assign [the antiquities] their legiti­ mate provenance”. José Mariano Macedo (1882), Catálogo de la colección de Antigüedades Peruanas del Dr. José M. ­Macedo, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J, E 453/82. Macedo was a meticulous accountant; not only do his personal notebooks list his daily expenses in detail, he kept track of his archaeological acquisitions, of select pieces and of entire collections he purchased. See, for instance, his notebooks, Macedo 1880. See, for instance, entry 1478 in the 1881 catalogue Un paquet de soixante petites pièces de différentes formes, dimensions et couleurs, Macedo 1881. “Deux collections de tissus fins et variés, fixés sur une pièce de toile blanche”, entry 1482, ibid. EMB, VIII E 683 – 9, VIII E 683 – 24, VIII E 683 – 26, VIII E 683 – 27. Majluf and Wuffarden 2001. On the guano era, see Gootenberg 1993. On the history of antiquities collecting in Lima during the second half of the nine­ teenth century, and the history of Macedo’s collection in particular, see Chapter Two in Stefanie Gänger 2014. Keith McElroy, in what was one of the first attempts to write a comprehensive history of photography in Peru, remarked, how the study of pre-Columbian antiquities and the art of photography matured simultaneously in the nineteenth century and converged in the minds of Peru’s middle and upper strata. The remark referred to photographs of pre-Columbian sites rather than artefacts, however: McElroy did not examine photographs of antiquities comparable to the ones under scrutiny in this paper in his dissertation. McElroy 1977, 167. For the association between archaeology and photography in Europe, see Adam 1979; Alexandridis and Heilmeyer 2004, 19 – 20. Barthe 2007; Szegedy-Maszak 2006. McElroy 1977, 167. McElroy 1986, 104. On photographic albums in Lima, cf. Majluf and Wuffarden 2001; also Poole 1997, 112. The Berlin Museum retains thirty-nine of these photographs in its collection of historical photographs: EMB, VIII E 685 a – VIII E 686 p. Hutchinson 1873, xi. See also Benavente et al. “Cronología”. Jackson 2001, 310. The French photographer Felix Carbillet introduced photographs in the carte de visite format in Lima in 1859, one year after the format had been introduced in the United States. Majluf and Wuffarden 2001, 38 – 44. On the different formats in use in Lima, see Jackson 2001. Edwards 2001, 53. Alexandridis and Heilmeyer 2004, 19. Penny 2002, 51 – 52. Edwards, 2001. José Mariano Macedo (1881), Carta a Adolf Bastian, París, 21 de Julio, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J. Carlos Macedo Morales (1894, Lima, 15 de Octubre), Carta a Adolf Bastian, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J, E 1398/94.

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45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56

57 58 59 60

Adolf Bastian, the director of Berlin’s Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, was one of the correspondents who received photographs; Albin Kohn, a Prussian scholar associated with Berlin’s University, was another. Macedo, Carta a Adolf Bastian, París, 21 de Julio, Macedo, Cartas a Albin Kohn. José Mariano Macedo (1882), Carta a Adolf Bastian, París, 7 de Enero, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J. José Mariano Macedo (1889), Carta a Adolf Bastian, Lima, 6 de Junio, EMB, Sammlung Macedo Pars I B. ­Litt. J, E 650/89. The expression “portable antiquities” goes back to Flinders Petrie, who suggested that archaeology’s purpose was to produce “portable antiquities”: plans, words, drawings and photographs that would connect the objects to their place of origin. See Podgorny 2008. On translation, see also Achim 2007. On the exchange and collecting of photographs within anthropology around 1900, see chapter two of “Exchanging Photographs, Making Archives”, in: Edwards 2001. Tello and Mejía Xesspe 1967, 46. See catalogue entry 1491 in Macedo, Catalogue d’objets archéologiques du Pérou de l’ancien empire des Incas. For Macedo’s professional life, see an homage by Lima’s Medical History Society. Sociedad Peruana de Historia de la Medicina 1945. Quiroz 1993, 127 – 128. The German original reads: “[…] Herrn Ludowieg in Lima hat alte Gönnerschaft aufs Neue durch das Geschenk interessanter Thongefässe aus peruanischen Gräbern bestätigt”, Uhle, 1885. See Chapter Two in Gänger 2014. Macedo’s kept a visitors’ book. Several of his visitors are cited in: Sociedad Peruana de Historia de la Medicina 1945, 17. Cf., for instance, the antiquities from Gretzer’s collection, today at the Ethnologisches Museum, catalogued as V A 3834 A – an example for a handwritten reference – and V A 3839, bearing a nametag with the name of Macedo. Macedo must have sold or bestowed them upon Gretzer. I thank Beatrix Hoffmann for making me aware of Gretzer’s possession of antiquities that were formerly owned by Macedo. See Hamber 2008. Carranza 1895, 60; Wertheman 1892, 147. Uhle 1908. Brigham 1896, cited in Edwards 2001, 54.

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Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

An approach to the history of motifs The photographic collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin consists to a significant extent of carte de visite photography, which was one of the early standardized and widespread formats in the nineteenth century. In the realm of portraiture in particular, there is an abundance of highly staged and florid compositions, showing singles, couples or group portraits, often accompanied by picturesque furniture and decoration. They include representations of people under­ taking handicrafts alongside their tools, and street-vendors with various commodities, but also noble portraits indicating the social status of citizens and the upper class. Many of these photographs can be categorized as ethnographic in the nineteenth century sense of the word. They depict indigenous people from diverse regions of South America, dressed in traditional clothes, surrounded by artefacts and objects that were associated with their cultural and ethnic background (Fig. 1). However, they also include plain photographic portraits of the diverse ethnic groups residing in South America at the time. The motif history of carte de visite photography reveals some typical visual codes that after being developed in Europe, spread to the photographic studios of the world. The result is a considerable amount of portraits that present nearly interchangeable settings, postures and adornment from all continents.1 For example, the notoriously elegant furniture and decoration found in photographic studios are regularly com­ posed of fashionable chairs and escritoires, curtains, balustrades and pillars. Natural environments and cultivated parks are mostly visualized by backdrops, but there are also some natural objects. Moreover, photographers often provide the appropriate clothing and take care of the respective postures and gestures. The Ethnologisches Museum’s collection certainly seems to correspond to these international conventions of studio photography. However, on a closer look, the portraits from nineteenth century South America are also rooted in the local history of their places of origin. They represent significant adaptions and re-inventions in the realization of photographic portraits. A wide range of motifs offers insights into local social practices. The images make visual statements about contemporary

Margrit Prussat

1 Pulque transport, Mexico. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E Nls 763 (P 4866).

categories of social organization, classification and stratification and reveal tradi­ tions and visions of self-representation. Alongside photographs that were taken for the people portrayed in the pictures, there are also images that were taken for a third person, namely the photographer or the consumers of images. If the cartes de visite are evaluated as historical source material, it is their massive production and distribution in particular among other aspects that provides a multitude of approaches. The cards can become the subject of various serial investigations, the routes of the cards can be reconstructed, and the ways they were published and their contextualization can also be analysed. Thus, the large set of carte de visite photographs belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum permit ethnographic and historical inquiry to be undertaken from diverse starting points; this makes the collection a rich and meaningful historical source. In addition, the collection serves as a source for the history of the discipline of anthropology starting in the nineteenth century.

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

The following presentation of the carte de visite collection will focus on the his­ tory and development of photographic motifs. The discussion also touches on the communicative and commemorative functions and the private and public usage of these photographs.

The invention of the carte de visite format and its distribution to South America The carte de visite format was invented and patented by the French photographer André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819 – 1889) in Paris in 1854. He developed a camera with four lenses, which enabled four images to be taken at one shooting, and these were exposed on the first half of a negative plate. The second half of the plate could be used for another four images, which meant he could obtain eight images from just one negative plate. This technique immensely reduced the costs of photography, and this was the most important factor behind the success of the medium.2 Albumen prints regularly provided the photographic basis for carte de visite ima­ ges with a rough size of 5.5 × 9 cm that were mounted on cards with the format of 6.3 × 10 cm. This overall standardization made it easy to provide standardized albums for the images, and this served to promote the collection of cards. In the nineteenth century, giving away portraits and collecting portraits of loved ones, friends and family, but also of famous people, was a widespread social practice.3 The intensive exchange of images was also promoted by the ease of sending the cards: their small size, stability and robustness, especially when compared to the daguerreotype or ambrotype, facilitated sending the cards by mail. In general, portraiture was one of the first important usages of photography. The carte de visite format opened up the medium to a much wider clientele than was the case with other more expensive photographic techniques. Thus, the carte de visite format is regularly described as a motor of the “democratization” of photography as it enabled the emerging middle class to enter a sphere and take part in a social practice that was formerly a privilege of the upper classes. This was also the case with South America, where the production of the cartes de visite marked the beginning of the massive production of photography that started in the 1850s. The format continued to be predominant until the early twentieth century, especially in portrait photography.4 Extensive stocks and voluminous albums in collections and archives all over the world provide the evidence of their far-reaching distribution. This spread of images was facilitated by the fact that the photographs were highly connected to the new fashion of private travel which started in the mid-nineteenth century. Many

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of the first photographers in South America were travelling or residing Europeans who initially settled in the big cities and the coastal areas. However, they also travelled to the more remote areas and offered their service as travelling photographers.5 Together with innovations in photographic techniques, they also brought specific iconic traditions and conventions of portraiture with them.6 Their clients can be found in the diverse social groups that stratified South American society at the time. Besides the upper and the emerging middle classes, which made use of photography for their own purposes, many of the images in question were produced with respect to a foreign, overseas mar­ ket as part of the growing tourist sector. Thus, the consumers of the images were not necessarily the people who were being photographed. Photography was a commercial product and the photographers provided typical scenery and well-known views of the region and its inhabitants. Before the invention of the picture postcard at the end of the nineteenth century and before the spread of amateur photography, cartes de visite were mainly commissioned for a sometimes distant clientele to depict the world and provide memories of people’s travels. Apart from the tourist sector, photographs of the local population were often taken within the context of scientific expeditions. Profes­ sional photographers were hired as documentarists; their images entered the realm of the academic milieu and were distributed as scientific illustrations. As a second form of endeavour, the photographers apparently made use of the images, or the surplus images from their contractual work, for their own commercial enterprises and sold them as typical views in the image market.7 Reproductions represent another form of usage of carte de visite photography: images from diverse sources and photographers were copied on carte de visite and distributed later on. Many reproductions of the same images can be found in diverse archives and collections and are clear evidence of this widespread function. There are also some duplicates within the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum, entered the collection from different provenances.8

On the history of the collection The biographies of photographic collections 9 are generally poorly documented and images have often been stored without any contextual information. Even basic metadata such as the names of the photographers, dates and places of origin or subject matter are missing in many cases. One reason for this may be the fact that photographs were not regarded as adequate historical sources and were often neglected as mere illustrations and considered secondary objects within collections for a long time. This attitude changed rather recently and over the last few decades,

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

photographs have gained new interest as historical source material in a wider con­ text. This led many photographic collections to be analysed in their entity and to be structured following the principle of provenance (origin) and not according to subject matter as in former times. Unfortunately, the collection of photographs on South America belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum is not an exception to this. Apart from inventory books and correspondence about the acquisition of images, no detailed documentation is available. Against this background, any sort of additional information is helpful for the analysis of photographs. Formats such as the carte de visite can play a special role in archival research as they usually contain some textual information printed on the back of the cards. But even simple metadata like the name of the photographer or the place of the studio have to be analysed critically as photographs were regularly exchanged and re-distributed between photographers and publishers of images which resulted in many confusing or false identifications. However, another typical aspect of the carte de visite – its massive production and distribution – poses a helpful approach to the identification and verification of various versions of the same image. The collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum embraces 222 cartes de visite, whereas the classification as carte de visite followed practical reasons and was not strictly reduced to the object in its narrow sense. Consequently, photographs of the approximate size of carte de visite are incorporated even if they were mounted on larger cards or sheets. Moreover, the larger carte cabinet format (approximately 16.5 × 11.5 cm) was also included within the carte de visite collection. The carte cabinet format developed around 1866 but did not reach the same widespread distribution as the carte de visite. The main provenances (previous owners) of the collection of cartes de visite were the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (BGAEU, also Berliner Anthropologische Gesellschaft)10 (173 cards), the anthropologist Arthur Baessler (25 cards), the architect, engineer and photographer Teobert Maler 11 (9 cards), René Du Bois-Reymond (8 cards), G. ­Biel (4 cards). The main regional focuses of the collection include Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Haiti and Brazil. There are a number of relevant sub-provenances within the BGAEU collection. Many prominent members of the so­ ciety are among them, for example, Rudolf Virchow (1821 – 1902, the influential doctor and co-founder of the BGAEU), Wilhelm Joest (1852 – 1897, the scientist and member of the BGAEU) and Carl (Karl) Künne (a member of the BGAEU). Renowned photographers of nineteenth century South America are present in­ cluding Alberto Henschel, the first photographer in Brazil who ran diverse studios at the same time in Recife, Salvador da Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Henschel’s

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images are very widespread and have often been published.12 Other influential people and organisations involved in photography at the time include Eugène Courret and the Courret Hermanos, who had their main studio in Peru,13 the photography and publishing house Cruces y Campa from Mexico,14 and the photographer Ricardo Villaalba, who worked mainly in Peru and Bolivia in the 1860s and 1870s.15

The panorama of motifs The collection of cartes de visite has a clear focus on motifs representing the ethnic background and cultural life of the peoples of South America. People have been photographed in regionally distinctive environments, and undertaking activities that are connected to their cultural traditions, customs and beliefs. These people are accompanied by tools and objects that are to be interpreted as part of culturally defined activities and surroundings. Most of the images were taken in a photography studio; only a few images were taken outdoors (Fig. 2). The motifs of the portraits can roughly be classified into three main groups: the noble portrait, depicting ­people in an aristocratic ambient; plain photographic portraits without many objects or adornment; narrative portraits, showing people in action, or fulfilling work or other activities (the most widespread group). These subdivisions provide an overview of the collection but should not be assumed as constituting fixed categories of images. Apart from portraiture, the few other motifs in the collection are objects such as buckets (EMB, P 1861), a figure (EMB, VIII E 678) and reproductions of paintings and other images (e. g. EMB, P 1440, P 595, P 596, P 620, P 621). In how far the cultural representations and ethnic identifications are based on emic categories of the photographed themselves cannot be discussed here in detail.16 However, it is clear that many of the staged images and the added information stem from an outsider’s view; namely, the view of the photographer or distributor of the images. As such, they do not necessarily correspond with an emic viewpoint of the photographed. The reason is that many of the cartes de visite were commercial products aimed for the tourist market and the photographers oriented their work to the clear or assumed demands of consumers. As a consequence, a cycle of repeatedly used, standardized pictures can be identified in popular and academic publications as well as in collections and archives. The contexts of these forms of publication and collec­ tions provide insights into the different ways these visual documents were received and interpreted. Moreover, handwritten annotations on the cards themselves play a special role as a historical source. Some of them are said to have been added around the time of the production and distribution of the images, some obviously later, for

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

2 Chilean in a Poncho riding a horse. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E 5981.

example by collectors or archivists. The annotations, as well as diverse systems of numbers scratched into the negative plates by the photographer, reveal the significant ways in which the images have been used. If the motifs of the collection are considered as a whole, it is striking that the collection does not contain any cartes de visite from the field of anthropometry. As carte de visite photography had significant roots in governmental and criminalist tasks, it served as an early medium to register and identify people accused of crimes, but also the homeless, deviants, and other people who were regarded as suspect from the perspective of state control.17 The usage of photography for registration purposes is one of the reasons behind the great number of images that were not made on behalf of the photographed. Other reasons include scientific endeavours based vision on objectivist and sometimes evolutionist descriptions of the world. Whereas a good number of cartes de visite belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum could be interpreted as registration images (for example the series of Africans by

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Alberto Henschel), the notorious anthropometric images taken from a biologist perspective represent a blank field in the collection. The main provenance of the cartes de visite was the BGAEU, and as many of its members (such as Rudolf Virchow) were physicians with a special interest in medical anthropology, they worked with anthropometric imagery. However, if this category of images ever existed in the collection of the BGAEU, it was not taken over by the Ethnologisches Museum. With this focus, the collection of Ethnologisches Museum mirrors the division between the ethnographic and the anthropological realms of the discipline that began to crystallize in the late nineteenth century.

The noble portrait In its early days, portrait photography followed the models of painting with respect to the composition of images. Therefore, noble portraits showing the respective gestu­ res and attitudes, accompanied by aristocratic furniture predominate the forms of repre­sentation in early photography. A vivid example is the photograph of Lorgnet, a commander of Port-au-Prince, Haiti by an unknown photographer (Fig. 3). Carte de visite photography is not only based on this kind of representation; it is its preferred and highly standardized pattern. Because of the lower costs of the new medium, the middle class could now afford to have their own portrait taken. As visual language was still focused on the aristocratic portrait, the images could be used to give a visual statement of increased social status. In many parts of nineteenth century South America, the emerging middle class consisted to a large degree of immigrants from Europe, who may not have had the same status in Europe. Besides its commemorative functions, portraiture also provided these people with self-assurance, and they were able to communicate their new status by distributing their images and collected them in albums. The albums were regularly presented in the reception rooms of private houses and demonstrated the growth and quality of the personal network and status of its inhabitants.18 The communication of hierarchy, status and sometimes the transgression of status lines was a relevant function of the public usage of portraits. Thus, the public distri­ bution of photographs served to demonstrate the division of public spaces between different groups of the population. The elegant images of generals from Haiti, who were apparently killed during the civil war in Haiti (1867 – 1870), demonstrate the transgression of the social order. The twelve portraits were taken in a photographic studio, sometimes with and sometimes without military decoration. As most of the generals stem from the Afro-Haitian population, they belonged to the community

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

3 Lorgnet, Commander of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E Nls 783 (P 613).

of former slaves who served the army and thus enhanced their social status in Haiti. The images were distributed in the context of the civil war and became part of the discourse of historical memory on Haiti, as handwritten comments on the photographs reveal. Thus, they can be read as images of social bodies rather than of individuals, even though they were taken in a private setting initially. Besides the noble portraits taken by the emerging middle class and by persons of high social status, there are images of indigenous people taken in the same iconographic tradition and aristocratic ambient. Photographs of people from diverse regions such as Mexico (EMB, VIII E Nls 340), Patagonia (EMB VIII E Nls 951, P 1400) or the Caribbean Coast (Fig. 4) were staged in the studio, often wearing traditional dress, and sometimes accompanied by tools or other objects related to ethnic backgrounds. Obviously, there is a discrepancy between the living environment of the indigenous people and the noble parlours in which they were photographed. It is unclear whether

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4 Indian family from Suriname. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E Nls 764 (P 1554).

this gap was represented intentionally or if it was simply a matter of standardized photography that photographs were taken in a widely recognized, available envi­ ronment. Indeed, even if the photographic ambient and the backdrops were the same, the posture of indigenous people differs significantly from the noble portraits of the bourgeois. The former often posed plain, sometimes in profile and resemble the anthropometric ima­ges that were taken for scientific reasons. These images were not necessarily ordered or used by the people they portrayed; as such, they should be understood as foreign representations. These images corresponded to contemporary visual ideas of the other, as causing a sense of astonishment, and above all a sense of the picturesque in the eyes of a travelling, foreign beholder.19 Specific methods of post-production of the images and further elaborate photogra­ phy techniques such as the use of vignettes, artistic frames and ornaments famously belonged to the noble portrait, but they also prevail within the two other categories of images, the plain and the narrative portrait (see for example, Fig. 5).

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

5 Bolivians. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E Nls 769 (P 1576).

The plain portrait The plain or simple photographic portrait occurs as half-length, knee-length or full body portrait and is one of the most common objects in international studio photo­ graphy. Half-length portraits in particular were regularly purchased for registration reasons, for example, for use in official documents. Besides the needs or wishes of self-representation, plain portraits were also taken out of other interests and for the photographer or a third party. The simple portrait developed slowly out of the more elaborate and ornate portraits. Therefore, specific visual languages or iconic codes for the representation of distinctive social groups only arose during the last few decades of the nineteenth century.20 The photographer and distributor Eugène Courret, who mainly worked in Lima, made a series of portraits of the ethnic groups living in Peru and Bolivia. There is a portrait of a person from the Andean highlands with the handwritten title “Cholo Bolivero” (EMB, VIII E Nls 952, P 4877), aimed at visualizing a Bolivian mestizo. As the term Cholo was used in very unspecific

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6 Quechua from Bolivia. Carte de visite. Photographer: Ricardo Villaalba. EMB, VIII E Nls 765 (P 1397).

ways and often had a pejorative connotation, the image served to illustrate a type of people rather than an individual member of a group. Famous are also the man­ ifold portraits by Ricardo Villaalba, who photographed the ethnic groups living in Bolivia, and distributed his photographs in black and white and in artfully coloured versions 21 (Fig. 6). The Mapuche of Chile are also well represented within this group of plain portraits. But there is also a good number of portraits, most of them full body portraits, of Mapuche in all three categories. The plain photographs regularly depict barefooted Mapuche wearing traditional (Fig. 7). A peculiar and extensive series of 32 plain portraits within the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum exists of African and Afro-Brazilian people (Fig. 8). These portraits were taken by the renowned photographer Alberto Henschel (1827 – 1882) in his studios in Recife, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, and were distributed widely. The aesthetic value of this series was highly regarded by contemporary recipients in the nineteenth century as well as by current collectors and curators. The images were

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

7 “Araucarian” (Mapuche). Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E Nls 766 (P 1564).

published in diverse early travel books, literature and other media and today form a renowned part of collections, exhibitions and catalogues on photography.22 The fact that the images by Henschel can be found in various archives and collections reveals that they must have been distributed in great numbers by Henschel from his four studios in Brazil. Moreover, they were copied and sold by other distributors such as by Carl Dammann.23 This series of portraits of Africans or Afro-Brazilians is striking because the aesthetic quality of these images and the ways they were used seems to place them between the realms of the noble portrait and the plain, registrative portrait.24 Historical research has revealed that the people in the photographs obviously belonged to a famous, then illegal, house of Candomblé (Afro-brazilian religion) in nineteenth century Brazil.25 As only free people could become members of that Candomblé, they may have be­ longed to the free or freed African population in Brazil during a time when slavery was still legal. The members of the Candomblés were persecuted regularly, and these

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8 Portrait of an Afro-Brazilian woman. Carte de visite. Photographer: Alberto Henschel (1827-1882), Brazil. EMB, VIII E Nls 767 (P 4650).

images were used by the organs of state control to register their members.26 However, it is also possible that these images were made on the initiative of the people in the photographs and were only used for registration purposes if necessary. Thus, the images may have been used by the people in the photographs to indicate and communicate their enhanced social status as freed persons by using the same medium as the noble (white) Brazilians; this was common among some members of the Candomblés and Brother- and Sisterhoods in nineteenth century Brazil.27

The narrative portrait The greatest number of carte de visite portraits belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum can be classified as narrative portraits. These images depict typical craft workflows, social interaction and labour situations. They celebrate aspects of public urban life such as markets, but also private home life. The wealth of details they provide means

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

9 Indigenous man from Suriname. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown. EMB, VIII E Nls 768 (P 8854).

these images contain far more information than personal portraits, which gain their meaning mainly within the private or personal context of the people in the photo­ graphs. However, although narrative portraits provide more visual details, they have to be interpreted carefully and critically and need to be seen as artificial, highly staged, elaborated compositions and not as real representations of any particular social ­interaction or other scene. Cards from South America representing labour-related topics are typical of the collection. As images of labour, they follow a famous iconographic tradition within European art that has existed since the sixteenth century. Large collections of handicraftsmen and their tools were published in forms similar to encyclopaedias by Jost Amman (1568) and Christoph Weigel (1698). These compilations represent the common professions of their time and thus promote the development of a model of identity that determines the status of human beings to a wide extent according to their profession. They provide an impressive visual overview of the

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10 Woman selling fresh water. Carte de visite. Photographer: unknown, distributed by: Cruces y Campa. EMB, VIII E Nls 770 (P 4873).

social organization and labour division during a specific period. Until the nineteenth century, they consisted mainly of woodcuts and engravings, but these were later successfully replaced by photography. The collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum embraces a wide range of these images of labour. The term ‘labour’ includes all forms of earning a livelihood and is not restricted to waged work. Thus, there are images of hunters and gatherers as well as fishermen from diverse regions such as a man with a spear from Suriname who was photographed against a backdrop of park scenery (Fig. 9). Another photo­ graph represents a similar situation: three men from Chile are posing against a neutral backdrop in a nature studio environment and present their spears and other tools. The carte de visite is titled “Araukaner” and represented three Mapuche men (formerly named Araukaner) in Chile (EMB, VIII E Nls 1007, P 14857). The situa­ tion of people selling at market­places and of street-vendors are also a widespread topic that was covered in diverse regions of South America.28 One image depicts a

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

person selling freshwater, posed at a spring with exuberant plants (Fig. 10). Typical for the representation of the “other” are the photographs of breastfeeding women from diverse regions.29 The narrative portraits correspond widely to the sense of the picturesque that attracted European travellers in the nineteenth century. This is clear, for example, from travel literature of the time. The images provide idyllic views of social life that was staged in most instances in a photographic studio. Only very few cartes de visite were taken outdoors, in the street or against natural landscapes; this reveals that the medium was expected to produce certain visuals that could be better attained in photographic studios.

Results and perspectives This overview of the carte de visite collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum demonstrates that the photographs are closely connected to the international trends of portrait photography in the nineteenth century. This applies to the history of motifs, and the social usage of these images. However, compared to carte de visite photography within Europe, the history of the format in South America is still full of many blanks. The vast collections belonging to European institutions, in particular, have yet to be integrated intensively into the discourses on history of photography in South America. These images still need to be linked to the various aspects of regional history and media of their time. Thus, the collection provides a wide range of starting points for the history of the motifs as well as for other aspects of history of photography. By publishing these images in online databases, they enter a new stage of ­public life. Even if significant metadata such as details of the photographers are still missing, there is a good chance that the enhanced availability of the photographs on the Internet and new research tools will promote and facilitate further research. With respect to the content of the images, their online publication could lead to a significant growth of information. Open access strategies by the responsible institu­tions are important motors that could further collaborative research on visual data, especially between distant places. The analysis, description and processing of photographic archives from the field of anthropology could become a very fruit­ ful endeavour of combined, collaborative work between students and researchers. This would mean that the significance of the collection could be enhanced by the continuous addition of metadata.

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Bibliography Almeida, Pires de. 1913. “Erros e preconceitos populares.” A Illustração Brazileira 103: 294 – 296. Arnal, Ariel. 1998. “Construyendo símbolos – fotografía política en México: 1865 – 1911.” E. I. A. L., 9(1) (available online: http://www.tau.ac.il/eial/IX_1/index.html#articulos). Banta, Melissa and Curtis M. ­Hinsley. 1986. From Site to Sight: Anthropology, Photography and the Power of Imagery. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press. Bayerdörfer Hans-Peter, Bettina Dietz, Frank Heidemann and Paul Hempel (eds.). 2007. Bilder des Fremden. Mediale Inszenierung von Alterität im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin: LIT. Biblioteca Nacional (Brasil; ed.). 1987. Fotografias. “Collecção D. ­Thereza Christina Maria”. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional. Biblioteca Nacional (Brasil; ed.). 1997. A Coleção do Imperador: fotografia brasileira e estrangeira no século XIX / Biblioteca Nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Biblioteca Nacional und Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil. Billeter, Erika. 1981. Fotografie Lateinamerika von 1860 bis heute (Ausstellungskatalog Kunst­ haus). Zürich: Benteli. Billeter, Erika. 1994. Fotografie Lateinamerika 1860 – 1993. (= Canto a la realidad. Photographie latino-américaine 1860 – 1993, Madrid). Bern: Benteli. Corkovic, Laura Miroslava. 2012. La cultura indígena en la fotografía mexicana de los 90s. Universidad de Salamanca, Tesis del Departamento de Historia del Arte / Bellas Artes [online:] http://gredos.usal.es/jspui/handle/10366/121140 Dammann, Carl. 1873/74. Anthropologisch-Ethnologisches Album in Photographien von C. ­Dammann in Hamburg. Berlin: Wiegandt, Hempel u. Parey. Derenthal, Ludger, Raffael Dedo Gadebusch and Katrin Specht (eds.). 2012. Das koloniale Auge. Frühe Portrait-Fotografie in Indien (Ausstellung Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang. Deustua, Jorge and Fernando Torres (eds.). 2009. La destrucción del olvido: Estudio Courret Hermanos 1863 – 1935 (Exposición). Lima: Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano. Edwards, Elizabeth. 1990. “Photographic ‘Types’: The Pursuit of Method.” Visual Anthropology 3: 235 – 258. Edwards, Elizabeth (ed.). 1992. Anthropology and Photography 1860 – 1920. New Haven, L ­ ondon: Yale University Press. Edwards, Elizabeth, and Janice Hart (eds.). 2004. Photographs Objects Histories. On the ­Materiality of Images. London, New York: Routledge. Engelhard, Jutta Beate, and Peter Mesenhöller (eds.). 1995. Bilder aus dem Paradies. Koloniale Fotografie aus Samoa 1875 – 1925. Köln (= Ethnologica, N. F. vol. 19). Ermakoff, George. 2004. O negro na fotografia brasileira do século XIX. ­Rio de Janeiro: G. ­Ermakoff Casa Editorial. Freitas, Marcus Vinicius de. 2001. Hartt. Expedições pelo Brasil Imperial 1865 – 1878. São Paulo: Metavídeo SP Produção e Comunicação. Freund, Gisèle. 1979. Photographie und Gesellschaft. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Giordano, Mariana. 2012. Indígenas en la Argentina: fotografías 1860 – 1970. Buenos Aires: El Artenauta.

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait

Grunspan, Elise (ed.). 1992. Catálogo de Exposição O Sujeito em Perigo – Identidade Fotográfica e Alteridade no Brasil: do Século XIX até 1940. Recife: Fundaj, Editora Massangana. Kossoy, Boris. 1998. “Photography in Nineteenth-Century Latin America.” In Image and Memory. Photography from Latin America 1866 – 1994, edited by Wendy Watriss and Lois Parkinson Zamora, 19 – 53. Houston: University of Texas Press. Kossoy, Boris. 2002. Dicionário Histórico-Fotográfico Brasileiro. São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles. Kossoy, Boris, and Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro. 1994. O olhar europeu: o negro na iconografia brasileira do século XIX. ­São Paulo: Edusp. Krech, Hartmut. 1984. “Lichtbilder vom Menschen. Vom Typenbild zur anthropologischen Fotografie.” In: Fotogeschichte 14: 3 – 15. Maggie, Yvonne. 1992. Medo do feitiço: relações entre magia e poder no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional. Maxwell, Anne. 1999. Colonial photography and exhibitions: representations of the “native” and the making of European identities. London: Leicester Univ. Press. Massé Zendejas, Patricia. 2000. Cruces y Campa. Una experiencia mexicana del retrato tarjeta de visita. México, D. F.: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Dirección General de Publicaciones. Nascimento, Luiz Cláudio. 2004. Invenção de Identidades Africanas no Recôncavo Baiano. Quilombos, Rebeliões Escravas, Formação de Famílias, Compadrio, Domesticidade e Religiosi­ dade de Cunho Africano em Cachoeira, Bahia. (unpublished manuscript). Nascimento, Luiz Cláudio, and Cristina Isidoro. 1988. A Boa Morte em Cachoeira. Contribuição para o estudo etnológico. Bahia: Cachoeira. Newhall, Beaumont. 2005 [1937]. Geschichte der Photographie. München: Schirmer/Mosel. Parker, Ann and Avon Neal. 1982. Los Ambulantes: The Itinerant Photographers of Guatemala. Cambridge, MIT. Pena, Patricia G. 2007. Ricardo Villaalba’s Péron Et Bolivie: Types Et Costumes: An Album of Cartes de Visite. Ryerson University and George Eastman House. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity. A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Prussat, Margrit. 2008. Bilder der Sklaverei. Fotografien der afrikanischen Diaspora in Brasilien, 1860 – 1920. Berlin: Reimer. Regener, Susanne. 1999. Fotografische Erfassung. Zur Geschichte medialer Konstruktionen des Kriminellen. München: Wilhelm Fink. Ribeyrolles, Charles. 1861 [1859]. Brazil Pittoresco. Paris: Lemercier. Sampaio, Gabriela dos Reis. 2001. Nas trincheiras da cura: as diferentes medicinas no Rio de Janeiro imperial. Campinas, SP: UNICAMP, CECULT, IFCH. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. 2000 [1998]. As Barbas do Imperador. D. ­Pedro II., um monarca nos trópicos. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. 2002 [1993]. O espetáculo das raças: cientistas, instituições e questão racial no Brasil, 1870 – 1930. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Souza Filho, Durval de. 2003. “Retratos da transgressão. A Casa de Correção da Corte. 1859 – 1878”. In Ensaios sobre a escravidão, No. 1, edited by Manolo Florentino and Cacilda Machado, 263 – 286. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.

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Suárez Saavedra, Fernando. 2011. Historia de la Fotografía en Bolivia. Sucre, Bolivia: Servicios Gráficos IMAG. Theye, Thomas (ed.). 1989. Der Geraubte Schatten. Die Photographie als ethnographisches Dokument. München: Stadtmuseum München/Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin. Theye, Thomas. 1999. “Einige Neuigkeiten zu Leben und Werk der Brüder Carl Victor und Friedrich Wilhelm Dammann.” In: Ethnographie Afrikas. Ethnographische Photographie, edited by Wulf Köpke and Bernd Schmelz, 247 – 284. Bonn: Holos (= Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg, N. F., Bd. 24/25). Turazzi, Maria Inez. 1995. Poses e Trejeitos. A fotografia e as exposições na era do espetáculo (1839 – 1889). Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, Funarte. Watriss, Wendy and Lois Parkinson Zamora (eds.). 1998. Image and Memory. Photography from Latin America 1866 – 1994. (FotoFest) Austin: University of Texas Press. Wiener, Michael. 1990. Ikonographie des Wilden. München: Trickster.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Cf. for example, Banta and Hinsley 1986; Edwards 1992; Engelhard and Mesenhöller 1995; Maxwell 1999; and Derenthal, Gadebusch and Specht 2012. Cf. Newhall 2005; Freund 1979. The term carte de viste refers back to the custom that visitors announced themselves by handing out a card (“calling card”) with their name to the visited person. These cards were collected and served as marker of social status, cf. Turazzi 1995, 103; Poole 1997, 11. Turazzi 1995, 103. Cf. Parker and Neal 1982 on the Ambulantes, itinerant photographers in Guatemala. Gutierrez 1997; Kossoy 1998. See for example Freitas 2001. Cf. e. g. EMB VIII E Nls 953, P 4861 and VIII E 1826 h: the candle-seller, Velero, Mexico, around 1869; VIII E Nls 954, P 4860 and VIII E 1839 g: kids playing, Mexico around 1869. Cf. Edwards and Hart 2004. Cf. contribution by Junker in this volume. Cf. contribution by Leysinger in this volume. Turazzi 1995, 212 – 223; Kossoy 2002,175 – 179; Prussat 2008, 90 – 103. Deustua and Torres 2009. Arnal 1998; Massé Zendejas 2000. Pena 2007. Cf. Bayerdörfer et al. 2007; Corkovic 2012; Edwards 1990; Kossoy and Tucci Carneiro 1994, Poole 1997, Suárez Saavedra 2011. Grunspan 1992; Regener 1999. Cf. Turazzi 1995, 61. Cf. Ribeyrolles 1859; Schwarcz 2000 and 2002. Cf. Regener 1999, 28, 67; de Souza Filho 2003. Massé Zendejas 2000.

Carte de visite photography in South America. The mass-produced portrait 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

For example Turazzi 1995; Ermakoff 2004; Biblioteca Nacional Brasil 1987, 1997. Cf. Dammann 1873/74; Theye 1999; Prussat 2008, 98, 102. Prussat 2008, 97 – 101. Almeida 1913; Sampaio 2001. Maggie 1992. Cf. Nascimento and Isidoro 1988; Nascimento 2004. Cf. the photographs in Billeter 1981, 1994; Watriss and Zamora 1998. EMB, VIII E Nls 1045, P 7539; VIII E Nls 8839, P 1044, P 8839; these are said to depict the same woman, but who was photographed in different poses in the studio.

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Postcards from Latin America

During the late 1890s and in the first decades of the twentieth century the picture postcard belonged to the most important visual media.1 It spread and popularized photos and prints showing very different motifs – people, landscapes, cities, buildings, railways, events, and many, many more – from all over the world including Latin America. Postcards from Latin America transferred an ambivalent image of the unknown continent to Europe. On the one hand, these postcards emphasized that Latin America possessed well-developed economies and infrastructure that enabled the colonizer to exploit the continent’s natural resources, engage in agricultural industry and conduct trade without encountering major problems. For example, postcards-turned-photo­graphs of railways – the symbol of progress – demonstrated that infrastructure had even been developed in the Andes. And pictures of modern metropolises with their government palaces, parliaments, national banks, hotels, and other urban views, factories and other modern production sites, ports, possibilities for leisure activities, romantic parks, sports facilities, botanical gardens, or the zoo in Buenos Aires as well as of rural estates showed that Latin American life could be quite comfortable. Emi­grants and travellers who sent such postcards home demonstrated to their relatives, friends, or business partners that at least Latin America’s bigger cities, and among them Buenos Aires in particular, did not have to shy away from comparisons to European metropolises, as they were not that different. Congruently, when speaking about the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, the famous German writer Karl May stated: “One could just as well be in Bordeaux or Trieste.”2 On the other hand, pictures of rough landscapes, untouched nature and traditional, savage indigenous people confirmed the age-old imagination of Latin America as a backward periphery with a racially inferior native population that had been ‘naturally’ conquered by the Europeans and whose exploitation and displacement was legitimate.

The Postcard Collection of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin The collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin consists of about 188 photo- and picture-postcards acquired between the beginning of the twentieth century and the late 1930s. Compared to those of other institutions, the collection is rather small. In 1937, Walter Krickeberg, who was to become director of the museum two

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1 “Casa Bamba” – Sierras de Córdoba. Postcard. Photographer and editor: unknown, probably Argentina, around 1920. EMB, VIII E Nls 259.

years later, admitted the whole collection of photographic images from the Americas still was “rather pitiful”.3 Notwithstanding, its qualitative analysis and systematic inte­ gration into the whole cosmos of visualizations of Latin America provides us insights into something special: the museum’s scientific-ethnological view.4 Not surprisingly, a category of motifs displaying ‘modernity’ is rare, although not absent, in the collection. The museum sought to build a collection of postcards with ethnological and anthro­ pological portraits of indigenous people, their bodies, physiognomies, costumes, jewellery, crafts, traditions, cultures, history and ‘natural habitat’. Of course, this one-sided view reduced the idea of Latin America and its inhabitants to well-known stereotypes. The resulting process of othering, the construction of indigenous alterity along with a European, bourgeois identity, has been investigated many times before.5

Picture postcards Officially, the first postcard was sent in Austria in 1869. (Earlier usages of postcards occurred in the 1860s in the United States.) These early so-called correspondence cards were not illustrated except for small emblems. Soon, however, their use spread to the rest of Europe and the United States, and by the 1890s postcards were also

Postcards from Latin America

commonly being used in Latin America and other parts of the world. By this time, the first picture postcards in black and white appeared. They were lithographically illustrated on the back; contrary to popular opinion, the front being the side with the address. However, I adopt the common language use in order to avoid confusion. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the postcard consisted of a divided back (originally the front) with one section reserved for the message, and the other for the address.6 Previously, the picture and the message had competed for space on the front (originally the back) resulting in the well-known phenomenon of greetings and other short messages written in the sky, for instance, or on other brighter parts of the image.7 Around 1895, chromolithography enabled the production of coloured cards (but there are only a few such coloured postcards in the museum’s collection). As was the case with the black and white lithographic cards, often the illustrations printed on these early postcards were based on photographs. Thus, the new media of photography and postcard were amalgamated even before the early twentieth century when the first photo-postcards appeared in black and white (collotype and bromide). The attraction of editing photographs in the form of postcards and thus the latters’ importance for the distribution of photographic images resulted from two factors. First, the postcard made the large-scale dissemination of images possible through sending them via the postal service. Second, serial production made postcards the cheapest way to print photographs. From the 1920s, picture and photo-postcards were being produced by offset printing. All this technical progress soon reached Latin America. Especially in the urban centres of Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Brazil, photographers and other specialists, often European immigrants, many of them from Germany, produced their own postcards and/or distributed postcards produced in the United States or in Europe; again, this especially occurred in Germany.8 The postcard thus had a truly transnational charac­ter: it could cross the globe various times before finding its way into the private albums or archival collections such as that of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. A photographer, often a European immigrant, would take a picture in Latin America (making use of a European technique). The photo might then be sent to a manufac­ turer in Europe that produced postcards. The following provides an example of an editor represented in the museum’s collection: the German photographer Guillermo Grüter (1871 – 1947), who had arrived in Paraguay in 1893. Grüter’s early postcards were printed in Germany, then sent back to Grüter in Asunción, before they were finally sold – perhaps to a European traveller – who then might have sent them to family in Germany or brought them back as souvenirs or for professional reasons. The case of Grüter’s postcards is not an exception; there are various other similar cases.

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Photographs and photo-postcards played a crucial role in the process of imagining Latin American reality. Contemporarily credited with objectivity, authenticity, and facticity they not only ‘proved’ what they represented to be true, which was particularly important because of the already mentioned ambivalence of the overall image; they also facilitated the generation of knowledge as photos and other visual media are most immediate media.9 Thus, they helped to foster stereotypes and to project fantasies onto strange Latin America. Visual media had done so since the first cultural contacts between Europeans and indigenous Americans in the course of European expansion. European knowledge about Latin America always has been visually transmitted. The prints of the de Brys illustrating, for instance, Hans Staden’s account of Brazil are very well-known.

The Actors Before turning to the images that were transmitted from Latin America to Germany, the various actors involved in this process: the photographer, the editor, and the viewers are presented. Latin American photographers were often European immi­ grants that had established their businesses principally in the major cities such as Lima, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Valparaíso and Rio de Janeiro.10 European scientists, adventurers, and travellers were some of the other authors of images. Among these photographers, proba­bly the best known is Guido Boggiani (1861 – 1902), an Italian ethnologist, artist, and adventurer. Boggiani had arrived in South America in 1887 and became fascinated with the indigenous people of the Chaco (a region on the borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia). The following year he established himself in Paraguay. In 1902, he is said to have been decapitated by “Indians” during a journey through the Chaco.11 A series of 114 photographs Boggiani had taken of “indigenous types of central South America”,12 mostly residents of the Chaco in 1904, was published as postcards by German anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche (1872 – 1938) in cooperation with the editor Roberto Rosauer from Buenos Aires (Lehmann-Nitsche 1904). The collection, which was printed in Germany, was praised by anthropologists and ethnologists at the time: “[Lehmann-Nitsche] performed a pious deed and benefitted anthropology by editing this collection”.13 Thus, it can be found in various European institutions, including the Ethnologisches Museum of Berlin. Some postcards with motifs from this collection appear twice, and their divided backs reveal that they were reprinted later by Rosauer. Due to the fact that many, if not most, Latin American photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were taken by Europeans, some historians

Postcards from Latin America

with regard to these representations speak of a “view from outside”.14 Other famous photographers whose pictures were edited as postcards that can be found in the Ethnologisches Museum include Odber Heffer Bissett (1860 – 1945). Bissett was born in Canada and went to Chile in 1886 to work for Félix Leblanc, the owner of the presti­ gious photographic studio Garreaud. This studio operated subsidiaries in Copiapó, Santiago, Valparaiso, Talca, La Serena, and Concepción.15 The work of the Peruvian photographer Martín Chambi (1891 – 1973) is also represented in the museum’s col­ lection. Chambi was the only indigenous photographer among those known to have produced the museum’s postcards. Born in 1891 in Coaza (Puno), Chambi first came into contact with the medium of photography in the gold mines of Santo Domingo, which were run by the (US-)American Inca Mining Company. In 1908, he moved to Arequipa where he worked as an apprentice in the studio of Max T. ­Vargas, a pioneer of Peruvian photography.16 After having opened a studio of his own in Sicuani in 1917, Chambi established himself in Cuzco in 1920 where he developed his own photographic style. Taking pictures of indigenous people, their culture and tradition, costumes, rituals, crafts, but also of indigenous ruins and the Andean landscape (often in combination with visualizations of modernity, such as the flight of Velasco Astete over Cuzco, for instance), Chambi essentially contributed to the indigenist Cuzco school.17 Many photographers such as Vargas and Chambi also edited postcards – mostly based on their own photographs. This brings me to the second group of actors: the editors. Like the photographers, many, if not all of the editors were European immigrants or sons of immigrants, often from Germany or German-speaking countries. These included the following editors of postcards archived in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin: Roberto Rosauer, one of the major editors in Buenos Aires; Kohlmann in Rosario, Argentina; Guillermo Grüter in Asunción, Paraguay; Max Rösner in Curi­tiba, Brazil; Gottfried Hurter in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala; and Carlos Brandt and Adolfo Stegmann in Valparaiso and Concepción, Chile.18 While in most Latin American countries the editors operated in the bigger cities, the national and provincial capitals, postcard pro­ duction in Chile was much more regionalized. Even in Punta Arenas, various editors produced postcards, among them the Austrian immigrant and hotelier Roberto Mulach (1883 – 1930) and Henry Poirier (1871 – 1915). Poirier, originally Herman Birnbaum, was born into a Jewish family from Bucharest. In the late 1880s, he emigrated and around 1890, after having spent about two years in Marseille, he arrived in Punta Arenas and established a successful fur and hide trade. In his Peletería Magallanes, the passionate photographer also sold postcards and curios.19 However, with the exception of the bigger printers such as Rosauer, editors would have produced small batches as they probably lacked the machinery for large-scale production.

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2 Souvenir from the Strait of Magellan. Postcard. Photographer and editor (probably): Henry Poirier, Peletería Magallanes, Punta Arenas, around 1900. EMB, VIII E Nls 202.

As was the case with the people producing photos and postcards, the greater part of the viewers of postcards also belonged to the urban sphere. Due to the lack of sources, this third group of actors is the hardest one to grasp. In Latin America, the images were seen predominantly by an urban public stemming from the higher and middle classes. Postcards were more or less affordable – as had been cartes de visite and cabinet cards (visual media that had been popular earlier in the nineteenth century).20 However, they could be found almost exclusively in the shops belonging to editors and photographers and in libraries, tobacconists and stationary shops in the urban centres. Moreover, Latin American postcards were bought by Europeans. Immigrants sent them home to friends and relatives, and travellers who for commercial or scientific reasons were staying or living in Latin America for some time sent postcards home too, or bought them as souvenirs or out of scientific interest. The postcard collection of the anthropologist Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, who between 1897 and 1930 was the director of the anthropology section of the Museo de la Plata is very well known. Because of his large anthropological, ethnological, and folkloristic collection consisting not only of postcards and photos but also of other everyday testimonials, Lehmann-Nitsche is called the “archivist of everyday life” on the homepage of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin that hosts his legacy.21

Postcards from Latin America

The first decades of the twentieth century saw a boom in collecting postcards.22 Thousands and thousands of them were sent within Latin America. As Graciela ­Silvestri (2003) has shown in Argentina, for instance, “there were lists and specialized magazines to foster the exchange”.23 But the networks of collectors also reached E ­ urope. For example, the Swiss collector Adolf Feller, whose collection was published online by the ETH Zürich, received postcards from friends, partners, and pen pals from all over the world including Latin America.24 Scientific institutions such as the Ethnolo­ gisches Museum, for instance, did not take part in this exchange. To acquire postcards for their collections, rather, they were dependent on private collectors who left their collections to them in part or as a whole. Due to bad or lacking documentation, it has not always been possible to reconstruct the exact path the postcards took before reaching the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum, and in some cases it will never be reconstructed. However, as none of the postcards was sent by post, it seems they all came from private collections of either postcard collectors or hobby scientists concerned with Latin America and/or ethnology. The museum’s records state the names of private collectors who left or sold postcards to the museum. In October 1924, for instance, the museum bought 27 postcards showing Brazilian, Chilean, and Bolivian “Indians” along with 140 photos of other South American indigenous groups and individuals at the price of 200 Goldmark from Dr Paul Traeger, a private scholar from Zehlendorf, which had been part of Berlin since 1920.25 On 11 October, 1928, Max Schmidt, director of the South American section of the museum noted: “Cornelia Heller, Berlin, nurse at the Rudolf Virchow hospital, ward 10, today has donated 5 clay figures, excavated in Manta in northern Ecuador, and 9 pieces of textile from ancient Peru to the museum of ethnology. She also offers the museum 29 photographs and 18 postcards resp. smaller images for sale.”26 Considering Heller’s “valuable donation”, the museum bought the images for 60 Mark. As Heller is identified as having taken at least two of the pictures on the postcards she sold, she must have been a resident in Peru for some time and probably built her collection there.27 Other transactions are less well documented. In May 1937, Walter Krickeberg wrote to the general director Professor Dr Kümmel that the museum had been offered a collection of about 70 photos and 17 photo-postcards with ethnographic motives from different regions of South America and an ethnographic collection of about 30 Aymaran artefacts from Bolivia by “a certain Mrs Görms” from Steglitz. “The photos are all outstanding and some are very rare (especially those of the Araucanians and Patagonians and a whole series of pictures of Botocudos) and the collection includes very remarkable pieces. Considering that our American photo-collection still is rather pitiful and that our ethnographic collection of modern South American highland

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indians strongly needs to be enlarged, I appeal for the approval of funds for the pur­ chase. The owner demands for both, photos and collection, only 200 R. M. ­So, the offer is remarkably favourable.”28 The purchase was approved a week later. In the case of Harriet Siebold, who sold three postcards from Guatemala to the museum in 1927, the records only mention the purchase of a Guatemalan magic pouch.29 More postcards were obtained from Max Bohnstedt in 1912; Werner Hopp in 1923; Alberto Vollmar in 1928; and Dietrich Reimer in 1937. One postcard had formerly belonged to the ethnologist Adolf Bastian (1826 – 1905), who was also the museum’s founding director; another one was acquired in 1941 from Erich Junkelmann. (This postcard is special: it is not originally from Latin America but from the Linden-­Museum in Stuttgart. It shows some of the museum’s objects from Latin America; on its back there are handwritten new year’s greetings.) The names of the people who sold or donated more than half of the postcards have not been documented.

Different Views As has been mentioned already, and this is hardly surprising for an ethnological col­ lection, the majority of the postcards depict indigenous people, individuals as well as groups, and both men and women. Another important group of postcards displays archaeological motives: ancient ruins and artefacts. Thus, originally, the collection was organized according to these categories. This differentiation of archaeological and ethnological postcards today is obsolete, and for good reasons. There are other motives that do not match this classification such as the small number of views of ‘modernity’. This includes views of urban scenes and modern infrastructure. (Such representations of progressive Latin America make up the majority of other collec­ tions such as the one that belonged to Adolf Feller hosted by the ETH Zürich or the collection of the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg.) Moreover, there are half a dozen postcards that display the exterior and interior of churches and some views of villages or settlements in Tierra del Fuego. These are probably meant to demonstrate that even this remote area had been colonized (although the villages are quite humble). Colonization is represented most immediately in a postcard depicting indigenous children in the Salesians’ mission on Isla Dawson, Tierra del Fuego.30 The photographs-turned-postcards that display indigenous people were produced within the epistemic system the scientists acted in.31 Whereas ideally, anthropologists had to photograph their research objects naked; ethnologists aimed to capture the ‘authentic’ setting such as typical activities, costumes, jewellery, including body deco­ ration such as tattoos, and so on. Pictures of landscapes were to show the ‘natural

Postcards from Latin America

3 Tierra del Fuego. Yaganas. Crab fishermen. Postcard. Photographer and editor: Fot. Kohlmann, No. 908, Rosario, Argentina, around 1910. EMB, VIII E Nls 238.

habitat’ of indigenous peoples (Fig. 3), but they could also be interpreted from a geographical, geological, or botanical perspective. Thus, the images served to increase scientific knowledge. But on a meta level they also produced identity and alterity as has been mentioned above. American indigenous people (just as other ‘primitive’ groups such as Australia’s Aborigines or Africans) were constructed dichotomously as the opposite of the white (male) bourgeois European. Many picture postcards of indigenous people are accompanied by short inscriptions either printed on the front or back of the postcard, or by handwritten notices by the collectors. Usually, these textual components provide information about the ethnic belonging of the portrayed and/or the localization of the ethnicity’s home territory. Ethnic groups represented in the museum’s collection include Yaghan (Tierra del Fuego); Ona (also misspelled “Hona”, Tierra del Fuego, today Selk’nam);32 Tehuelche (a collective name for Patagonian indigenous ethnic groups, including, for instance, the Selk’nam); Mapuche (“Araucanians”); Lengua, Toba, Pilagá, Chinipis, and Chamacoco (all from the Chaco); Guaraní (from parts of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Bolivia); Coroados (Bororo) (Brazil); Campa (a derogatory exonym of Asháninka from the Peruvian and Brazilian rainforest); and Andean Aymara and Quechua. In some cases, scientist-collectors knew better (or thought they did) than the editor as is clear from

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4 The periphery of Quito. Native customs (sweeper). Postcard. Editor: Fototipía Laso, No. 97, Librería de Roberto Cruz, Quito, around 1910. EMB, VIII E 4268.

Fig. 4. The ethnologically well-informed collector who bought the postcard edited by José Domingo Laso, one of the first photographers in Quito, corrected Laso’s printed inscription: he claimed the road sweeper was not from the surroundings of Quito but from the Quito district or from the Ecuadorian capital – what is meant exactly is unclear. The collector stated that the man in the picture was from Zámbiza, which had been an Inca colony. In fact, Zámbiza is part of the Quito district but it is also located northeast of the city and thus in its surroundings. The picture of the indigenous road sweeper and other postcards in the museum’s collection including representations of  ‘typical’ activities such as those of vendors, water carriers, musicians, or gauchos, and of ‘typical’ costumes, as well as of picturesque landscapes were modern and ‘realistic’ versions of well-known costumbrista themes. There are similar pictures from probably all Latin American countries and even from Europe where photographers and postcard producers fabricated similar images of the rural, peasant population who were dressed in traditional costumes. In Germany,

Postcards from Latin America

traditional Trachten were (re)discovered and invented in the course of the Heimatbewegung in the nineteenth century. Images from the Iberian Peninsula even more resembled those from Latin America.33 This is not surprising as the Latin American costumbrismo in the nineteenth century was adapted from Spain and literarily as well as pictorially merged romantic and realistic features.34 Costumbrismo was also related to the Mexican pintura de castas and the even older tradition of the Flemish genre painting that represented the everyday life of ordinary people. Although costumbrista motives were almost universal, their Latin American versions were part of a visual canon that represented ‘typical’ views. Modern media photography and postcards demonstrated the ‘good old days’, and placed traditional paisanos and landscapes in a romantic light. Thus, they provided a contrast to the representations of modernity that were also very popular motives for postcards. As modernity also implied the threat of losing unique national characteristics in a globalized world and the threat of degeneration, all over the westernized world appeasing images flourished of tra­ ditional people rooted in their native lands doing what they and their ancestors had done ever since anyone could remember. For instance, representations of the gaucho 35 affirmed Argentina’s history, its firm, brave, and male native spirit in the face of mass immigration and Buenos Aires’ cosmopolitanism. (Paradoxically, these visualizations of the essence of original Argentine masculinity were mostly produced by porteños and European immigrants.) While the costumbrista and related postcards of the museum’s collection are rather ethnological views, other representations of indigenous people come under the ­heading of anthropology. These photographs, often taken from the front and/or profile, and ­preferably with naked subjects, belong to or resemble the category of type photographs,36 and they served to survey, measure, identify, and classify indigenous people in order to make out ethnic and racial ‘types’. The best example of a person who conducted this kind of anthropological research is Robert Lehmann-Nitsche: he maniacally collected all of the pictures of indigenous he could take or acquire to (often incorrectly) identify and classify these people. This kind of research validated the scientific racism of the contemporary race system with the white bourgeois man at the top. Thus, images of indigenous people served not only classification and documen­ tation; they were also part of a binary visual set that consisted of representations of modernity and tradition, of civilization and barbarianism, of culture and nature, and of the future of the modern nation-state and the indigenous past. In a process of internal colonization that was effected in countries such as Argentina as part of the so-called Conquest of the Desert (Conquista del desierto), former unexploited areas like Patagonia or later the Chaco were integrated into the national territory and

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5 “Corroados” (Bororo). Postcard. Editor: Max Rösner, Curitiba (Brazil), around 1900. EMB, VIII E 4267.

its indigenous population was killed, expelled, and/or subjected to modern living conditions and capitalist conditions of production. Photography was seen and used by many scientists as a means to conserve at least visually these cultures that were clearly faced with extinction.37 From yet another perspective, images representing Latin American modernity and modernization such as the postcard of  “Casa Bamba” (Fig. 1) equalled the destruction of indigenous life and its resources, and thus could have evoked regret – be it for humanistic reasons or because of the loss of potential objects for ethnological research. The at times slow but seemingly inevitable collapse of indigenous cultures was viewed analogously with the pictures of the ruins (Fig. 6) and artefacts left behind by the extinct pre-Columbian cultures. They clearly demonstrated the fate that was in store for the last ‘wild’ indigenous peoples. Of course, these pictures also had a scientific dimension, as they also served archaeological and ethnological aims. During this time, a very strong narrative dominated political and scientific dis­ courses: the view that extinct indigenous cultures had only left ruins behind them, and of existing indigenous people who were doomed to extinction because of their ‘racial inferiority’ compared to the ‘white’ population. According to the zeitgeist of social Darwinism, it was clear that these indigenous groups would lose the struggle for the survival of the fittest. Only very few people understood the social reasons

Postcards from Latin America

6 Ruins of Cuzco. Postcard. Photographer and editor: M. Mancilla, Arequipa, Peru, around 1925/1930. EMB, VIII E Nls 481. 7 Fiesta. Postcard. Photographer and editor: Martín Chambi, Cuzco, Peru, around 1920. EMB, VIII E Nls 235.

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behind the problems faced by indigenous populations and denounced the ruthless and criminal behaviour of the whites and mestizos and the expulsion and exploitation of indigenous people. However, the pictures of ruins and indigenous people that represented (invented) traditions and a (genuinely faked) history 38 not only contrasted with white ­Western, European, modern nations and with the ‘modernizing’ Latin American states and their bourgeois elites. In the 1920s, indigenist photographers such as Chambi increasingly began producing visualizations of indigenous cultures as virtuous, dignified and proud. In its aim to qualify and to classify human beings, scientific and type photography was related to medical and criminal photography which identified and simultaneously constructed other deviant types (people with mental illnesses, criminals, prostitutes, poor people, and so on). The indigenous woman portrayed in Fig. 8 in another edition is depicted as an “Indian woman with prominent breasts.”39 According to Masotta, “The body of the woman was exposed to the lens of the camera with her breasts uncovered and her hands behind her back. Moreover, the postcard is the product of a photo­ montage where the image of the body was placed onto a savage jungle-background. Her facial expression, and the way she looks into the camera with her head inclined, reproduce an effect of critical interpellation and of activity that contradict the body’s passivity.”40 Moreover, this picture reminds me of the photographs of pathological cases that, for instance, Robert Koch brought with him from his journeys to Africa, India, and the South Pacific. At the same time, however, the emphasis on, or even the reduction to, this woman’s secondary sexual characteristics brings to light yet another perspective within these postcard images. In accordance with the findings of orientalist research based on the work of Edward Said (1978), the spatial distance and the supposed cultural and racial distance meant that the desires and fantasies that had marked sexual elements could be projected onto the exotic ‘other’ in the orient, as well as in Latin America.41 The continent seemed to represent a space of unlimited sexual opportunities, an image with a large and strong, persisting historical continuity. Since the times of the conquista, which was accompanied by the mass rape of the indigenous population, Latin America repre­ sented the woman that was to be conquered by European men.42 In the nineteenth and twentieth century the sciences of race constructed indigenous people as natural beings and ascribed them an exuberant libido, incontinence, and sexual liberality in contrast to cultivated white and bourgeois Europeans.43 Photographs and postcards also transmitted this sexualized image of Latin America and its exotic, eroticized, and sexualized population. These pictures transcended the limits of the epistemic

Postcards from Latin America

8 Indigenous woman. Postcard. Photographer and editor: unknown, around 1920/1930. EMB, VIII E Nls 226.

system outlined above. This also applies, for instance, to some of the postcards in the Boggiani collection. The images showed something ‘more’ and in postcolonial theory can be considered as hybrids.44 Apart from the exotic note that is most apparent in the representations of the tattooed women or the man with a Boa constrictor around his neck, some of the postcards have a decidedly erotic note.45 Pictures of naked or semi-naked women, men, adolescents and even children might have stimulated the sexual fantasies of Europeans, especially European men. Although the inscription that identifies the girls on the following postcard (Fig. 9) as “lenguas” suggests a scientific purpose, the non-scientific and sexualized perspective within the image becomes quite clear in the arrangement and (artistic?) pose of the people in the photograph: this is neither anthropological nor ethnological; it is European and resembles the pose of models. Legally and publicly displaying nudity in photographs was only possible in certain artistic and scientific contexts. (Of course, erotic postcards and explicit pornographic

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9 Lenguas. (Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay). Postcard. Editor: Guillermo Grüter, Asunción, Paraguay, around 1910(?). EMB, VIII E 5571.

photos were sold underhand.) Scientific photos of indigenous naked and semi-naked men, women, and adolescents, even children, taken by anthropologists and ethno­ graphers also showing primary and secondary sexual characteristics thus were located between the poles of generating scientific knowledge and of orientalist-like exoticism and eroticism.46 Even if explicitly pornographic postcards of indigenous people were rare, they did exist.47

Conclusion When representing indigenous individuals (or, contemporarily, ‘types’) and cul­ tures in photographs and postcards, the people depicted were not only identified, classified, conserved, and assigned their place in the racial system: the images also revealed certain characteristics about the indigenous peoples. These ascriptions were highly ambivalent and even contradictory. Indigenous people were scientifically and

Postcards from Latin America

10 Indigenous woman from Beni, Bolivia. Postcard. Editor: Arnó Hnos., La Paz (Bolivia), around 1910(?). EMB, VIII E Nls 207.

popu­larly constructed as members of a primitive, natural, immoral, defeated, and dying race. At the same time, the positivist zeitgeist of the nineteenth century believed in and sought ways of integrating and assimilating the indigenous people into Latin American societies. Some indigenous people were assumed to be noble; others were orientalised, exoticized, and eroticized. Due to their intense ambivalence, it is more often than not impossible to unambi­ guously assign the pictures a single function or effect. In the case of the postcards from the Ethnologisches Museum, these certainly served to further ethnological and anthropological as well as archaeological knowledge about Latin America. However, they also served to represent American indigenous alterity and thus produce European bourgeois identity. Moreover, the same photograph or postcard may work as a scientific image as well as an artistic or exotic/erotic image. Guido Boggiani, for instance, was an artist and an ethnographer, and this becomes very clear from his photographs. The ambivalent and at times conflicting dimensions of representations of ‘indigenous people’ leap out to

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the observer of Fig. 10, which is part of a series of portraits of indigenous people. The studio photograph shows a ‘typical’ indígena from Beni, a Bolivian lowland region, in front of scenery meant to represent the jungle, her supposed natural habitat. The picture blends scientific (the inscription suggests an ethnological aim that was confirmed with the inclusion in the museum’s collection), artistic (the whole image seems costumbrista) and exotic-erotic (bare breasts, feather headdress and skirt) traits. The postcards (and other pictures) from Latin America can be described by the adjective ‘iridescent’: the pictures have different effects, depending on the context and mood they are interpreted from. In some cases, this ambiguity seems to have been intended by photographers and editors. Clearly, there is not a single dimension, nor a ‘correct’ way of viewing or interpreting a certain image. As Roland Barthes argued, photographs (the basis of many postcards) are not transparent documents written in a universal language, they are signs, semiotic phenomena whose magic results from their supposed transparency and objectivity, and it is this that provides different interpretations with authority.48

Unpublished documents [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 40, 1. 1. 1922 – 31.12. 1924, Pars I B, E 681/24 (Paul Traeger). Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 42, 1. 1.1927 – 31. 12. 1928, Pars I B, E 1124/1928 (Cornelia Heller). Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 45, 1. 1. 1935 – 31. 12. 1938, Pars I B, E 494/37 (Görms).

Bibliography Alloula, Malek. 1986 [1981]. The Colonial Harem (= Theory and history of literature, 21). Minnea­polis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Alvarado Pérez, Margarita, and Carla Möller Z. (eds.). 2009. “Dossier Fotografía y alteridad.” Revista Aisthesis 46. Alvarado Pérez, Margarita, Carolina Odone, Felipe Maturana, and Dánae Fiore (eds.). 2007. Fueginos: Fotografías siglos XIX y XX: Imágenes e imaginarios del fin del mundo. Santiago de Chile: Pehuén Editores. Andermann, Jens. 2007. The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil (= Illuminations: Cultural Formations of the Americas). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

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Barthes, Roland. 1990 [1964]. Rhetorik des Bildes. In Der entgegenkommende und der stumpfe Sinn (= Kritische Essays, 3), translated by Dieter Hornig, 24 – 46. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Bayerdörfer, Hans-Peter, Bettina Dietz, Frank Heidemann, and Paul Hempel (eds.). 2007. Bilder des Fremden. Mediale Inszenierungen von Alterität im 19. Jahrhundert (= Kultur­ geschichtliche Perspektiven, 5). Berlin: LIT. Beukers, Alan. 2007. Der Reiz des Exotischen: Postkarten aus einer fremden Welt. Hamburg: National Geographic Deutschland. Bhabha, Homi, K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Brown, David. 1996. “Genuine Fakes.” In The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth Making in Tourism, edited by Tom Selwyn, 33 – 47. Chichester, New York: Wiley. Bryce, James. 1912. South America: Observations and Impressions. London/New York: Macmillan. Bustos González, Atilio (ed.). 2007. Historia de la Postal en Chile. Valparaíso: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. Campbell, Duncan. 2012. The British Presence in Southern Patagonia. (01/17/2013). Chamberlain, Alexander F. 1905. “Review La Coleccion Boggiani de Tipos indigenas de Sudamerica Central, publicada por Robert Lehmann-Nitsche.” American Anthropologist N. S.  7: 325 – 326. Contreras Roqué, Julio Rafael. 2009. Guido Boggiani (1861 – 1901): Entre la memoria y el olvido (= Colección Azara, 1). Asunción: Fundación de Historia Natural “Felix Azara”. Corbey, Raymond. 1988. “Alterity: The Colonial Nude.” Critique of Anthropology 8(3): 75 – 92. Coronado, Jorge. 2009. The Andes Imagined: Indigenismo, Society, and Modernity (= Illumina­ tions: Cultural Formations of the Americas). Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Cresto, José Juan. 2004. “Roca y el mito del genocidio.” La Nación, 11/23/2004, (01/17/2013). Dunn, Benjamin. 2011. “Postcards from Punta Arenas.” The Dunn Saga, 04/11/2011, (01/17/2013). ETH Zürich. 2010. Die Postkartensammlung von Adolf Feller. (01/17/2013). Giordano, Mariana. 2009. “Nación e identidad en los imaginarios visuales de la Argentina: siglos XIX y XX.” Arbor 185(740): 1283 – 1298. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich and, Juan-José Sánchez. 1984. “Der Misanthrop, die Tänzerin und der Ohrensessel: Über die Gattung ‘Costumbrismo’ und die Beziehungen zwischen Gesellschaft, Wissen und Diskurs in Spanien von 1805 bis 1851.” In Bewegung und Stillstand in Metaphern und Mythen: Fallstudien zum Verhältnis von elementarem Wissen und Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert (= Sprache und Geschichte, 9), edited by Jürgen Link and Wulf Wülfing, 15 – 62. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Hempel, Paul. 2007. “Facetten der Fremdheit. Kultur und Körper im Spiegel der Typenphoto­ graphie.” In Bilder des Fremden: Mediale Inszenierungen von Alterität im 19. Jahrhundert (= Kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven, 5), edited by Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer, Bettina Dietz, Frank Heidemann, and Paul Hempel, 177 – 205. Berlin: LIT. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger (eds.). 1983. The Invention of Tradition (= Past and Present Publications). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Holzheid, Anett. 2011. Das Medium Postkarte: Eine sprachwissenschaftliche und mediengeschichtliche Studie (= Philologische Studien und Quellen, 231). Berlin: Schmidt. Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin. 2009. Miradas alemanas hacia América Latina. (01/17/2013). Jäger, Jens. 2008. “‘Fotografiegeschichte(n).’ Ein Forschungsstand?” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 48: 511 – 537. Jäger, Jens. 2009. Fotografie und Geschichte (= Historische Einführungen, 7). Frankfurt/M./ New York: Campus. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1902. “Guido Boggiani, ein neues Opfer des Gran Chaco.” Globus 82(22): 359. König, Eva. 2002. “Gottfried Hurter: Der Kaufmann von Quetzaltenango (Guatemala) (1866 – 1951).” In Indianer 1858 – 1928: Photographische Reisen von Alaska bis Feuerland, ­edited by Eva König, 52 – 54. Heidelberg: Edition Braus im Wachter Verlag/Museum für Völker­ kunde, Hamburg. Kraus, Michael. 2004. Bildungsbürger im Urwald: Die deutsche ethnologische Amazonienforschung (1884 – 1929). Marburg: Curupira. Latour, Bruno. 1986. “Visualization and Cognition: Drawing Things Together.” Knowledge and Society 6: 1 – 40. Lehmann-Nitsche, Robert (ed.). 1904. Die Sammlung Boggiani von Indianertypen aus dem centralen Südamerika / La Colección Boggiani de tipos indígenas de Sudamerica central. Buenos Aires: Rosauer. Luque Azcona, Emilio José. 2008. “Los imaginarios de Montevideo a través de sus tarjetas postales (1890 – 1930).” Contrastes: Revista de Historia Moderna 13: 57 – 75. Masotta, Carlos. 2003. “Cuerpos dóciles y miradas encontradas: Miniaturización de los cuerpos e indicios de la resistencia en las postales de indios argentinas (1900‐1940).” Revista Chilena de Antropología Visual 3, (01/17/2013). Masotta, Carlos. 2005. “Representación e iconografía de dos tipos nacionales: el caso de las postales etnográficas en Argentina 1900 – 1930.” In Arte y antropología en la Argentina, edited by Marta Penhos, 65 – 114. Buenos Aires: Fundación Telefonica; Fundación Espigas/ Fondo para la Investigación del Arte Argentino. Masotta, Carlos. 2007. Gauchos en las primeras postales fotográficas argentinas del s. XX  / ­Gauchos in the Early 1900s: Argentine Photo Postcards (= Colección Registro gráfico). Buenos Aires: La Marca Ed. Masotta, Carlos. 2008. Albúm postal / A Postcard Album (= Colección Registro gráfico). Buenos Aires: La Marca Ed. May, Karl. 1983 [1894]. Am Rio de la Plata. Repr. of the 1st ed. Bamberg: Karl-May-Verlag. Milne, Esther. 2010. Letters, Postcards, Email: Technologies of Presence (= Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies, 24). New York: Routledge. Onken, Hinnerk. 2007. “Wir sind Deutsche, wir sind Weiße und wir wollen Weiße b­ leiben!” Die Debatte um die sogenannten “Rassenmischehen” in “Deutsch-Südwestafrika”. ­sozial.geschichte.extra, [14. 03. 2013].

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Onken, Hinnerk. 2014a. “Ämbivalente Bilder: Fotos und Bildpostkarten aus Südamerika im Deutschen Reich, ca. 1880 –1930.” Rundbrief Fotografie 21(1/2): 8-16. Onken, Hinnerk. 2014b. “Visiones y visualizaciones: La nación en tarjetas postales sudameri­ canas a fines del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX.” Iberoamericana 14(56): 47 –69. Paul, Gerhard (ed.). 2008 – 2009. Das Jahrhundert der Bilder (2 vol.). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World (= Princeton Studies in Culture / Power / History). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Poole, Deborah. 2004. “An Image of ‘Our’ Indian: Type Photographs and Racial Sentiments in Oaxaca, 1920 – 1940.” HAHR 84(1): 37 – 82. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan. Schülting, Sabine. 1997. Wilde Frauen, fremde Welten: Kolonisierungsgeschichten aus Amerika. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Silvestri, Graciela. 1999. “Postales Argentinas.” In La Argentina en el siglo XX, edited by Carlos Altamira, 111‐135. Buenos Aires: Ariel. Silvestri, Graciela. 2003. “El viaje de las Señoritas.” Revista todaVIA, 4, (01/17/2013). Tropper, Eva. 2010. “Bild/Störung: Beschriebene Postkarten um 1900.” Fotogeschichte 30(118): 5 – 16. Villacorta Chávez, Jorge, and Andrés Garay Albújar. 2007. Emilio Díaz y Max T. ­Vargas: Los orígenes de la fotografía en Arequipa y en el sur andino peruano. Lima: Instituto Peruano de Arte y Diseño. Voigt, Jochen. 2006. Faszination Sammeln: Cartes de visite: Eine Kulturgeschichte der photographischen Visitenkarte. Chemnitz: Ed. Mobilis. Walter, Karin. 2001. “Die Ansichtskarte als visuelles Massenmedium.” In Schund und Schönheit: Populäre Kultur um 1900 (= Alltag und Kultur, 8), edited by Kaspar Maase and Wolfgang Kaschuba, 46 – 61, Köln: Böhlau. Wolter, Stephanie. 2005. Die Vermarktung des Fremden: Exotismus und die Anfänge des Massen­ konsums. Frankfurt/M: Campus. Young, Robert J. ­C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. London: Routledge.

Notes 1

2 3

Nevertheless, research on postcards is still scarce and has increased only recently. Cf. e. g. Holzheid 2011; Milne 2010; Walter 2001. There is only very little literature available on Latin American postcards. Cf. especially the works of Masotta 2005, 2008; but also Bustos González 2007 and Luque Azcona 2008. “Man könnte sich ebenso gut in Bordeaux oder Triest befinden.” May 1893, 17. Krickeberg called the collection “ziemlich kläglich”. Of course, Krickeberg had a per­ sonal interest in highlighting the small size of the collection as he wanted to buy new material. Cf. EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 45, 1. 1. 1935 – 31. 12. 1938, Pars I B, E 494/37 (Görms).

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9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18

19

20 21 22 23 24

The concept of the view is the guideline for my current research, cf. e.g. Onken 2014a. Cf. e. g. Bayerdörfer et al. 2007 or Alvarado Pérez and Möller Z. 2009. The divided back was officially introduced in 1907 by the Universal Postal Union. In Germany, for instance, it had been introduced two years earlier. Cf. Tropper 2010. In Buenos Aires, the principal editors were Rosauer (Austrian), Peuser (German) and ­Fumagalli (Italian). According to the CONICET researcher Graciela Silvestri 2003, by the 1920s they had produced more than 6,000 postcards. Cf. e. g. Latour 1986. German historian and expert in visual studies Paul 2008 – 2009 coined the term of the “century of the images” for the twentieth century. For an intro­ duction into the history of photography and visual history, cf. Jäger 2009. The demand for photographs that existed among the rural population was satisfied by travelling photographers. Cf. e. g. Koch-Grünberg 1902; for Boggiani’s biography, cf. Contreras Roqué 2009. “[…] tipos indígenas de Sudamérica central.” Chamberlain 1905, 326. “[…] mirada desde afuera”, Giordano 2009, 1285. The studio was founded by French photographer Pedro Emilio Garreaud (1835 – 1875) who in 1855 came to Latin America and installed himself in Peru before leaving for Chile ten years later. Cf. Villacorta Chávez and Garay Albújar 2007. For the rich literature on Chambi and the Cuzco school cf. e. g. Coronado 2009. For more information about editors in Chile cf. Bustos González 2007; for Argen­ tina, Silvestri 1999 and for Hurter (Guatemala) König 2002. To my knowledge, the existing literature does not provide information on the other identifiable editors of postcards from the collection. These are: de Notta y Compañía, Fot. Piérola, and Arnó Hnos., all in La Paz; Fototipía [ José Domingo] Laso, Quito; M. ­Mancilla in Arequipa, Peru; Jorge López Alvarez in San Juan de Pasto, Colombia, and Annibal Rocha in Curitiba, Brazil. Cf. Campbell 2012. Campbell’s website also contains a photo of the shop, cf. [accessed 01/17/2013]. For more of Poirier’s post­ cards cf. Dunn 2011. Cf. Voigt 2006, and for the Andean region, Poole 1997. Cf. the contribution by Prussat in this volume. Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin 2009. The Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut is twinned with the Ethnologisches Museum as part of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. For a cultural and analytical approach to collecting and the psychology of the collector cf. Andermann 2007, 12 – 13. “[…] existían listas y revistas especializadas para promover el intercambio”. ETH Zürich 2010. According to Carlos Masotta 2007, one of the few specialists in the field, most collectors were women. However, I doubt Masotta’s assertion, as in the course of my investigations on Germany, I found more male than female collectors. This also applies to the people who donated the postcards to the Ethnologisches Museum.

Postcards from Latin America 25 26

27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 40, 1. 1. 1922 – 31.12. 1924, Pars I B, E 681/24 (Traeger). “Schwester Cornelia Heller, Berlin, Rudolf Virchow Krankenhaus, Station 10, hat heute dem Museum für Völkerkunde 5 Tonfiguren, Ausgrabungen aus Manta in Nordequador, sowie 9 Gewebestücke aus Alt-Peru geschenkt. Sie bietet dem Museum ausserdem 29 Photographien und 18 Postkarten resp. kleinere Bilder aus Peru zum Kauf an.” EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 42. 1. 1.1927 – 31. 12. 1928, Pars I B, E 1124/1928 (Cornelia Heller). Cf. the handwritten notes on the postcards with the signatures EMB, VIII E 5040 and VIII E 5050. “Die Photos sind durchweg hervorragend und z. T. äusserst selten (darunter besonders diejenigen von den Araukanern u. Patagoniem und eine ganze Serie von Botokuden-Auf­ nahmen), und die Sammlung enthält sehr bemerkenswerte Stücke. In Anbetracht dessen, dass unsere amerikanische Photo-Sammlung noch ziemlich kläglich und unsere ethnographische Sammlung von den modernen südamerikanischen Hochlandindianern sehr ergänzungsbedürftig ist, bitte ich dringend um Bewilligung von Mitteln für die Erwerbung. Die Eigentümerin verlangt für beides, Photos und Sammlung, zusammen nur 200 R. M. ­Das Angebot ist also aussergewöhnlich günstig.” EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika. Vol. 45, 1. 1. 1935 – 31. 12. 1938, Pars I B, E 494/37 (Görms). “Zauberbeutel.” Cf. the postcard with the signature EMB, VIII E 4179. Cf. Jäger 2008, 521. For representations of Tierra del Fuego and its inhabitants, cf. also Alvarado Pérez et al. 2007. Cf. e. g. the Lisboan postcards showing a fruit vendor and fishermen in the legacy of Max Uhle in the archive of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin, signature N-0035 s 17. Cf. e. g. Gumbrecht and Sánchez 1984. Cf. Masotta 2007; Giordano 2009; and Onken 2014b. Cf. Hempel 2007; Poole 2004. Cf. a letter Theodor Koch-Grünberg sent to Karl Weule in Kraus 2004, 481. The dicho­ tomous view of whites/Argentinians vs indígenas that degrades the indigenous is still quite strong in Argentina, especially among the political right. Cf. for instance an apologetic article on the conquista del desierto published in the national newspaper La Nación by right-wing historian José Juan Cresto (2004), who until 2005 was the director of the Museo Histórico National and president of the Academía Argentina de la Historia. For these concepts, cf. Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983 and Brown 1996. “[…] India de pecho sobrepuesto.” “El cuerpo de la mujer fue enfrentado al objetivo de la cámara con los pechos descubiertos y las manos en la espalda. Además la postal es producto de un fotomontaje donde la imagen del cuerpo se superpuso a un fondo selvático. La mirada a cámara, la inclinación de la cabeza y la expresión del rostro reproducen un efecto de interpelación crítica y de actividad que contradice la pasividad corporal”, Masotta 2003, 7.

172 173

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42 43

44 45

46 47 48

Travel accounts demonstrate that the transfer of the orientalist approach to Latin ­America was by no means anachronistic. British traveller James Bryce, for instance, wrote of “scantily dressed Indians, wild looking as Bedaween, though with reddish brown instead of yellowish brown skins” (1912, 65). For orientalist visualizations, cf. Alloula 1986. Cf. e. g. Schülting 1997. Of course, this most affected Africans who were perceived to be on the lowest racial level. This was also caused by the political issue of official and personal relations in the realm of the colonial order. For instance, this was the case of the highly controversial mixed-race marriages in German Southwest Africa and other – often forced – sexual contacts between white German colonizers and African men and women, cf. Onken 2007. Cf. Bhabha 1994 and Young 1995. Cf. e. g. the postcards with the signatures EMB, VIII E Nls 72 and VIII E Nls 74 or the one displaying a woman named “Tásiga” who seems to be about to reveal her breasts, signature EMB, VIII E Nls 75. Furthermore, in the Boggiani collection there are several pictures of naked juvenile indigenous men that resemble very closely the homoerotic photographs of young men and boys taken in Sicily by homosexual baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Often, the exotic was distinguished from the erotic only by the letter ‘r’ and advertising, for instance – sex sells – already capitalized on the erotic thrill of the exotic, cf. Wolter 2005. Cf. Masotta 2008, 158 – 159. For colonial erotic/pornographic postcards from Africa cf. Corbey 1988, and for other world regions, Beukers 2007. Barthes 1990.

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Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

Introduction On 19 October 1911, the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin bought a set of 12 copies of photographs depicting portraits of Indians from different tribes from the Upper Amazon. It was in fact a set of 12 collotype images, in other words photome­ chanical reproductions mounted on grey blackboards with a stamp from the responsible company on the front. These copies were produced and sold by Kunstanstalt Albert Frisch, established in 1872, according to the receipt. The price of each copy was three Marks, leading to a total cost of 36 marks. But the owner, Albert Frisch was more than a reproduction specialist who copied images of Amazon Indians. He also produced these images. In 1868, he had under­ taken the first successful photographic expedition on the Upper Amazon taking more than one hundred images; a year later, these were sold by Georg Leuzinger, owner of a photographic establishment in Rio de Janeiro and at that time Albert Frisch’s employer. These early photographic images of the Amazon region were distributed worldwide; they were bought by travellers and visitors, sold to scientists and became part of private and public collections. These commercial images found their way into collections and publications, and this was also the case in early German anthropo­ logy – and particularly in Berlin – the capital of the German Empire – with its strong anthropological presence in the form of the Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (BGAEU) and the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde. Until recently, very little information was available about the photographer Albert Frisch, his expedition to the Amazon and the dissemination of his images. Frisch belonged to the group of ignored or forgotten commercial photographers from the early years of the new imaging technology, which had been invented in 1839. His life, career as a photographer and his expedition to the Amazon remained as unknown as the results of his photographic adventures.1 In this article, I present information about this pioneer of expedition photography in the tropics and outline the production of one of the oldest photographic images of the Amazon Region. At the same time, I outline the dissemination of some of his images in scientific circles from early German anthropology as an example for

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cooperation between commercial photography and science in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.2

Production and publication of a series of photographs from the Upper Amazon in Brazil. Albert Frisch, the photographer Frisch’s career as a photographer started late, after he had already made some other attempts to earn his livelihood; and it started in South America, thanks to a random contact. Similarly, his development from a portrait to a landscape and expedition photographer was accompanied by a variety of random encounters. Albert Christoph Frisch was born on 13 May 1840, in the Bavarian town of A ­ ugsburg, as the eleventh child of Johann Joseph Nepomuk Frisch, a reasonably successful businessman, and Friederike Auguste.3 His mother died when he was eight and he was sent to an orphanage in the small town of Windsbach in the Bavarian province, where he was educated and started his first job as a pastry maker. When he became 18, he left the province and moved to Munich where he started working for the art dealer Friedrich Gypen. At the beginning of the 1860s and still during his training, he was sent to France where he completed practical training at the famous lithographic institute of the French art dealer Adolphe Goupil. His experience in Paris led the young and adventurous Albert Frisch to the idea of selling prints with religious motives in Argentina across the Atlantic Ocean. With the support of his German employer and his mother’s inheritance, he produced the prints in 1862 and left Europe, taking a ship from Bordeaux to Buenos Aires, were he intended to start his new business in the new world. Despite all of his hopes and efforts, he failed with his enterprise and after a few weeks left the Argentine capital accepting a job as a private teacher with a German farmer in the province for six months before returning to Buenos Aires in 1863. It was only at this time that the 23-year-old Albert Frisch started his career as a photographer after a random meeting with another German who had worked as a photographer for the Arthur Terry. Terry was from the US and owned a successful photographic studio in Buenos Aires. Like many other photographers in the early decades of the new image technology, Albert Frisch was a career-changer.4 The former pastry baker, art dealer and private teacher initiated his career as a portrait photographer in Buenos Aires before he continued his photographic activities in Asunción, working for Solano López, the Paraguayan dictator. Apart from a brief autobiographical fragment from Frisch himself, no further and detailed information and images from the beginning of his career as a photographer in South America have been identified. Frisch’s autobiographical fragment ends with

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

him leaving Buenos Aires with the Paraguayan dictator’s steamer, heading towards Asunción. We have no clear information about his stay in Paraguay and his move to Brazil, were he continued his work as a photographer for Georg Leuzinger in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. Presumably, he left Paraguay in the first few months of 1865, when it became clear that there would be war between Paraguay and its neighbors – Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil – or shortly after the first fighting began. In mid-1865, Georg Leuzinger opened a photography atelier, specialized in city and landscape views. Like Frisch, Leuzinger was a European immigrant.5 Leuzinger, who was born in Switzerland, had come to Rio de Janeiro in 1831 to complete his training as an international businessman, and took up work in an enterprise belonging to his uncle. After the firm went bankrupt he stayed in Brazil, and in 1840 he opened his own – successful – business, Casa Leuzinger, dealing with office supplies, bookkeeping articles and typographical products for banks, firms and official institutions in the independent Empire of Brazil in the tropics. A few years later, he added a depart­ ment for art, dealing with views from Rio de Janeiro and pictures from the tropical landscapes near to the Brazilian capital. He started with lithographic prints before in 1865 switching to photography, opening his Officina Photográphica and employing Albert Frisch as photographer. In the same year, Albert Frisch – supported by assistants – started taking pictures in large format in Rio de Janeiro and undertaking small excursions into the surrounding area. The resulting photographs of landscapes and cityscapes from the capital itself, from different suburbs, the Botanical Garden and little towns such as Teresópolis, P ­ etropolis in the nearby mountains, and the images of nature were mounted on card with graphi­ cally designed and printed explanations in French, the international langua­ge of the nineteenth century. They were then sold in Leuzinger’s shop, located in the Rua do Ouvidor 36, one of the finest shopping streets in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. Of all the Brazilian historians of photography, the German engineer and Leuzinger’s son-in-law, Franz Keller-Leuzinger, is considered to have been the leading photogra­ pher and manager of the photographic atelier.6 This view, first proposed by Gilberto Ferrez in 1953, without ever presenting a source, was adopted not only by Brazilian historians but also by international historians.7 Nevertheless my research, analysing documents from the Leuzinger family and from descendants of Albert Frisch, has demonstrated clearly that Albert Frisch was the photographer employed by Georg Leuzinger and responsible for the pictures sold under the label “Atelier photographique de G. ­Leuzinger, Rio de Janeiro”. On the other hand, I found no documents mentioning Franz Keller-Leuzinger in connection with the photographic studio. On the contrary, official reports from the Brazilian authorities show clearly that Franz Keller-Leuzinger

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was in charge of several surveying expeditions in different provinces of the country far from Rio de Janeiro in the second half of the 1860s, when most of the photographs were taken for Leuzinger’s Atelier. Therefore, his was not involved as a photographer in the Officina Photográphica of his father-in-law during this time.

Amazon expedition 1867 – 1868 In November 1867, Georg Leuzinger sent Albert Frisch to the Amazon region. Frisch was aware of the risks associated with photographic expeditions into the tropical rainforest, especially since the failed attempts of his compatriot Louis Agassiz in 1865 and 1866, whose accompanying photographer had hardly been able to produce usable images. The logistics of transporting the complex and large equipment through remote regions, the effect of the extreme climate on the sensitive photographic equipment and the reactions of the indigenous inhabitants towards the camera and the photographer were difficult to calculate and all involved possibilities of failure. On the other hand, a successful expedition with a large number of photographs would have provided him with exclusive images that promised commercial success. At that time, the Amazon region attracted scientific and economic attention at the national and international level. Only two years earlier, Louis Agassiz, one of the most famous scientists worldwide – and the most famous opponent of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution – had performed a highly regarded expedition to the Amazon, resulting in a widely published account of his travels in the form of articles and books. In 1867, the Brazilian government officially opened the river for international shipping and at the Universal Exhibition, which took place that year in Paris, had displayed a great variety of botanical samples, showing the world the natural resources of the Amazon. Organizing a photographic expedition to the Amazon shows Leuzinger’s entre­ preneurship and his connections to the economic and scientific fields. He was clearly aware of the interest in the region and expected a high demand for such images. He was also able to take advantage of the fact that his son-in-law Franz Keller-Leuzinger had been commissioned by the Brazilian government to evaluate the possibilities of establishing a transport route along the Rio Madeira, a major tributary of the Amazon. When the Engineer Keller was commissioned to explore the rivers Madeira and Mamore, Georg Leuzinger sent a photographer of the house to accompany the expedition, which brought from these incomparable regions a large number of clichés: from the flora, the fauna, the landscape and photographs from the wild Indians and their huts, settlements, instruments, weapons, etc.8

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

Detailed written documents about Frisch’s expedition are lacking. However, now that photographic prints have been found – and identified – in several public institutions and private collections, and with the help of the short written explanations on the cards, it is possible to reconstruct and analyse Frisch’s expedition. Frisch travelled by steamship with Keller-Leuzinger from Rio de Janeiro to Belém, provincial capital on the mouth of the Amazon, and further with a steamboat to Manaus, another provincial capital in the jungle, at the confluence of the Rio Negro and Rio Solimões. There he left the German engineer and continued travelling along the Rio Solimões until he reached the Peruvian border. It was here that he started his actual photographic expedition, and covered the more than 1,600 kilometres to Manaus in five months in a rowing boat, accompanied by an assistant for his photographic work. It is possible to identify where Frisch stopped on the course on the river and how he carried out his work. Comparing the existing images – the negatives are lost, but different copies are still available – it becomes clear that Frisch produced over 120 negative glass plates. From most of the motifs – especially from the portraits – it is clear that Frisch took similar or almost identical pictures, which leads to the conclusion that he frequently produced two images for security reasons. The glass plate negatives were fragile and could break easily during the long journey along the Amazon to Rio de Janeiro. In addition to this problem, the photographic process at that time was still an adventure, and even more so under tropical conditions. Failure due to bad chemicals or inappropriate treatment could ruin an image and jeopardize the whole success of the expedition. Frisch noted that several Indians lived on the border of the Amazon and photo­ graphed their huts, as well as taking pictures of representatives of the tribes of the Ticuna, Miranha, Kaixana and Umaua (Karijona). He also took pictures of several villages on the shore of the main river or on nearby tributaries and lakes, most of them during stops made by the boats of the Amazon steamship company. The tropical fauna and flora was also captured in great number on glass plate and some of the people living in the region were also photographed. In Manaus, capital of the province, he took more than 20 photographs that portrayed the city and its inhabitants, and particularly focused on a group of Bolivian rowers. Overall, Frisch proved to be an extremely talented photographer, who was able to work under tropical conditions and who developed his skills in short excursions to Rio de Janeiro. He finally handed in his photographic masterpieces of the tropics with the successful completion of his expedition to the Amazon.

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Production of a series of 98 images The more than 120 glass plates provided the basis for the production of a photographic series including 98 images in Leuzinger’s Officina Photográphica in Rio de Janeiro. Failed negatives were discarded. Were multiple images existed of one subject, a single recording was selected. Before publishing, the images were edited and retouched. The portraits of Indians received special treatment. Almost all of them were produced as so-called “combination prints”.9 In a first step, the original background of the images was eliminated so only the person in the foreground was left over. Then Frisch and Leuzinger produced a new image, mounting one of the other pictures showing a river or trees of the expedition as new background.10 The original background was probably replaced to make the images more appea­ ling to the general public and guarantee sales opportunities for those images. The two most important criteria for good photography in the nineteenth century were sharpness and contrast. However, photographic techniques at that time focused on the person in the foreground and this inevitably led to a blurred or faded background. Constructing the new images with other images from the expedition can also be interpreted as an attempt to recreate the original tropical environment and guarantee authenticity. The skillful and careful reassembly, which respected proportions and perspective, clearly show the effort that went into composing true images of the tropics. This interpretation is supported by the manner in which the whole series is constructed. The pictures were organized logically, following the course of the river from the Peruvian border downstream to Manaus. Additionally, Frisch tried to docu­ ment all of the different aspects of the region, not only focussing on aspects that show the tropical nature such as animal life, flora and the supposedly uncivilized Indians in their ornament. Frisch also showed the first steps of modern society in the amazon jungle by portraying villages, steamboats, the communities on the shore and human activities such as fishing and rubber production. Indeed, Frisch and Leuzinger successfully produced a series of images of the Amazon that not only satisfied the demand by curious travellers and visitors but also the interest of anthropologists. Cutting out the background without mounting a new background meets exactly the requirements of the science of anthropology. Frisch and Leuzinger provided neu­ tral pictures of Indians from different tribes and ethnic groups that anthropologists wanted to measure and compare without a disturbing background.

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

1 “Umaua” (Karijona), standing, with weapons. Copy with the original background cut out. From the Album: “Paul Ben. Sarasin 1879. / Photographien vom Amazonenstrom.” Picture 8. EMB, VIII E Nls 786 (P 14949). 2 “Umaua” (Karijona). A copy of the same negative with the new mounted background. Photographer: Albert Frisch, 1868. EMB, VIII E 2763.

Selling and distributing in Rio de Janeiro In 1869, the images were edited and mounted on card with short subtitles and Georg Leuzinger issued a catalogue, listing the 98 images of the “Alto Amazonas”. Interested clients could buy the images in Leuzinger’s shop in the centre of Rio de Janeiro, and as Ernesto Senna, a contemporary witness wrote, he did so with great commercial success: These collections have been of great value for ethnographic studies and were very interesting from every point of view and very popular with foreign travelers.11

But as is the case with the expedition and the production of the glass plate negatives, written information concerning the distribution of the images is missing and we once again have to accept this lack of written accounts. The buyers of the Amazon images we could identify did not leave notes concerning the acquisition of the images. Even receipts are missing, so it is unclear how much Leuzinger charged for the pictures

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from “Alto Amazonas ou Rio Solimões”. Again, the only sources we have are the images themselves. In 1871, Kaiserliche Hoheit Prinzessin Caroline and her son Königliche Hoheit Prinz Philipp purchased an album consisting of the complete series of 98 prints belonging to the Amazon series. The only known existing complete series is stored in the archives of the Weltmuseum in Vienna. These clients belonged to the imperial family. Caroline’s real name was Marie Clémentine Léopoldine Caroline Clotilde of Orléans and she was the mother of Prince Ludwig August von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha who in 1864 married Leopoldina, the youngest daughter of Dom Pedro II and Teresa Maria Cristina. Without further information we only can assume that the album was pur­ chased in the beginning of the 1870s during a family trip to the tropics. In May 1873, Carlos Götting a German artisan, who had been living and working in Chile for many years, purchased 18 of Frisch’s photographs in Leuzinger’s shop during a stopover on his journey back to Europe. In addition to these 18 photographs, he also acquired 15 images with motifs from Rio de Janeiro.12 In November 1875, the German geologists and volcanologists Alphons Stübel and Wilhelm Reiss travelled to Rio de Janeiro and bought a great number of images of the Amazon. The colleagues had undertaken a long trip – beginning in 1868–through almost all the northern states in Southern America before entering Brazil and travelling along the entire Amazon from the Peruvian border until the Brazilian coast. During their long trip they had worked as archaeologists, botanists, anthropologists and ethnographers, collecting objects and samples, undertaking excavations and purchasing photographs.13 Alphons Stübel, the more eager collector and buyer, put together a collection of more than 2000 images.14 During his three months in Rio de Janeiro, Stübel bought over 200 images: including 124 from Leuzinger, 65 of which were by Albert Frisch. Stübel later mounted them on his own card with short notes but he left no written account about this or any other acquisition of photographs during the nine years he spent in South America. Even in 1890, the Amazon photographs were successfully marketed. The Swiss merchant, Hermann Kummler, who had worked between 1888 and 1891 in Pernambuco, a province in the North of Brazil, from his compatriot Leuzinger during a two-week stay in Rio de Janeiro had acquired 33 images. The images were laminated on card, and include 12 photographs of the Amazon.15 This short list of transactions, as well as the existence of images of the Amazon by Frisch and Leuzinger in several private collections and public institutions most of all in anthropological museums and archives, confirm the great interest in these images and the commercial success mentioned by Ernesto Senna.

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

As mentioned above, not a single written account or receipt has survived to give us more details and a better insight into the business with Frisch’s photographic images in Leuzinger’s shop in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Selling and distributing in Germany Interestingly, Albert Frisch started to sell and distribute copies of his images of the Amazon in the 1870s in Germany. In 1870, soon after arriving back from the Amazon and preparing the images for commercial distribution, Frisch returned to Europe. He was sent by his employer, Georg Leuzinger, to Paris and Munich to learn new technologies in copying and printing photographic images. In Munich, he learned the Collotype process from its inventor Joseph Albert. Collotypes, Lichtdrucke, as they were known in Germany, were printed copies of photographs in high quality. They used all of the tones of grey and this combined the advantages of photography and printing. It resulted in detailed technical images in ink, without the problems of fading and avoided undesirable photochemical reactions that made photographic images problematic at that time. However, instead of returning to Brazil and implementing the new technique, he continued working for Joseph Albert, and implemented the Collotype process in New York in 1871, before returning to Germany in 1872. He then started his own business, specializing in high quality reproduction with photographic techniques in Hessen around 1872. He went on to join the photographer Johannes Heinrich Franz Nöhring in Lübeck, in Northern Germany, before moving to Berlin and opening the Kunstanstalt Albert Frisch in September 1875, a business specialized in printing and reproducing all kinds of images, mostly of scientific objects and works of art (Frisch Junior: 1925). Choosing Berlin for opening his own business was decisive for the success of the Kunstanstalt. The existing and newly founded museums and art collections in the capital of the German Empire with their extensive inventories offered a fruitful field of work for high-quality photo-mechanical reproductions. In particular, institutions such as the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Decorative Arts Museum), Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings), the Nationalgalerie and the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, to name just some of Frisch’s clients, possessed rich collections of photographically reproduced and printed images, documents and objects in their permanent collections, libraries, archives and depots. One example of Frisch’s work, is the images he printed in 1891 – by collotype – for Paul Ehrenreich’s publication Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Brasiliens, consisting of a variety of objects and photographs the anthropologist had collected during his field trips to central Brazil and the Amazon region in the late 1880s.

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3 Letterhead from Kunst-Anstalt Albert Frisch on an invoice from 1911. In 1875, Frisch moved his company to Berlin, the capital of the German Empire, where his company was very successful due to the wide-ranging graphic and photographic services it provided. In EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika Vol. 3., I B, E 1694/1911. Photographer: Peter Jacob. 4 Six images depicting “Umaua” (Karijona), Miranha and a group of Bolivians with their boat in the harbour of Manaus. In Anthropologisch-Ethnologisches Album mit Photographien von C.[arl] Dammann in Hamburg. 1873/74. Berlin: Verlag von Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey, table “Amazonenstrom, Süd-Amerika V”.

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

5 Popunha-palm and a man. The man in front of the tree is probably the photographer Albert Frisch. From the Album: “Paul Ben. Sarasin 1879. / Photographien vom Amazonenstrom”, Picture 7. EMB, VIII E Nls 785 (P 14948).

By 1873, Frisch had already started distributing his images of the Amazon in Germany. In the same year, the Hamburg-based photographer, Carl V. ­Dammann, published an album containing so-called anthropological type photographs and ethno­logical images, with the support of the BGAEU. ­Between 1873 and 1874, a total of 50 panels (Tableaus), containing 642 albumen prints were published in 10 lots. Most of the images had been made by professional or commercial photographers based in different parts of the world. The BGAEU also provided photographs from its photographic collection and the private collections of individual members.16 Three album pages, with the geographical specification Amazonenstrom-Gebiet, contain 18 photographs made by Albert Frisch. Four Indian ethnicities – Ticuna, Miranha, Kaixana and Umaua (Karijona) – are depicted in 10 images. The other photographs are pictures of people in Manaus, such as the Bolivian rowers, Mura Indians in a fishing boat, a woman weaving, and another woman carrying a water jar. On one of the three panels (number VI) the following information is stated about the photographer and his images: “Albert Frisch from Homburg v. d. H. willingly contributed with his original types.”17 This wording suggests that Frisch provided the images free of charge.

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6 Two Miranha women. Photographer: Albert Frisch, 1868. Mounted on cardboard by Kunstanstalt Albert Frisch. EMB, VIII E 2765. 7 Kaixana man and woman. Photographer: Albert Frisch, 1868. Mounted on cardboard by Kunstanstalt Albert Frisch. EMB, VIII E 2759. 8 Ticuna inside a hut. Photographer: Albert Frisch, 1868. Mounted on cardboard by Kunstanstalt Albert Frisch. EMB, VIII E 2757.

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

The short texts printed at the bottom of the panels were created with the aid of the subtitles produced by Georg Leuzinger and using additional scientific literature. The ethnographic survey of the Brazilian Indians by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius and published in 1867 was clearly used as the main source of information. The texts printed in the Dammann album are unmistakably similar to the description of the Indian ethnic groups in von Martius’ book.18 After moving to Berlin in 1875, Albert Frisch intensified his work with the BGAEU, joining the society in 1876. According to the minutes of the meeting that accepted his membership, Frisch spoke about his expedition “to the Solimões” and displayed a “magnificent collection of photographs made by himself ”, including “very vivid representations of Moxos, Amaua, Mura, Tecuna, Miranha and other Indians from the Amazon provinces”.19 In 1877, when the Brazilian emperor visited Berlin and was received by the BGAEU with a special meeting, the room was adorned with Brazilian photographs made by Albert Frisch.20 His Amazon photographs were exhibited for just one night, but for an exclusive and limited audience. Frisch was integrated in the scientific network of ethnology, and in the capital of the German Empire he seems to have found good conditions for the sale of his Amazon photographs. In 1879, a small album with 12 collotypes was acquired by the naturalists Carl Friedrich and Paul Benedict Sarasin. The album, with seven photographs of landscapes and plants, and five of people, was handed over to the BGAEU ’s archive by Paul Ehrenreich and later came into the collection of the Museum für Völkerkunde. Paul Ehrenreich also owned a set of 24 collotypes with copies of the same images and some other prints with similar topics, showing the tropical flora, fauna and the people living on the shores of the Amazon. Walter Lehmann incorporated the images together with other documents from Ehrenreich in his own collection of working material, which is actually stored in the archives of the Ibero-Amerika­ nisches Institut. In October 1911, another 12 collotypes from the Amazon expedition was sold by Albert Frisch to the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. The portraits of the Amazon Indians found in this set were the same as those that were depicted in Dammann’s album.

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Frisch’s Images of the Amazon in Early Anthropology Since its beginnings, photography had been viewed as the most appropriate visual medium for recording reality in ethnology. Technical images enabled reliable data to be collected for anthropology and ethnology. Furthermore, in related disciplines such as archeology, geography, and cultural studies, photography was very much in demand as a means of providing records and documentation.21 Photographic images were divided into two main categories: physiognomic and ethnological images. In the last third of the nineteenth century, anthropologists were more focused on “physio­gnomic” images. Especially in the first half of the 1870s, these anthropological portraits were the subject of a broad, rigorous discourse of standardization in order to use them for comparative studies, the preferred field in early anthropology.22 Gustav Fritsch, the BGAEU’s photography expert, dominated the discourse on the standardization of anthropological recordings, and focused on the unification of the equipment, the standardization of image formats and the uniform presentation of the people being photographed. From these highly regarded and strictly standardized “physiognomic representations” photographs with general “ethnographic significance” were distinguished. These less appreciated types of photographs included images of people, in clothing and in any position; images of architecture, landscapes and photographs of cultural objects. They were interpreted as pictures offering additional visual information. Scientific work required comprehensive descriptions and reliable measurements, as well as a broad material base of photographs. Large amounts of data are required in order to make scientifically reliable statements about bodily features or proportions, characteristic clothing and typical cultural artifacts. In the case of photography, this implied creating an extensive photo collection. In addition, scientists depended on close cooperation with professional photographers and studio operators at this early stage. They possessed the technical expertise to produce the required representations. Adolf Bastian, co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, had called for collaboration with all kinds of photographers before the official founding of the BGAEU. ­In an appeal to “Photographers from all countries and nations”23, Bastian emphasized the interest in photographic material. Frisch was one of the commercial photographers who responded to this request. He sent images to Dammann when he started his album of anthropological photo­ graphs. Frisch’s images, however, were interpreted as of less ethnological importance, as were the pictures of the majority of other professional photographers. Nevertheless, they were explicitly praised by the photography expert Gustav Fritsch when the Dammann album was published. Fritsch described them as “very splendid images

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in terms of execution and in terms of selection”.24 The term “execution” referred to technical factors such as sharpness and contrast range but also to the successful staging of the people and its composition. Frisch’s “selection” of the people he had photographed was also praised. Underlying this is the idea that the people in these pictures were the most typical representatives of the Amazonian Indians and that the images not only show their typical clothing and weapons but also reveal their characteristic features. As far as recognizable, the images from the Amazon were not used for scientific research, but they were very popular as collector’s items and ethnographically valuable visual documents. Albert Frisch successfully distributed copies of his images over the next 40 years, which he had taken in the Amazon region of northern Brazil in 1868. His photographic reportage covered a wide range of the various aspects of tropical nature, the lives of the different types of residents and the modern transport system in remote areas. However, only images that had some anthropological or ethnological interest were in demand. These included copies of portraits from the Amazonian tribes, their huts and villages and images showing simple activities such as fishing, carrying water or weaving; images depicting tropical nature and wildlife were also requested. Accordingly, the photographs of the steamboats and modern settlements did not find their way into the collections, and this cut out all aspects of modernity.

Bibliography Adam, Hans Christian. 1996. “Zwischen Geschäft und Abenteuer. Photographen im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Alles Wahrheit! Alles Lüge! Photographie und Wirklichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Die Sammlung Robert Lebeck, edited by Bodo v. Dewitz and Roland Scotti, 25 – 33. Dresden/Berlin: Verlag der Kunst. Andrade, Joaquim Marçal Ferreira de. 2007. “As primeiras fotografias da Amazonia: Resul­ tado de uma expedição fotográfica pelo Solimões ou Alto Amazonas e Rio Negro, reali­ zada por conta de G. ­Leuzinger, rua do Ouvidor 33 e 36, pelo Sr. A. ­Frisch, desendo o rio num barco com dois remadores, desde Tabatinga até Manaus.” Anais da Biblioteca Nacional 122: 339 – 362. Baldwin, Gordon, and Martin Jürgens. 2009. Looking at Photographs: A Guide to Technical Terms, Revised Edition. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. B[astian, Adolf ]. 1869. “Beachtenswerth fuer die Photographen aller Nationen.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 1, after 480. Christiani, Franz-Josef. 1994. Blicke in die ferne Welt: Photosammlung des Braunschweiger Bürgers Carl Götting aus der Zeit zwischen 1870 und 1885. Braunschweig: Städtisches Museum. Dammann, Carl. 1873/74. Anthropologisch-Ethnologisches Album mit Photographien von C.[arl] Dammann in Hamburg. Berlin: Verlag von Wiegandt, Hempel und Parey.

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Edwards, Elizabeth (ed.). 1992. Anthropology and Photography 1860 – 1920. New Haven/­London: Yale University Press. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1891. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Brasiliens. Mit 15 Lichtdrucktafeln und einer Farbenskizze. I. ­Die Karayastämme am Rio Araguaya (Goyaz); II. ­Über einige Völker am Rio Purus (Amazonas). Veröffentlichungen aus dem königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde II(1/2). Berlin: W. ­Spemann. Ferrez, Gilberto. 1990. Photography in Brazil 1840–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Ferrez, Gilberto and Weston J. ­Naef. 1976. Pioneer Photographers of Brazil, 1840 – 1920. New York: The Center of Inter-American Relations. Franceschi, Antonio Fernando de (ed.). 2006. Georges Leuzinger. (= Cadernos de Fotografia Brasileira, 3). São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles. Frisch Junior, Albert. 1925. Albert Frisch. Graphische Kunstanstalt, Druckerei und Verlag 1875 – 1925. [Festschrift anlässlich des 25-jährigen Firmenjubiläums] Berlin. Fritsch, Gustav. 1874. [Review] “Anthropologisch-ethnologisches Album in Photographien von C. ­Dammann in Hamburg.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 6: 67 – 69. Gesualdo, Vicente. 1990. Historia de la Fotografía en América. Desde Alaska hasta Tierra del Fuego en el siglo XIX. ­Buenos Aires: Editorial Sui Generis. Hannavy, John (ed.). 2008. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. New York/ London: Routledge. Kleinknecht, Thomas. 2005. “Die Fotografie – ein neues Bildmedium im Wissenschaftspano­ rama des 19. Jahrhunderts.” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 28: 103 – 113. Kohl, Frank Stephan. 2005. “Um ‘olhar europeu’ em 2000 imagens: Alphons Stübel e sua coleção de fotografias da América do Sul.” Revista Studium 21 http://www.studium.iar. unicamp.br/21/04.html Kossoy, Boris. 2002. Dicionário histórico-fotográfico brasileiro; fotógrafos e ofício da fotografia no Brasil (1833 – 1910). São Paulo: Instituto Moreira Salles. Krase, Andreas. 1994. “‘Von der Wildheit der Scenerie eine deutliche Vorstellung.’ Die Foto­ grafiesammlung von Alphons Stübel und Wilhelm Reiss aus Lateinamerika 1868 – 1877.” In Spurensuche. Zwei Erdwissenschaftler in Südamerika, edited by Andreas Brockmann and Michaela Stüttgen, 145 – 159. Unna: Kreis Unna Kulturamt. Kümin, Beatrice. 2007. Expedition Brasilien. Von der Forschungszeichnung zur ethnografischen Fotografie. Zürich: Benteli. Luchesi, Elisabeth and Nadja Taskov-Köhler. 1989. “Südamerika, die Expeditionen und die Fotografie.” In Der geraubte Schatten. Die Photographie als ethnographisches Dokument, edited by Thomas Theye, 470 – 484. München: Bucher. Martius, Carl Friedrich Philipp von. 1867. “Die indianischen Völkerschaften, Stämme und Horden in Brasilien und einigen benachbarten Gebieten, Land und Leute. Hierzu ein Kärtchen von den muthmaßlichen Wanderungen und der Verbreitung des Tupi-Volkes und von den Sprachgruppen.” In Beiträge zur Ethnographie und Sprachenkunde ­Amerika´s zumal Brasiliens, edited by Carl Friedrich Philipp Martius, vol 1: 145 – 7 80 (481 – 483: Cauixanas, 545 – 546: Umaua). Leipzig: Fleischer.

Commercial photography from the Upper Amazon and Early Anthropology

Prussat, Margrit. 2008. Bilder der Sklaverei. Fotografien der afrikanischen Diaspora in Brasilien 1860–1920. Berlin: Reimer. Schneider, Jürg. 2009. “Vom formulierten Anspruch zur kontrollierten Produktion. Das Ringen der frühen deutschen Ethnologie und Anthropologie um Standardisierung und Vergleichbarkeit fotografischer Aufnahmen.” Baessler-Archiv 57: 59 – 75. Senna, Ernesto. 1908. O Velho Commercio do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro/Paris: Livraria Garnier Irmãos. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Ethnologisches Museum (ed.). 2002. Deutsche am Amazonas. Forscher oder Abenteurer? Expeditionen in Brasilien 1800 bis 1914. Berlin: LIT. Stüttgen, Michaela. 1994. “Zum Leben und Werk von Alphons Stübel und Wilhelm Reiss.” In Spurensuche. Zwei Erdwissenschaftler in Südamerika, edited by Andreas Brockmann and Michaela Stüttgen, 11 – 20. Unna: Kreis Unna Kulturamt. Theye, Thomas. 1989. “‘Wir wollen nicht glauben, sondern schauen.’ Zur Geschichte der ethnographischen Fotografie im deutschsprachigen Raum im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Der geraubte Schatten. Die Photographie als ethnographisches Dokument, edited by Thomas Theye, 60 – 119. München: Bucher. Theye, Thomas. 1999. “Einige Neuigkeiten zu Leben und Werk der Brüder Carl Victor und Friedrich Wilhelm Dammann.” Mittheilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde 24/25: 247 – 284. Vasquez, Pedro Karp. 2000. Fotógrafos Alemães no Brasil do Século XIX. ­Deutsche Fotografen des 19. Jahrhunderts in Brasilien. São Paulo: Metalivros. Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte vom 22. 04. 1876. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 8: 121. Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte vom 07. 04. 1877. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 9: 143. Ziegler, Beatrice and Beat Kleiner. 2001. Als Kaufmann in Pernambuco 1888 – 1891. Ein Reisebericht mit Bildern aus Brasilien von Hermann Kummler. Zürich: Chronos.

Notes 1 2

3

4 5

Theye 1989; Vasquez 2000; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum 2002. This article is a short version of my PhD research (to be published), recovering the available written and iconographic information about Albert Frisch, his photographic expedition in the Amazon region and the dissemination of his images. My research on the life of Albert Frisch was based on primary resources (official docu­ ments) held in the archives of Augsburg and Berlin and a biographical text, printed by Frisch’s company, but not published: Fragment einer Selbstbiographie Christoph Albert Frischs, in: Eberhard Frisch, Herkommen und Geschichte der Familie Christoph Albert Frisch, Augsburg-Berlin 1942. Adam 1996, 25 – 33. Franceschi, 2006.

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Frank Stephan Kohl 6 7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24

Ferrez 1990; Vasquez 2000; Kossoy 2002. Hannavy 2008; Luchesi and Taskov-Köhler 1989; Prussat 2008; Kümin 2007. “Quando o Engenheiro Keller foi em comissão explorar os rios Madeira e Mamoré, Georg Leuzinger mandou um photographo da casa acompanhar a expedição, que trouxe depois daquellas incomparaveis regiões grande cópia de clichés, da flora, da fauna, de paizagnes, e photographias dos selvicolas e de suas tabas, aldeiamentos, instrumentos, armas etc.”, Senna 1908, 69. Baldwin and Jürgens 2009, 22. Kümin 2007, 78 – 80. “Estas collecções, de grande valor para estudos ethnographicos, eram muito interessantes sob qualquer ponto de vista e muito procurados por viajantes extrangeiros.”, Senna 1908, 69. For more information about Götting cf. Christiani 1996, 14 – 24. Stüttgen 1994. Krase 1994; Kohl 2005. Ziegler and Kleiner 2002, 100 – 110. Theye 1999, 247 – 284. “Die Original-Typen sind von dem Herrn Photographen Albert Frisch aus Homburg v. d. H. bereitwilligst beigestheuert.”, Dammann 1873/74, table VI. Martius 1867, 481 – 483. 545 – 546. “Hr. Photograph Alb. Frisch spricht über seine im Gebiete des Solimoês [sic] aus­ geführten Reisen, legt auch eine prächtige Collection von ihm selbst aufgenommener Photographien vor. Es finden sich darunter sehr lebensvolle Darstellungen der Moxos, Amáua, Muras, Tecunas, Miranhas und anderer Indianer der Amazonas-Provinzen.” Verhandlungen der BGAEU 1876, 121. Verhandlungen der BGAEU 1877, 143. Theye 1989; Edwards 1992; Kleinknecht 2005. Schneider 2009.

“Beachtenswerth fuer die Photographen aller Nationen”, B[astian] 1869, after 480.

“Die Ausstattung des Albums ist sehr reich, sowohl durch das gewählte Format, das verwandte Material und den geschmackvollen Druck der näheren Bezeichnungen.” Fritsch 1874, 68.

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The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

On 15 March 1895 the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde received an offer of objects and photographs, which, as stated in a letter by Dr Gustav Müller: [they] were collected by a bold and enterprising citizen from Strasbourg who has lived in Peru and Chile for many years. He undertakes expeditions with enthusiasm, diligence and skill, and has collected from the local half-wild people living in the mountains. The artefacts he has collected are all marked with exact descriptions of where they were found. They provide valuable documentation of the techniques performed by these peoples and the processes involved in the production of their artefacts. I am responsible for selling this collection […] The photographic section is of particularly high value and is of eminent scientific importance.1

This is probably one of the first official museum records of what is now known as the Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection. Some of Müller’s comments on the contents of the ‘package’ he was offering are particularly noteworthy. Müller begins by emphasising the qualities of the person who put the collection together: a bold entrepreneur who, despite all the hardships endured during his endeavours, spent many years in Peru and Chile documenting the “half-wild people living in the mountains”. As for the collection itself, he stresses that the objects and in particular the photographs are valuable documents “of eminent scientific importance”. Written only two decades after the museum was established, these thoughts re­ main pertinent and represent relevant guides for the formation of similar collections worldwide. By the end of the 19th century, native artefacts and, above all, photographs of indigenous people from around the globe were in great demand in Europe. It is possible that these two German travellers and photographers had this in mind when they left their home country to explore the Peruvian Amazon and Andean regions to collect precious objects and images. Unfortunately, little is known about Charles Kroehle. He seems to have settled in Lima in the 1880s, where he established a photo studio. He died in 1902, apparently from a wound inflicted by an arrow. His name – as well as Hübner’s – only came to light when the Peruvian photographs were offered to the museum on several occasions and by different people, including by his sister Marie Kroehle. In 1905, she exchanged various letters with the institution resulting in the acquisition of some of her brother’s images.2

Andreas Valentin

Hübner’s life and work, on the other hand, is well documented.3 He was born in Dresden in 1862 into a middle class family of entrepreneurs; his father was a wood merchant. Although there is no precise information on his early years, it is likely that he attended good schools and had a solid upbringing, considering that Dresden was an important cultural and economic centre at that time. In 1885, he travelled to South America for the first time and embarked on a journey that lasted more than six years. He entered the Amazon through the obvious and natural way: along the Amazon River, passing the cities of Belém and Manaus. In 1886, he arrived in Iquitos. From there, he continued to the Río Ucayali region and engaged himself in the trade and extraction of rubber, activities that were flourishing in the region.4 After a stay in the German colony of Pozuzo he arrived in Lima where he settled for some years. In 1888, he met the photographer Charles Kroehle.5 Together, they travelled for three years throughout Peru, from the Andean highlands and the Pacific coast to the Amazon region. This expedition resulted in hundreds of photographs, signed by both,6 as well as knowledge of the geography and customs of the indigenous population. Hübner reported that they had remained in some cities for longer periods than in others during their journey.7 In Iquitos they set up a photography studio; in Tarapoto they held public projections with a laterna magica and in Cajamarca they spent some time making prints from their photographs. In early 1891, Hübner departed from the Peruvian coastal city of Pacasmayo for Dresden. In the following year, Oscar Schneider (1841 – 1903) introduced him to the Verein für Erdkunde, where he gave lectures illustrated with photographic projections, and published accounts of his travels.8 Schneider was the first person to receive let­ ters and images from Hübner from South America. He was a doctor of philosophy, naturalist, theologian, professor at the prestigious Annen-Realschule and member of the two leading scientific societies in Dresden: the Isis and the Verein für Erdkunde. Hübner established contacts with other distinguished affiliates of these societies, such as the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz – who had travelled to the Amazon in 1865 – and the geographer Alphons Stübel who, together with Wilhelm Reiss, had travelled to South America and collected scientific objects and photographs. In Dresden in 1881, Schneider published his Schneiders Typen-Atlas, a large-format book, lavishly illustrated and described in its subheading as a “compact scientific geographical atlas for school and home”.9 The section on South America includes Brazilian “Umauá” (Karijona) drawings made from photographs taken in 1868 by Albert Frisch in Manaus. Most of the ethnographic illustrations, Schneider assures us, were “conducted on the basis of original photographs.”10 Hübner also met Hermann Krone. Krone was a photographer,

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

naturalist and teacher who was involved in the sale of photographic equipment; he was also a member of the Verein für Erdkunde and it was probably here that they met and Hübner was able to improve his photographic techniques and practices. In 1893, Hübner published his first article, Meine Reise von Iquitos nach Lima in the Deutsche Rundschau für Geographie und Statistik.11 It was here that he explained that the purpose of his first trip was: to establish a collection of photographs of what are largely unknown regions and the wild Indian tribes living beyond the Andes. I hope this collection will awaken the interests of every­ one concerned with the interior of Peru.12

Most ethnographic and photographic collections kept by major Western museums relied on scientists, travellers and adventurers to gather contents for their collections. The objects and images that were classified and exhibited illustrated the universalist theories of anthropologists about the origin and evolution of humanity. Collections of curiosities and exotica from all over the world multiplied and were evaluated according to western historical ‘normality’. A collection mediates visible and invisible objects, rites, myths, narratives and stories. In the minds of 19th century traveller-scientists, objects accumulated, ordered, translated and preserved the histories and social facts of European-dominated cultures. Like photographs, ethnographic objects were regarded as trustworthy ‘witnesses’ of the truth embedded within foreign societies.13 Anthropological knowledge associated with visual metaphors transformed the ‘other’ into an object; whereas images led specificities and differences to become transportable and observable. Moreover, the accumulation of these images promoted the expansion of existing archives. The act of collecting involves a constant tension between the individual and infinity. Perhaps this is one of the characteristics of photography that leads it to be associated with compulsive repetitiveness. Noteworthy in Hübner’s text is the reference he makes to the ‘acclaim’ he hoped to accomplish. Still in his youth, he expected to succeed in his photographic work and scientific endeavours; and as a man of science, he assumed he would gain his laurels even sooner. Throughout his career, Hübner associated with scientists from various fields and before acknowledging his career as a photographer, he referred to himself as a scientist and researcher.14 His second article, Iquitos und die Kautschuksammler am Amazonenstrom was ­published in 1893 in Globus.15 Both of his texts are illustrated with a small number of photographs reproduced as sketches from the originals. The descriptions, however,

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1 Chola girl from Iquitos. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1889. EMB, VIII E Nls 38 (P 3072). 2 Chola girl from Iquitos. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner. Reproduction of the motif in: Globus LXIV (7), 1893: 104.

provide meticulous reports taken from his observations on geography, climate and the natural environment. In this article, Hübner emphasises the importance of the rubber plantations he visited or worked on. He provides detailed descriptions of the process of rubber extraction and production, the hard routine of the caucheros, and comments on their social conditions. At the end of the article, he concludes that many of these workers left their homes and their families believing they would become rich through rubber extraction, but actually “returned poorer and physically debilitated”.16 A summary of this article was published in Deutsche Rundschau – the monthly proceedings of the Verein für Erdkunde – on 7 April 1893. Hübner’s trip to Peru yielded yet another article; it was published in Deutsche Rundschau in 1895 under the title Vom Amazonenstrom nach der peruanischen Westküste.

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

Kroehle and Hübner’s clientele in their studio in Iquitos mostly came from the city’s emerging rubber elite. However, they also photographed some of the indi­ genous population. So far, only three such images have been identified: they depict two women and one man. They show a young Cholo man and a woman in front of the same painted backdrop dressed in western clothes, but barefooted.17 They are also standing on earth and leaves that had been scattered over the studio’s wooden floor as if to emulate their home environment. These are rather crude photographs and are not illustrative of Hübner’s later expertise in negotiating with the indigenous population in order to obtain a more ‘natural’ pose. The image of the woman was reproduced in the 1893 Globus article (Fig. 1 and 2). The photographs taken by Kroehle and Hübner during their stay in Ucayali were the first images of the inhabitants of the Peruvian highlands: they depict Campa (Asháninka), Maionixa, Cashibo, Conibo, Piro and Shipibo. Some of these groups have since died out. The images are portraits imposed by the photographers and were usually taken against a crude canvas background or opposite an individual’s home. It is important to point out that 19th century field photographers in the tropics worked under strenuous conditions of all kinds, including the effects of the natural wilderness; mistrust and fear on the part of the indigenous population; the weight of the cumber­ some equipment; and the fragility and low sensitivity of photographic glass plates. Hübner’s necessary authority and perseverance counterpoints the social criticism underlined in his detailed accounts of the dire situation of the people he encountered: indigenous people were driven off their land, hunted by rubber owners and forced into slavery; children were kidnapped and sold; and women were raped and held hostage. This situation is characterised by a double tension. On the one hand, a tension existed between those portrayed in the images and those taking the pictures. This was typical of practically all forms of photography of indigenous people in the second half of the 19th century. On the other, a tension existed between the photographer and the intention behind the image – the will to gain the best possible photograph under such difficult circumstances. In his first article, Hübner describes such a moment, as he tried to photograph the “Campa” (Asháninka): At first when we began to photograph them and their house, they looked at us attentively. But they were startled when we screwed the camera’s objective, as they assumed we were directing a rifle towards them, and they ran away leaving us behind.18

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3 Piro from the Río Ucayali region. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1888. EMB, VIII E Nls 784 (P 3075). 4 “Campa” family (Asháninka) in front of their house. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1888. EMB, VIII E 1530.

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

5 Piro women. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1888. EMB, VIII E 2018 d (P 15064). 6 Ahuishiri girl. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1889. EMB, VIII E 1559 (P 3127).

Figures 3 and 4 are demonstrative of this tension. The indigenous people are visibly uncomfortable in these pictures as they were ordered to pose for the photographer. Both the adults and the children seem scared and ill at ease with the situation. They gaze at us, or their faces are pointed towards the ground in expressions of sadness and melancholy. These are quite distinct from Hübner’s later photographs of Brazilian indigenous populations, in which he perfected not only his technique, but also his negotiating skills with the indigenous people. Brock V. ­Silversides mentions similar episodes in his study on the photographic documentation of indigenous Canadians. When confronted with cameras, many indigenous peoples reacted with hostility, fear or indifference. They named the camera a “face puller” – an object that removed the face and therefore the identity and soul. Silversides cites reports by photographers such as Humphrey L. ­Hime who photographed the inhabitants of the Canadian plains, in this case the Ojibwe in 1858:

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Andreas Valentin

7 Conibo at the Río Ucayali, front. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1888. EMB, VIII E 2021 c. 8 Conibo at the Río Ucayali, profile. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1888. EMB, VIII E 2021 d.

When an attempt was made to take a photograph of the interior of one of their lodges, several squaws, who were seated with their children around the fires, instantly rose, and, driving the children before them, hastened off to the neighbouring forest, and no argument or presents could induce them to remain. They said that the whites wanted to take their pictures and send them far away to the great chief of the white men, who would make evil medicine over them, and when the pictures were sent back the Indians who were drawn would all perish. They knew this was the way the white man wanted to get rid of the I­ ndians and take their land.19

For the indigenous population, the ‘white man’s mysterious box’ withdrew something from the portrayed; it was as if when he left, the photographer took something that had belonged to them. This awkward feeling was further strengthened when it became clear that the photographer would receive remuneration for the images; whereas the people photographed could expect nothing.

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

9 “Orejón” from the Río Napo region. Photographers: Charles Kroehle and Georg Hübner, 1888(?). EMB, VIII E Nls 762 (P 3086).

The indigenous people’s fear of posing in front of the camera and the fact that they associated photography with death can be analysed with reference to the very nature of the photographic image, which captures the real and is therefore symbolically able to remove life from the natural world. When ‘taking’20 a photograph, one appropriates something from space and time; and, like a weapon, the camera is ‘pointed’ at the subject. Some of these aspects can be inferred from the examples included here (Fig. 5, 6, 7 and 8). They demonstrate relationships with the ‘other’ that alternate between the imposed, the opportune and the negotiated. Some portraits, however, demonstrate that the photographers established a closer relationship with their subjects, resulting in finer and thus more ‘artistic’ images. This is the case with the series of photographs depicting “Orejon” from the lower Río Napo. The poses and looks were carefully staged in these images, but they also demonstrate a better handling of light and, most importantly, the people in the images might have actually consented to the photographs. This series also points to Hübner’s later portrait style, which displays some affinity with the pictorialist movement (Fig. 9).21 In the two years following his return from the Amazon, Hübner published articles, and established contact with German scientific institutions to sell the photographs he took in Peru. In the Verzeichnis der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft (Berliner

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Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte) his images are listed with the numbers P 3069 – 3128,22 and as having been acquired in 1894; they carry the remark “Hübner phot.”. There is no mention of Kroehle, which leaves room for some questions. Was there an agreement between Hübner and Kroehle for the sale of these images? Did Hübner take possession of them? Did he hire Kroehle to take the photographs, and therefore maintain rights over them? At that time, copyright, particularly of photo­ graphs, had not been clearly established. In this sense, it is interesting to note that in 1890 Hermann Krone prepared a bill that would certify copyright in photography. In 1894, Hübner travelled once more to South America. From Manaus, he went to the Upper Orinoco region, along Rio Branco, a tributary of Rio Negro in the current Brazilian state of Roraima. It was there that he improved his skills as a botanist – an activity that would assure his sustenance in his last fifteen years, following the closure of his photographic studio. In two articles published in the Deutsche Rundschau, he mentions that his main aim was to collect orchids. After an eight-month journey, Hübner returned to Manaus. During his stay, he met the city’s growing German population, the rubber elite and some European photographers, among them Arturo Lucciani from whom he acquired an image of the Rio Branco that he published in one of his articles. Returning to Dresden in April 1896, he brought back scientific samples, and 60 photographs depicting the locations he had visited and indigenous peoples in various poses. Oscar Schneider, to whom Hübner had sent a detailed, handwritten, numbered list containing a brief description of each photograph, acquired this series. The images were arranged according to the region in which they were taken (Orinoco, Guiania, C ­ asiquiare, Rio Negro and Rio Branco). The list also includes some photographs taken in the town of Borba on the Rio Madeira and three pictures of the rubber extraction process. Hübner’s images demonstrate great care with the technical and compositional aspects of photography; qualities that were to mark his work thereafter. The indi­ genous people in the pictures appear very different from those depicted in the Peruvian images. The Pauxiana, for example (Fig. 10) are more relaxed: a man is smiling, which indicates a good rapport between photographer and subject. Clearly, this photograph was the result of successful negotiation and provided mutual benefit. On the one hand, Hübner got the photo he desired – indigenous people posing patiently – and with good technical quality (remembering the difficulty of photographing a large number of individuals and especially children); on the other hand, the indigenous people were ‘rewarded’ with objects and utensils.23 Of this same group of Pauxiana, Hübner also photographed men and women separately, and simulated studio situations with white canvas serving as a background, a technique he had already employed in Peru.

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

10 Pauxiana. Photographer: Georg Hübner, 1895. Legacy Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Völkerkundliche Sammlung der Philipps-Universität Marburg, KG-H-VIII, 33.

During this trip, Hübner improved his techniques and practices of p ­ hotographing indigenous people in various situations and locations. The series demonstrates ­Hübner’s ability to reach out to the people he photographed. When viewing the portraits of these individuals, we are attracted to the unknown, we go beyond the image’s surface; and this draws us into the intimacy of the lives of the people de­ picted in the photographs.24 In 1897, Hübner settled in Manaus 25 where he began signing his photographs and business dealings with the spelling of his name adapted to Portuguese: George ­Huebner. There are no precise indications that might point to the reasons for his important decision to leave Dresden and settle in Brazil. During the twelve years he visited the Amazon as a traveller, photographer and scientist, he accumulated professional expe­ rience, gained knowledge of the region and nurtured important contacts. Now that he had witnessed the transformation of Manaus from a hinterland into a cosmopolitan rubber economy, he recognised the opportunities it offered for professional growth. In 1899, Huebner opened a studio in Manaus, Photographia Allemã, which deployed cutting-edge technology from Saxony: it rapidly established itself as the largest and best photography business in the Amazon. The successful business expanded to Belém (1906) and Rio de Janeiro (1910). In 1920, after the Amazonian rubber

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11 “Bindiapá boy”, Rio Juruá. Photographer: Georg Hübner, 1902(?). Legacy Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Völkerkundliche Sammlung der Philipps-Universität Marburg, KG-H-VIII, 49.

trade crashed, Huebner sold his studio and its subsidiaries and moved to a country home on the outskirts of the city. Until his death in 1935, Huebner survived on growing, collecting and exporting plants from the Amazon to Europe, and orchids in particular. In recognition of his contribution to botany, some genera of orchids have been named after him. One particular image might suffice to synthesise Huebner’s process of contacting and photographing indigenous people in the Amazon. Fig. 11, taken on the Rio Juruá, depicts a young “Bindiapá” man leaning against a tree in a relaxed manner. The man is gazing into the distance, and the forest is clear in the background. This picture represents more than merely the visible and physical. The focus is not on the generic “Bindiapá” ethnic group: this is a portrait of an individual, and a good one at that. It reveals qualities such as intimacy and personality, and this enables immediate iden­ tification by its receptor. Such images are only possible when a photographer directly relates to the subject of the photograph and is able to leave behind filters and cultural interference. This demonstrates some of Huebner’s striking abilities and it clearly cuts through the surface of his pictures; he undoubtedly acquired these skills during his long sojourn in Peru with his colleague Charles Kroehle.

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

Unpublished documents [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)]

Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, vom 1. Januar 1895 bis 31. Dezember 1895. Pars I, Vol. 16, E 320/1895; Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, vom 1. April 1904 bis 31. März 1905, Pars. I B, Vol. 26, E 541/1905. [Völkerkundliche Sammlung der Philipps-Universität, Marburg (VK Mr)] Nachlass Theodor Koch-Grünberg. A (= Korrespondenz)

Bibliography Clifford, James. 2000. “Culturas viajantes”. In O Espaço da diferença, edited by Antonio Arantes, 185 – 198. Campinas: Papirus. Hübner, Georg. 1892/93. “Meine Reise von Lima nach Iquitos.” Deutsche Rundschau für Geographie und Statistik XV: 9 – 19, 59 – 66, 122 – 126. Hübner, Georg. 1893. “Iquitos und die Kautschuksammler am Amazonenstrom.” Globus 64(7): 101 – 105, 122 – 127. Hübner, Georg. 1895. “Vom Amazonenstrom nach der peruanischen Westküste.” Deutsche Rundschau für Geographie und Statistik XVII: 145 – 155, 203 – 213. Hübner, Georg. 1898a. “Reise in das Quellgebiet des Orinoco.” Deutsche Rundschau für ­Geographie und Statistik XX: 14 – 20, 55 – 65. Hübner, Georg. 1898b. “Nach dem Rio Branco.” Deutsche Rundschau für Geographie und Statistik XX: 241 – 250, 306 – 313. Illius, Bruno. 2002. “‘Nichts zu lachen’. Die Indianer im Osten Perus”. In Indianer, 1858 – 1928. Photographische Reisen von Alaska bis Feuerland, edited by Eva König, 125 – 131. Heidelberg: Edition Braus im Wachter Verlag/Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg. König, Eva (ed.). 2002. Indianer, 1858 – 1928. Photographische Reisen von Alaska bis Feuerland. Heidelberg: Edition Braus im Wachter Verlag/Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg. Schneider, Oscar. 1885. Schneiders Typen-Atlas. Naturwissenschaftlich-geographischer Hand-Atlas für Schule und Haus. Unter künstlerischer Mitwirkung von W. ­Claudius, H. ­L eutemann, G. ­Mützel und C. ­F. Seidel. Dresden: C. ­C. Meinhold & Söhne, Königl. Hofbuchdruckerei. Schoepf, Daniel. 2000. George Huebner 1862 – 1935: un photographe a Manaus. Genève: Musée d’Ethnographie. Silversides, Brock V. 1994. The face pullers. Calgary: Fifth House Ltd. Valentin, Andreas. 2012. A fotografia amazônica de George Huebner. Rio de Janeiro: Nau Editora. Vasquez, Pedro Karp. 1985. Dom Pedro II e a fotografia no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Index.

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Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

“kühner und unternehmender Straßburger, der sich seit mehreren Jahren in Peru und Chile aufhält, und Expeditionen unternimmt, mit Eifer, Fleiß und Geschick bei den dortigen halbwilden Gebirgsvölkern gesammelt hat. Die Gegenstände sind alle mit genauen Fundangaben bezeichnet, sie repräsentieren werthvolle Dokumente für die ge­ sammte Technik der in Frage kommenden Völker, sie geben ein Bild der Arbeitsleistung in deren Entwicklung. Ich bin mit dem Verkaufe der Sammlung beauftragt. […] Eine Beigabe von überaus seltenem Werthe ist die photographische Abtheilung, von eminent wissenschaftlicher Bedeutung.” EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, vol. 16, 1 Januar 1895 bis 31 Dezember 1895, Pars I. ­B (320/1895). These are listed in the museum’s collection as EMB, VIII E 1526 to VIII E 1572. She offered to sell her brother’s photographs, objects and a manuscript that included more photographs (this was not bought by the museum). Regarding the photographs, she wrote: “Unfortunately, I have to inform you that the glass plates (negatives) remain in Lima and that as the photographs are now 14 years old, they will surely have suffered various forms of damage during their long storage.” (“Betreffs der Glasplatten (Nega­ tive) muß ich Ihnen leider mitteilen dass dieselben in Lima geblieben sind und muß bemerken dass die Photographien bereits 14 Jahre alt sind, und ein etwaiger Defekt bei längerem Liegen sich doch wohl bereits bemerkbar gemacht haben würde”), Marie Kroehle, letter dated 24 March, 1905, EMB, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung ethnolo­ gischer Gegenstände aus Amerika Vol. 26. Vom 1. April 1904 bis 31. März 1905. Pars I. ­B, E 541/1905. In the last fifteen years, Hübner’s work has seen increasing research and been made public through books, articles and exhibitions. Particular credit must be given to the Swiss researcher Daniel Schoepf, who in 2000 published the catalogue Georg Hübner, 1862 – 1935: un photographe à Manaus. This catalogue accompanied an exhibition of H ­ übner’s photographs in Geneva and Manaus. At that time, Schoepf was chief curator of the Musée d´Ethnographie of Geneva, and his superb research rescued from oblivion and anonymity not only striking images, but much of Hübner’s biography. Other resources on Hübner include König’s Indianer 1858 – 1928, Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg, 2002, and my own A fotografia amazônica de George Huebner, Rio de Janeiro, 2012. Hübner (1893) mentions that for one and a half years he had been associated with the German rubber tapper (cauchero) Guillermo (Wilhelm) Franzen in Chuchuras, located in the region of Pasco on the Ucayali, before his trip to Lima. He reports that Franzen taught the indigenous population how to extract latex from the trees and that they were paid with goods brought from Iquitos. There is no information available on why Hübner abandoned this activity after such a prolonged stay on the plantation. However, his commercial interest in rubber extraction is worth noting, and some years later, he detailed the entire process in a series of photographs. Cf. Schoepf 2000 and König 2002. Signatures are by both authors (“Kroehle y Huebner”, “Ch. Kroehle y Huebner”, “C. ­Kroehle y Huebner”) or only Kroehle (“C. ­Kroehle” or “Ch. Kroehle”). On some,

The Kroehle-Hübner photographic collection

7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14

15

16 17

18 19 20

21

as König points out, there is evidence that the names have been manipulated. Both photographers simplified the spelling of their names, removed the umlauts and ‘Lati­ nised’ their first names. It is noteworthy that original prints and reproductions of these photos are kept in collections of several other European institutions. Hübner 1893. The reports and proceedings of the conferences are gathered in Jahresberichte (Verein für Erdkunde). Hübner is quoted in numbers XXIII (1893) and XXIV (1894). Naturwissenschaftlich-geographischer Hand-Atlas für Schule und Haus. “nach sicher beglaubigten Originalphotographieen entworfen werden konnten.”, ­Schneider 1885. Deutsche Rundschau, published in Vienna between 1878 and 1915 by Professor Dr F ­ riedrich Umlauft, like other magazines of that time, had a large circulation reaching a wide and diverse audience. “durch Aufnahmen zum Theil noch unbekannter Gegenden sowie der jenseits der Anden wohnenden wilden Indianerstämme eine Sammlung zu schaffen, durch welche ich den Beifall aller sich für das Innere Perus Interessierenden zu erringen hoffte.” Hübner 1893, 9 cited in König 2002. Clifford 2000, 193. In the Verein für Erdkunde’s Jahresbericht, 1896, XXV, 44, 46 – 49, Hübner is listed as a “correspondent member, and naturalist” residing in Riesa, a town near Dresden. In the members’ directories published between 1904 and 1907, he is listed as a photographer, and as having been a member since 1896 in “Manáos in Amazonas”. Published by Richard Andree in Braunschweig between 1862 and 1909. The magazine’s content ranged from travel reports to scientific studies and observations. Its title was Globus, and it featured a subtitle: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde. Hübner 1893, 127. In his studio in Rio de Janeiro, Christiano Jr (1832 – 1902) produced a series of photographs in the carte de visite format depicting slaves. Some were dressed in suits, tailcoats, hats and with umbrellas; all of them, however, were barefooted. It is as if shoes symbolised the definitive incorporation of exotic people into western culture: the civilised should not step directly on the ground. Cf. Vasquez 1985. Hübner 1893, 60. Silversides 1994, 6. In German, a photograph is also an Aufnahme. This term has multiple meanings in­ cluding incorporation, assimilation, acceptance, absorption and recording. In addition, Illius 2002, 126 notes that in the Shipibo language, photography is referred to as foto-­ tsacati, tsacati meaning beating, poking or injuring. He also mentions that these were good-humoured and happy people. The pictures of them, however, depict serious and contracted facial expressions. Pictorialism flourished between the late 1880s and the beginning of World War I. ­Legitimised by technical advances in the process and new directions in painting to­ wards modern art, European and US photographers began questioning the sovereignty of the record and the facts inherent to photographic images. Technical images were to

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22 23

24

25

overcome automatism and evoke feelings and contemplation in their expression – the ultimate goal of the visual arts. In this way, photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946), Edward Steichen (1879 – 1973), Frank Eugene (1865 – 1936), Robert Demachy (1859 – 1936), Otto Scharf (1858 – 1947) and Hugo Erfurth (1874 – 1948) explored the fine line between science and art in photography. EMB, VIII E Nls 762, VIII E Nls 784, VIII E Nls 803–VIII E Nls 838. In his letters to Theodor Koch-Grünberg, Hübner often mentioned that during contact with the indigenous population it was very important to take along objects for trade. Commenting on a Swedish expedition that had lodged in his country home and for which he had mediated information and contacts, he wrote: “they had few objects to exchange with the Indians, although I have alerted about the need to take as much as possible. They did not take along, for example, hatchets that the wild much need” (“An Tausch-Gegenständen für die Indianer haben sie nur ganz wenig mitgenommen, obgleich ich dringend darauf aufmerksam gemacht hatte, möglichst viel mitzunehmen. Z. B. nahmen sie keine Äxte mit, die die Wilden doch so sehr benötigen.”) Hübner to Koch-Grünberg, 7 December 1923. VK Mr A Hübner. In another letter, Hübner writes to Koch-Grünberg that a French traveller, Octavie Coudreau, was unable to deal with the indigenous and the riverside people: “what she says about the Mundurucus – that she failed to extract one single word from them – shows that she does not have the adequate manner to deal with these simple people. This requires a special talent and, especially, a lot of patience, which she certainly did not have”. (“Auch was sie über die indios Mundurucús sagt, dass es ihr nicht gelungen sei, ein einziges Wort aus diesen Leuten herauszubringen, zeigt, dass sie nicht die rich­ tige Art besessen hat, mit diesen einfachen Menschen zu verkehren; dazu gehört ein besonderes Talent und – viel Geduld, die sie ganz gewiss nicht besessen hat.”), Hübner to Koch-Grünberg, 25 October 1915, VK Mr. A Hübner. Schneider in the Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden, 1898, XVI: 51.

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PAUL HEMPEL

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 8 8

In 1886, Karl von den Steinen published an account of his first expedition to the Rio Xingu. His publication, entitled Durch Central Brasilien – Expedition zur Erforschung des Schingú im Jahre 1884,1 was to usher in a new era of German ethnological research on South America.2 The Upper Xingu region had largely been unaffected by excluded external influences and contained diverse linguistic and cultural groups settled in close proximity. The exploration of such a multi-ethnic framework promised ground-breaking new insights into the settlement history and ethnological classification of the Americas. However, the positive response of the colleagues was accompanied by some critical remarks. Paul Ehrenreich, the German anthropologist who had undertaken an expedition in the same year as von den Steinen to the Krén (“Botocudos”) in eastern Brazil, commented: The layout deserves considerable praise. However, the travellers were unfortunately unable to use photography, and so they have provided no useful anthropological images of the newly discovered tribes, with the exception of an image of a ‘tame’ Bakairí, photographed in Rio. Nevertheless, the illustrations, most of which were based on sketches by the painter W. v. Steinen, provide us with an idea of the nature of the areas that they travelled through, even if the illustrations pay little attention to detail.3

Even in the mid-1880s, von den Steinen’s decision to reject photography in favour of drawing, and consequently leave the visual documentation of the expedition to his cousin Wilhelm von den Steinen, was no longer in keeping with the times. Although the reasoning behind this decision is not entirely clear, Karl von den Steinen expressed concerns about transport in his travel account and argued that logistical difficulties had validated his decision to avoid photography.4 In 1887, von den Steinen undertook a further expedition to the Xingu; this time with Paul Ehrenreich, who accompanied him as an anthropologist and photographer. This second expedition focused more strongly on accurately recording the region’s ethnographic, linguistic and anthropological facets. This turn to scientific professionali­ sation is also reflected in Paul Ehrenreich’s photographs, many of which have been preserved in the Ethnologisches Museum’s collection in Berlin.5

Paul Hempel

After a few introductory notes on Paul Ehrenreich, this contribution highlights the expedition’s temporal and spatial development in order to draw out some of the key constellations that determined Paul Ehrenreich’s photographic and visualanthro­pological approaches that he developed during the second Xingu expedition. By focusing on the images themselves as well as the contexts in which they were produced, the aim is to reveal the diverse dimensionalities of the photographs and shed some light on Paul Ehrenreich, a scholar who has long stood in the shadows of his famous colleague, Karl von den Steinen.

The man in the shadows Paul Ehrenreich was one of the most recognised experts of the indigenous cultures of the Americas at the turn of the nineteenth century. However, in retrospect his historical portrait seems rather sketchy. His travels through the eastern provinces of Brazil in 1884, his participation in the second Xingu expedition and the fol­ lowing explorations to the Rio Araguaia and the Rio Purus led von den Steinen to des­cribe Ehrenreich as probably having “seen more of the interior of the vast [Brazilian] empire than any other German traveller”.6 Nevertheless, for a long time Ehrenreich was mainly mentioned within professional discourse in relation to his later work on comparative mythology, whereas his further contributions to ethnology never achieved similar widespread acclaim to those of his colleague, Karl von den Steinen.7 Ehrenreich’s career largely corresponded to that of a typical private scholar at the turn of the century. He was born in 1855 in Berlin, studied medicine and natural sciences in Heidelberg and continued to do so at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (today Humboldt-Universität) in Berlin between 1877 and 1880.8 In 1895, he received a doctorate in medicine and philosophy from the University of Leipzig. In 1900, Ehrenreich completed his habilitation in ‘ethnology’ (Völkerkunde) in Berlin; he was finally appointed professor eleven years later. As Ehrenreich’s father was a hotelier, and his mother was a daughter of a merchant, his financial position enabled him to undertake independent research. In addition to travelling to South America, Ehrenreich also embarked on extensive trips through Europe, the Middle East, South and East Asia, and North and Central America. Ehrenreich had become interested in physical anthropology and ethnology while studying medicine. Ru­ dolf Virchow, the versatile scholar, politician and dedicated pathologist, seems to have greatly influenced him. Together with Adolf Bastian, Virchow was one of the central figures of German anthropology at the time. Within the discipline he was

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

1 “The Gentlemen”, from left to right: Januario, Peter Vogel, Karl von den Steinen, Wilhelm von den Steinen (seated) Louis Perrot, Paul Ehrenreich (seated), Antonio Bakairí, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: unknown, 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 779 (P 6025).

one of the leading representatives of an agenda of careful empiricism and liberal humanism that became increasingly marginalised during the first decades of the twentieth century.9 It was probably Rudolf Virchow who encouraged von den Steinen to take ­Ehrenreich with him on his second expedition. Virchow was a member of the board of trustees of the Alexander-von Humboldt-Stiftung, from which von den Steinen had applied for funding. The Stiftung eventually co-financed von den Steinen’s second expedi­ tion to the considerable extent of 7,000 marks. Virchow had previously sided with Ehrenreich in criticising von den Steinen for not supporting the results of his first Xingu expedition with anthropological material: “He provides some ethnographic evidence to support the correctness of his linguistic conclusions, but unfortunately lacks anthropological evidence”.10 Von den Steinen seems to have taken Virchow’s critique to heart as the description of his second expedition explicitly emphasised the scientific documentary techniques that were to be implemented, with Ehrenreich’s help:

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We will primarily be undertaking an anthropological and ethnological study of the Kuliseu Indians. We intend to measure as many people as possible, make drawings and undertake photographic and linguistic studies […] and will strive to bring home the largest possible ethno­logical collection.11

Images from the time ‘in between destinationsʼ – the path to the Upper Xingu Alongside von den Steinen and Paul Ehrenreich, Peter Vogel, a mathematician, who was responsible for the geographical measurements, and Karl’s cousin, the painter Wilhelm von den Steinen, also participated in the expedition (Fig. 1). The travellers arrived in Rio de Janeiro in February 1887, but their onward journey to Mato Grosso was delayed due to a cholera epidemic. This enabled von den Steinen and Ehrenreich to visit German settlements in the state of Santa Catarina, where they collected pre­ historic artefacts and investigated the puzzling shell middens (Sambaquis) that were found in this part of Brazil.12 Ehrenreich also acquired a “collection of photographs” in Blumenau during this time.13 This stage of their journey clearly demonstrates that Ehrenreich’s scientific and photographic interests need to be considered in the context of the specific understandings of the time. In terms of the prevailing evolutionary model, the three related disciplines of ethnology (including ethno-linguistics), anthro­ pology and prehistory were still understood as representing a harmonious triad. As such, reconstructing cultural history implied undertaking comparative ethnographic and anthropological studies in a manner similar to the analysis of geological and archaeological layers.14 It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that in­ creasing numbers of German ethnologists began calling for a stronger separation of the three sub-disciplines. ­D uring the period in which the second Xingu expedition took place, the issues covered by these fields were still interpreted as constituting an ‘ethnological whole’, and this needs to be taken into account when considering the photographic legacy of the time. By the end of May, the travellers had finally reached Buenos Aires via Montevideo. Buenos Aires provided the expedition with the opportunity to begin anthropological and linguistic studies, and the travellers unashamedly benefited from the Argentinian government’s relentless policies towards the indigenous population: The large number of magnificent types of Indians that one meets here at every step is particularly interesting. These people arrived in the city after the submission of the wild Pampas Indians, and the Chaco expeditions; since then, their children have been housed in families,

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

2 a, b Mataco. Buenos Aires. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, June 1887. EMB, glass plate, AP 853.

and their men have usually been placed in the army. We were given permission to examine, measure and photograph some of the latter, as well as record some word lists.15

Ehrenreich ‘examined’ and photographed four Mataco (Fig. 2 a, b), one of whom was a former interpreter, and one Toba.16 The photographs of physical type that this led to were taken according to the recommendations set out in contempo­ rary manuals on fieldwork photography. Accordingly, frontal and side shots were taken of semi-naked people posing in front of a neutral background. However, following his mentor Rudolf Virchow, Ehrenreich was critical of the techniques of anthropometric photography as supported, for example, by his compatriot Gustav Fritsch as well as the British biologist Thomas Huxley and John Lamprey who tried to extract measurement data for cross-racial comparison directly from the images.17 According to Ehrenreich, the photographs were “supposed to achieve, what measurement and description cannot attain”:18 an impression of a person’s general visual appearance and a representation of the characteristics of specific ethnic types (Volkstypen).19 For this purpose, as later pictures will show (Fig. 3 a), it seems Ehrenreich did not consider it particularly important to ensure the peo­ ple he photographed were naked. An entry in Ehrenreich’s travel diary makes it clear that he had not asked the indigenous soldiers to pose shirtless. In fact, it was

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3 a, b Bororo Chief Domingo and the boy Atahualpa, Cuiabá, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, March 1888. EMB, VIII E Nls 780 (AP 829, P 6062/P 6063).

done at the request of the men’s commanding officers; a request that Ehrenreich considered “notable”.20 Ehrenreich also declared that the indigenous soldiers seem to have thoroughly enjoyed the unusual interest that the European scientists had placed in them and their language: “The quite sullen and cheerless Indians clearly began to thaw during the examinations”.21 The delays experienced during this part of the expedition had shattered the travellers’ original plans to travel to Cuiabá and advance into the Xingu region in mid-May. In fact, the expedition did not arrive in the provincial capital until July. A photograph of the travellers’ house in Cuiabá (Fig. 4) visualises what Michael Kraus aptly views as time spent “in between destinations”.22 This distinctive transitionary phase can be regarded as an integral element of most ethnographic expeditions of the nineteenth century. It is characterised by spatial, logistical and physical-mental acclimatisation to the field, and a departure from familiar procedures, constraints and – more often than not – overly ambitious endeavours. The photograph shows Karl von den Steinen (left) and his cousin Wilhelm (right) sitting together with a third man, possibly Peter Vogel, in what appears to be a courtyard. The two cousins are smoking pipes next to a table cluttered with bottles

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

4 House in Cuiabá, Brazil. From left to right: Karl von den Steinen, Peter Vogel(?), Wilhelm von den Steinen. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, July 1887. Detail of EMB, VIII E Nls 112.

and numerous other objects. Their pose is demonstrative of the much-lamented paciencia.23 An umbrella has been left leaning against a wall, as if it were a warning: the rainy season was approaching, and the expedition would have to press on with the necessary travel arrangements. During Ehrenreich’s time in Cuiabá, he took portraits of various indigenous people in the town. Among them was a group of Bororo, who had arrived together with a Brazilian officer from the nearby aldeamento Thereza Christina, where the expedition was to stay on its return journey. One specific detail of the images of the Bororo is particularly interesting: the people are wearing labelled cards tied around their necks (Fig. 3 a, b). At first sight, this peculiar form of labelling is reminiscent of the photo-boards used in crime photography or of the metal plates that were attached to artefacts to simplify their inventory (cf. Fig. 10). However, the following passage in von den Steinen’s travel account demonstrates that these cards had little to do with inventories or anthropological typology: [Lieutenant] Duarte had brought some [Bororo] to be baptised. […] They were barefoot, but otherwise civilly dressed. They had a piece of green card about the size of a business card

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tied with cord around their necks. Their names were written on these cards: ‘Atahualpa’, ‘­Montezuma’, ‘José Domingo’ etc. […] Nonetheless, they continued to wear their native dress under their clothes; and as soon as they were outside of the city walls, they took off their clothes and packed them. However, they still wore the cards for a few days in remembrance of their conversion.24

Photographic encounters On July 28, it finally happened: the three scientists travelled north-eastwards accom­ panied by Januario, a former officer who had been granted supreme command over the expedition’s fifteen mules, the German-born settlers Peter and Carlos Dhein, Lieutenant Luis Perrot, who travelled with four soldiers from the state government under his command, and the kitchen boy Manoel.25 During the journey, they met Antonio, an indigenous interpreter who had provided good service to von den Steinen during his first expedition and once again declared his readiness to join the group. On September 6, on the eve of Brazilian Independence Day, the expedition set up a base camp – named Pouso da Independencia – next to the headwaters of the Rio Kuliseu: the source of the Rio Xingu. After Antonio had discovered an abandoned Bakairí camp in the forest Karl von den Steinen took him and Carlos Dhein on a first exploratory trip by bark canoe. Shortly afterwards in a nearby river bay, the first meeting took place with Chief Tumayaua of the Bakairí. This encounter was to have far reaching consequences for the expedition. Tumayaua invited the researchers to come to his village. Von den Steinen sent his two companions back to base camp to inform the other members of the expedition about their find, and then spent several days alone with the Bakairí. This stay, described in his travel ac­ count as “Bakairí-Idyll”,26 was to provide von den Steinen with the most formative insights he was to gain during his entire trip. Above all, he was to become aware of how differently the villagers behaved with him and each other when he was alone instead of with the rest of the expedition team. 27 He enthusiastically described the harmless mirth of the village men during their evening “tobacco council”28 in the centre of the village. He also gained valuable information about the course of the river and the level of hospitality with which the Bakairí expected him to be received in the ­various settlements.29 Ehrenreich and Vogel returned eight days later, accompanied by Antonio and Carlos Dhein, to pick him up.30 After a short stay in the neighbouring village, the researchers went back to base camp, from where the expedition jointly embarked along the river.31

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

5 Reception at the first Bakairí village, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: unknown, 2 October 1887. Detail of EMB, VIII E Nls 771 (AP 956, P 6027).

The expedition was to return on 19 November after visiting a total of eleven villages belonging to the Bakairí, Nahukuá, Mehinakú, Aweti, Yawalapiti, Kamaiurá or the Trumaí. In addition to numerous lists of words, anthropological measurements and an extensive ethnological collection, about one hundred and forty photographs have survived from the explorations along the Rio Kuliseu.32 The photographic documentation of the main section of the Xingu expedition did not begin until the start of the actual river journey, since it seems Ehrenreich had no photographic equipment at his disposal when he picked up von den Steinen from his “Bakairí-Idyll”. As such, the first contact made with the ‘wild’33 Bakairí was only indirectly visually recorded in the sense that photographs of representative sites were taken as substitutes. The first image carries the title “First evidence of the Indians encountered by the expedition” in the glass-plate catalogue;34 it was of the abandoned camp that Antonio had found close to Pouso da Independencia. Ehrenreich apparently used this photograph as a basis for a sketch for one of his publications.35 The second photograph, which was also used to illustrate von den Steinen’s travel account, is an undated landscape shot of so called Tumayaua Bay, the site where von den Steinen first met the village chief.36 The two unpublished images bearing the caption “Reception at the first Bakairí village”,37 therefore, do not actually depict von den Steinen’s first arrival in the village, but are from the second time he visited, when he was accompanied by the rest of the expedition. One of the two images (Fig. 5) seems to include Paul Ehrenreich (on the right) together with a group of Bakairí.38 If this is the case, then aside from the

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Paul Hempel

6a Centre of the second Bakairí village, Iguéti, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, around 4 October 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 772 (AP 959, P 6030). 6b Detail of EMB, VIII E Nls 772 (AP 959, P 6030).

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

well-known group portrait of ‘the gentlemen’ (Fig. 1), this would be one of the few surviving images of Ehrenreich in the field, which of course also means that he did not take this photograph.39 As with all of the photographs of villages,40 this scene was taken as a longshot, which is why some of the figures are hard to recognise, even at high magnification. Due to the relatively long exposure times needed at the time, photographs of dynamic scenes or snapshots were often taken using a short focal length and at some distance to reduce the inevitable motion blur.41 The people in a photograph of a neighbouring Bakairí village (Fig. 6) are even more difficult to make out. On closer inspection, however, Karl von den Steinen is clearly identifiable, and he is placing a calabash to his mouth. The three other Europeans are probably (left to right) Peter Vogel, Luis Perrot and Wilhelm von den Steinen. The four villagers are not specifically named, but the man to the left of Karl von den Steinen could be Chief Aramöke. According to von den Steinen he was the first of the indigenous Xingu population to stand behind a camera. He particularly liked the upside-down image that was projected onto the camera’s glass screen: The camera was placed in front of the chief’s home, and Aramöke accepted the invitation to look under the black cloth. He viewed the image with lively pleasure and spoke eagerly about it. The rest did not trust the thing.42

The camera and photography itself was received very differently among the indige­ nous population. Whereas some people needed persuading before they were willing to be photographed, and this was especially the case with the women, others did so without hesitation. A scene with the Bakairí from von den Steinen’s travel account (Fig. 7) illustrates how rapidly the villagers’ reactions could alternate between fear, the desire for goods and curiosity: The models were remunerated for every photograph with glass beads. The models were slightly worried at first, but the beads won out against their fear of danger. However, it was very diffi­ cult to produce the image of the group of women in Table 5. The women had been placed properly, but just as Ehrenreich was about to expose the plate they suddenly discovered their reflection in the lens and rushed towards the camera in amazement to look at it more closely. The photographer in a thousand troubles!43

A similar situation occurred with the Nahukuá:

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Paul Hempel

7 Bakairí women. A print based on a photograph, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, 2 October 1887. In: von den Steinen 1894, table 5.

Ehrenreich’s photography had initially caused alarm, but it continued far better than expected. The Nahukuá were very happy with the beads we paid them and even began fetching women from the forest [where they were hiding, P. H.], so that they too could earn some beads.44

Ehrenreich’s own comments on his photographic interactions with the indigenous population show, that he always judged such situations solely according to the scien­ tific results they provided. When commenting on his work on the Xingu, Ehrenreich concluded: Photography was not particularly difficult, but the people were often shaking so violently out of fear that they lost their natural facial expressions.45

This statement discloses the self-centredness with which the scientists collected their data and the lack of consideration they had for the feelings of the people they encountered. In the face of the camera shyness among the indigenous popu­ lation it seems remarkable, that they were neither particularly impressed with the photographic apparatus nor the images or the glass plates themselves. According to Ehrenreich, the Bakairí referred to the camera as paru, a word they also used

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

for ‘water’ and ‘mirror’. In a later essay, Ehrenreich explained that the indigenous population: refer to anything made of glass, mirrors, photographic lenses, the image on the camera’s view finder, or photographic negatives (they did not get to see anything else), as ‘water’ (in the case of the Bakairí, this was paru). […] photographs are thus also interpreted as mirror images; in other words, water.46

Glass plates that could no longer be used were appropriated without hesitation. In fact, “following Vogel’s instructions, [Chief Tumayaua] used one to build a window into the straw dome of his house”.47 In other contexts in Latin America, cameras were sometimes associated with firearms.48 However, this does not seem to have been the case with the villagers on the Xingu, as they had not seen such weapons until the arrival of von den Steinen and his expedition.49 It is therefore reasonable to assume that it was not the camera, but rather the photographic act that the indigenous population feared. The staged attention and the intense gaze that the people being photographed were exposed to must have been perceived as deeply suspicious and highly intrusive. This situation was worsened by the fear of involvement in a process with an unknown outcome, and not least by photography’s close connection to the anthropometric measurements that it often accompanied. Anthropological measurements taken with “Virchow’s instrumentarium”50 – a measuring rod, footboard, calliper, beam compass and a steel measuring tape – must have been rather unpleasant, if not painful. Ehrenreich commented on his images of the Kamaiurá in his diary: Body measurements in the afternoon; of course, first we had to address the question of the harmlessness of the equipment. However, it went better than could be expected. Four men, one woman. Photographed them afterwards.51

Whereas the anthropological measurements were endured by the elders with “stoic calmness”52 or were considered “a form of medical service”,53 the younger villagers were far less willing to participate. Undoubtedly, this procedure constituted a vi­ olation of privacy, and the meaning and purpose of the measurements remained foreign to the people under examination. In the case of the Nahukuá, Ehrenreich noted that he was slightly surprised that the photography had “presented no difficulty […]. The young people were a little unhappy about yesterday’s body measurements”.54

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Unlike the columns of anthropometric figures that were unfathomable to the uninitiated, the people being photographed could at least recognise photography as a technique resulting in an image. After Chief Aramöke had done so, several other villagers from the Xingu had the opportunity to look behind the camera. Ehrenreich noted that they “immediately recognised the image on the view finder; something that uneducated Europeans did not always succeed in doing the first time.”55 However, the villagers must have considered some of the ritualised practices related to photography mysterious, if not threatening. One such situation occurred in a village belonging to the Kamaiurá. After the evening gatherings, the travellers and the indigenous population were retiring to sleep: Ehrenreich wanted to change the photographic plates, but this meant asking the villagers to put out for a while the small fires that they usually kept burning next to their hammocks until the morning. They did so willingly, but it left them with a strange feeling. When they finally saw his red lantern, they nervously asked him a very strange question: were the Suyá [a group that was hostile towards the Kamaiurá P. H.] coming to the camp?56

It seems that Ehrenreich usually developed the glass plates on-site soon after exposure. This would have given the indigenous population the opportunity to view his negatives, even if they did not see any actual prints.57 Years later, however, ­Ehrenreich’s photographs found their way back to the Xingu due to the particular historical circum­stances of research. After two further expeditions to the Upper Xingu region by Herrmann Meyer, Max Schmidt undertook an expedition in 1900 along the Rio Kuliseu. Schmidt brought the travel accounts of the first two Xingu expeditions with him, and this enabled some of von den Steinen’s old companions to see their pictures and those of their neighbours. They did so with interest and amusement; however, images of the deceased led to a clear sense of unease among the indigenous population.58

Photography as a form of collecting Ehrenreich’s diary entries demonstrate that photography and anthropological measure­ment was extremely time-consuming considering that the length of the expedition’s stay in the villages was only a few hours to a few days. In the first two Bakairí villages, the photography alone took an entire afternoon to complete. Seen in this light, it is understandable that the short amount of time Ehrenreich spent in these villages led him to largely confine his photography to village views

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

8 Cooking pots and an Aweti grave, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 781 (AP 986).

and a series of standardised portraits of physical type and group photography. The rainy season was approaching, and this drove the researchers to work quickly. However, in many cases, the hospitality of the indigenous population was also pushed to the limits, which influenced the speed of their work.59 The departure from a village belonging to the Trumaí was described by von den Steinen in the following manner: Despite the fact that they were urging us to leave, we wanted to at least take the main body measurements and so we refused to let up. Seven men were measured in the rush to pack, and the only remaining photographic plate was used for a group shot, which later proved to have been unsuccessful.60

Remarkably few images have survived from the Upper Xingu that could be regarded as ethnographic in a narrower sense. The few exceptions are focused on the material culture. These photographs were in keeping with the approach recommended by Adolf Bastian, the founder and first director of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in

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9 Kamaiurá costume from the second Xingu expedition, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 773 (P 6149).

Berlin. Following Bastian’s ‘salvage ethnography’, which assumed irreversible change was occurring to indigenous culture in the face of modernity, von den Steinen and Ehrenreich sought to collect and extensively document ethnographic data from the field. Bastian believed “that the ‘raw materials’ collected in ethnology can be mixed with without concern”, because the underlying principles of the human condition and the cultural specificities of the particular ethnic group they materialise would quasi be revealed as long as the materials had been collected according to scientific standards and in sufficient quantities.61 In consequence, the context and the references between such artefacts were considered secondary. A photograph of an Aweti man sitting next to three large pots in front of a grave provides a prime example of this form of atomisation (Fig. 8). This image is remarkable because it combines three key contemporary ethnological fields of interest: physical type, material culture and religion. However, there is no particular connection between these three ethnological motifs, except for the fact that they can all be assigned to the Aweti. Even von den Steinen recognised that the person next to the pots, who also serves to demonstrate size, should have actually been a woman.62 Logistical reasons meant that immobile or large objects such as the Aweti pots or various costumes could not be brought home.63 In such cases, they were either

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

10 Objects from the Bakairí, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 105.

photo­graphed or drawn, but the choice of media does not seem to have been based on a clear system. The Bakairí’s vast Kualóhe costume, which was nearly ten meters in size, was drawn by Wilhelm von den Steinen;64 whereas Ehrenreich photographed a mask costume (Fig. 9) belonging to the Kamaiurá that resembled “a large mushroom”.65 Ehrenreich also used photography to make a visual inventory of the expedition’s ethnographic collection (Fig. 10). After the return to the base camp, he photographed some stools, stone axes, masks, straw dolls, ceramics and other objects from various ethnic groups in front of the same bright cloth that provided the background for images of physical type. Presumably, these artefacts were photographed after they had been provided with identification plates as a backup in case they were damaged during storage or transport, or were even lost. Ehrenreich made no attempt to specifically document the social or cultural contexts of material culture within the upper Xingu region. Only three images taken in the style of physical type photographs focused on the way in which the artefacts were used or worn. Two of these are of Chief Tumayaua’s travel equipment and his nephew Luchu, and portray them frontally and in profile.66 The third is of an Imeo costume photographed against a white background.67

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11 Hut scene with the Kamaiurá, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 774 (P 6148).

Twenty years later, and in his position as director of the American section of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, von den Steinen instructed Theodor Koch-­Grünberg, his young colleague, on the particulars of field photography. He recommended: placing particular emphasis on small ethnographic motifs, including images of techniques or any kind of characteristic activities, as well as extensively illustrating the living use of the collected artefacts.68

Even if this modern ethnographical approach was inspired by people such as von den Steinen and their own field experiences, it was the next generation that actually implemented the new methodology.

Approaches to ‘participant photography‘ Less standardised images not only took more time and patience, they also required a much higher degree of familiarisation and consent on the part of the indigenous population. Significantly, very few situational photographs were taken during the

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

12 A demonstration of a bird whistle with the Mehinakú, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. EMB, AP 895 (P 6110b). 13 Expedition’s base camp, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, October 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 778 (P 6033).

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expedition along the Rio Kuliseu, and those that do exist stem from the villages in which relations between the researchers and the indigenous population were particularly harmonious. One such photograph was taken of the centre of a Bakairí village.69 Another photograph that also captured the special atmosphere of the scene was taken with the Kamaiurá and depicts the “lovely distant view of lush reed over the blue sunlit water”70 of the nearby lagoon, and the silhouettes of a group of villagers standing in front of it. A further image depicts a ‘hut scene’ (Fig. 11), which could only be printed after it had been heavily retouched. 71 Ehrenreich’s camera, which was fixed to a tripod, was not particularly suited for taking snapshots. In contrast to the moment-apparatus cameras, which became widely available a few years later and were far more manageable, Ehrenreich’s camera was not only less mobile, it was also far more conspicuous. In a manual on field photography, Richard Neuhauss points out that at the time “it was not really possible to view this as a form of secret photography”.72 Apart from the images of the welcoming scenes mentioned above, which were taken from an extreme distance, very few photographs exist of people whose attention is not directed at the camera. One of these images, however, depicts von den Steinen in a Mehinakú village demonstrating a bird whistle to a group of bystanders (Fig. 12). Von den Steinen described this image as an admirable depiction of society […].The gesture made by the little girl in the middle, who, frightened, has placed her hands over her ears, is quite typical, as is the posture of the two friends leaning on each other. What a picturesque scene, their natural forms and their relaxed gestures: all so incredibly charming! 73

Apparently the image was interpreted as particularly valuable because it captured the natural expression and casual poses of the audience. The aim of documenting ‘natural expressions’ was taken up early in the history of ethnographic photography as a means of representing the characteristics of individuals and groups.74 In anticipation of later ethnographic methods, this form of photography could be described as an approach towards a more spontaneous, situation-oriented visual practice in which the photographer participates. Another example of this kind of ‘participant photography’ was taken by Ehrenreich in the kitchen area of the Pouso da Independencia camp (Fig. 13) showing a group of Bakairí cooking and eating.75 It seems it was easier for Ehrenreich to take such shots on his ‘own territory’ and without the temporal and communicative limitations associated with the status of a guest. These images also record unassuming details and the general mood of the expedition’s everyday work in the field as well as the mutual economic interests that provided the

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

14 “Indians dressed as Europeans” (c.f. Steinen 1994, fig. 8), included in the museum’s collection as “Bakairí bestowed with gifts”, Rio Kuliseu, Upper Xingu, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, 1887. EMB, VIII E Nls 777 (P 6034).

basis for ethno­logical collections and field research. This is clear from another image of a group of Bakairí amidst the expedition’s arte­facts and equipment. The Bakairí are collecting beads that were left on the ground as the camp was being dismantled.76 Although von den Steinen and his companions paid tribute to the friendly accept­ ance and favourable support of the villagers, some of their statements and photo­ graphs also demonstrate the paternalistic tenor with which they – like many of their contemporaries – approached the indigenous population. The unconcealed nature of this tone is clear from an image entitled “Indians dressed as Europeans”,77 which was published in von den Steinen’s travel account (Fig. 14). Towards the end of the expedition, Karl and Wilhelm von den Steinen paraded their two most deserving indigenous companions – Chief Tumayaua and a Bakairí man, who due to his heavy build was referred to throughout as “cab driver”78 – in fancy dress hats and medals in a questionable semblance of humour. Karl von den Steinen described the scene with pleasure and stated: The image provides us with a faint idea of how ghastly the two fools appeared, dressed like this but full of pride; both are certainly not the best looking of men, but now they appear downright ugly and contorted.79

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Ehrenreich presented this photograph at one of his lectures as evidence that “Euro­ pean clothing disfigures a savage worse than their barbarous but original and stylish national costume ever could.”80 With regard to von den Steinen’s appreciation of satire and irony, it could be possible to argue that instead of diminishing his indigenous companions, he might have actually been holding up a mirror to his counterparts to provide them with a caricature of their own ‘advanced’ civilisation. Whether this was the case, this role was forced upon their two companions, and as such the actual nature of the photograph changes nothing about the humiliating situation in which they placed the two men. In fact, this violent photographic act is all the more striking when contrasted with von den Steinen’s and Ehrenreich’s sympathetic view of the villagers. Both scholars used their travel accounts to refute entrenched stereotypes about the in­ digenous population, such as the ‘dark and introverted native’, and to demonstrate that the European view of moral and ethical standards was situated in a particular cultural context.81 This openness on the part of the explorers also in relations with the indigenous people was probably one of their keys to success, and one of the reasons why they are remembered positively in indigenous oral traditions from the Upper Xingu.82 During the nearly two and a half months that the researchers spent at the Rio Kuliseu, they clearly conducted an ethnographic study of a specific region. However, and crucially for further research, the overall positive relationship between the researchers and the people on whom they conducted their research was arguably far more important as it further developed specific research methods and practices. The expedition particularly demonstrated that it was essential to embed the multi-faceted layers of meaning embodied by cultural artefacts and practices into a study, and that this meant interacting and engaging in prolonged contact with the indigenous population. The instructions that von den Steinen later provided to Koch-Grünberg on how to record the “living use”83 of ethnographic objects, suggests that these insights also changed the demands placed on photography as one aspect of the scientific method.

Images from the catechesis – among the Bororo on the Rio São Lourenço It was only on the expedition’s way back from the Upper Xingu that the researchers were able to make tentative approaches towards modern ethnographic methods in villages belonging to the Bororo on the Rio São Lourenço. After many years of bloody conflict, a large group of Bororo had been moved to military-controlled colonies. The head of the Thereza Christina colony, Lieutenant Antonio José Duarte, had already

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

15 The Bororo Colony Thereza Christina – soldiers at roll call, Rio São Lourenço. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, 1888. EMB, VIII E Nls 778 (P 6045).

met the expedition members in Cuiabá, where the portrait photographs discussed above were taken (Fig. 3 a, b). In a letter to the geographer Wilhelm Reiss, von den Steinen noted that under such conditions “the opportunity to study, which in this case will be possible at all times, should not be left unused, as it certainly provides a rare opportunity.”84 Ehrenreich used the opportunity to focus on a more context-oriented photo­ graphy. The practices associated with archery were documented as was the way in which cere­monial decoration was worn.85 The resulting images are somewhat reminiscent of the photographs of physical types that he also extensively made among the Bororo, privileging the frontal view and full profile. Shortly after their arrival, the ­researchers witnessed two death rituals that enabled Ehrenreich to take various portraits and two serial photographs showing Chief Moguyokuri and the Bari (the Bororo s­ haman) during a ceremony.86 It seems, however, that the quality of these two images was not sufficient for publication. Instead, von den Steinen illustrated his account with a table drawn by Johannes Gehrts, itself based on a sketch by Wilhelm von den S ­ teinen.87 Noteworthy are also Ehrenreich’s snapshot-like images, that captured everyday situations. They include photographs

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16 Bororo Chief Mogoyukure intervening in an argument between a group of women. Thereza Christina, Rio São Lourenço, Brazil. Photographer: Paul Ehrenreich, 1888. EMB, VIII E Nls 782 (AP 917, P 6050).

of children playing in front of the men’s house or a group of returning hunters.88 The hunters were documented as two sequential shots. The first image shows the hunters returning from some distance across the river; in the second, they are clearly visible, as is their equipment. These images indicate once more a slight shift towards a more situation-oriented photographic practice. They also include a critical coverage of the situation in the military colony. Ehrenreich documented the unedifying state of the colony and the troops, who partly attended roll call barefoot: “a sight that was as pathetic as it was ridiculous”89 (Fig. 15). Although during his stay, von den Steinen avoided ­criticising the regimental commander as much as possible, Ehrenreich’s realistic images d ­ emonstrate the tensions present within this community, which were ­nourished by alcohol and prostitution. One image captures an argument between some women, and Chief Mogoyukure is seen intervening (Fig. 16);90 and a scene from the men’s hut provides an idea of how different meetings were in this com­ munity from those of the ‘tobacco councils’ on the Xingu.91

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

The long shadow of the Xingu expedition After an approximately one-month stay in the Bororo-catechesis and their return to Cuiabá, the expedition ended in early May 1888. Following von den Steinen’s advice, Paul Ehrenreich travelled along the Rio Araguaia and Rio Tocantins to Para and further to the Rio Purus.92 Peter Vogel also remained in Brazil and continued his geographical recordings.93 After a short stay in the German settlements in Rio Grande do Sul, Karl and Wilhelm von den Steinen arrived in Rio de Janeiro in July, where they began their journey back to Germany. Ehrenreich was to bring more photographs, ethnographic collections and extensive anthropological and linguistic material to Berlin from his subsequent travels. He later agreed to leave his collection “as a gift” to the museum in Berlin on the condition that it was kept “in conjunction with the Xingu expedition”.94 Despite his ambition to closely tie his collection to those of the Xingu expedition, it was obvious that his collection was certainly not as spectacular as those that were later to be primarily associated with von den Steinen.95 Whereas von den Steinen was offered a perma­ nent position at the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, and consequently went on to significantly influence the next generation’s research, Ehrenreich acted rather behind the scenes as a lecturer, a patron of the museum and as editor of the Baessler-Archiv until his untimely death in 1914. In addition, Ehrenreich’s cautious nature, which stood in stark contrast to the assertiveness and confidence of some of his colleagues, has certainly played a role in the fact that he has not been particularly visible in the history of his discipline. In a letter to Richard Andree, the editor of the Globus, von den Steinen assumed that the reason Ehrenreich had to wait eleven years to be appointed professor at Berlin University was due to his idiosyncrasies: It really is a scandal, but it is hard to deny that he too is partly responsible. He possesses a certain form of passivity, convenience and the like, which of course is detrimental in this world of pushiness.96

This characterisation of Ehrenreich is also relevant with view to his scientific and photographic approach. The passivity described by von den Steinen was expressed in Ehrenreich’s work in the form of a particularly cautious demeanour, and his prosaic images clearly demonstrate that he merely aimed to provide pure scientific docu­ mentation. This attitude was highly appreciated by some of his colleagues. In the foreword to a later work by Ehrenreich that was published posthumously, the editor, Ernst Sieke, emphasises Ehrenreich’s “careful balance, [and] unprejudiced investiga­ tive research methodology”.97 Even during the analysis of his own anthropological

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material, which he first published some ten years after his expedition to the Xingu, Ehrenreich not only harshly criticised some of the misguided premises in physical anthropology current at the time, but also admitted that he too had been misled by them while collecting his data.98 As has already been stated, Ehrenreich has only been unequivocally identified in one image that belonged to his extensive collection: the famous group portrait of the ‘gentlemen’ from the second Xingu expedition (Fig. 1). In this picture, Ehren­ reich is seen sitting on the floor, and looking forth from beneath the shadow cast by his hat: in retrospect, this seems to be a particularly appropriate portrait of the photographer.

Unpublished documents [Archiv Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin (BBAdW)] Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Abschnitt II (1812 ff ), Abt. XIIIc, Bd. 14, Akten betreffend Humboldt-Stiftung, Nr. 801 – 935, 1888 – 1885. [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Verzeichnis der Photographien der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft, 3 Bände. Plattenkatalog des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin. Acta betreffend die Erwerbung der Sammlung 1. Karl von den Steinen 2. Paul Ehrenreich, Pars I B. ­Litt: K, I/MV 1062. Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Koch nach Amerika 1903/1905, Pars I. ­B. 44. I/MV 190/03. [Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (IAI)] Estate of Paul Ehrenreich (1855 – 1914), Kapsel 66, Tagebücher. [Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SBB)] Collection Darmstädter Estate of Wilhelm Reiss. [Stadtarchiv Braunschweig (SB)] Letters to Karl and Richard Andree, Vol. 7 HIII 3 Nr. 361, [Karl von den Steinen].

Bibliography Baldus, Herbert. 1948. “Introdução”. In Paul Ehrenreich: Contribuições para a etnologia do Brasil, Separata da Revista do Museo Paulista, nova série, vol. II, 7 – 16. Bastian, Adolf. 1881. Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen und seine Begründung auf ethnologischen Sammlungen. Berlin: Dümmler.

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

Eder, Josef Maria. 1886. Die Moment Photographie in ihrer Anwendung auf Kunst und Wissen­ schaft. Mit 190 Holzschnitten und Zinkotypien im Texte, sowie 30 Illustrationen auf 17 Licht­ drucktafeln und 1 Heliogravure. Die 17 Lichtdrucktafeln sind eigens gebunden. Halle a. d. S.: Wilhelm Knapp. Edwards, Elizabeth. 1990. “Photographic ‘Types’: The Pursuit of Method.” Visual Anthropology, 3: 235 – 258. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1880. Ueber den Bau und Wachsthum der innersten Arterienhaut und die Pathogenese der Endarteriitis chronica. Inaugural-Dissertation welche zur Erlangung der Doctorwürde mit Zustimmung der Medicinischen Facultät der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin am 9. August 1880 nebst den angefügten Thesen öffentlich vertheidigen wird der Verfasser Paul Ehrenreich aus Berlin. Berlin: Buchdruckerei von Gustav Schade. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1886. “[Rezension:] von den Steinen, K., Dr. med.: Durch Centralbrasilien. Expedition zur Erforschung des Schingú im Jahre 1884. Leipzig, F. ­A. Brockhaus. Gross 8, 372 S. und 3 Karten”. Sonderabdruck: Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 8: 1 – 2. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1887. “Brief an R. ­Hartmann, Cuyaba, 26. Juli”. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 19: 594 – 596. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1889a. “Forschungen am Rio Purus”. Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 16: 123. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1889b. “Über seine Reise vom Paraguay zum Amazonas”. Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 16(9): 442 – 462. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1890a. “Dr. Paul Ehrenreich’s Reise auf dem Amazonas und Purus”. Globus 57: 316 – 317. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1890b. “Mittheilungen über die zweite Xingu-Expedition in Brasilien”. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 22: 81 – 98. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1890c. “Reise auf dem Amazonenstrom und dem Purus”. Sonderabdruck: Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 3: 1 – 19. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1891. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Brasiliens. Volume 2(1/2). Berlin: Spemann. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1892. “Südamerikanische Stromfahrten”. Globus 62: 1 – 4, 33 – 40, 70 – 74, 100 – 106, 133 – 140, 181 – 186, 214 – 221, 259 – 264, 326 – 331. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1897. Anthropologische Studien über die Urbewohner Brasiliens vornehmlich der Staaten Matto Grosso, Goyaz und Amazonas (Purus-Gebiet): Nach eigenen Aufnahmen und Beobachtungen in den Jahren 1887 bis 1889. Braunschweig: Verlag Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1898. “Neue Mitteilungen über die Guayaki (Steinzeitmenschen) in Paraguay”. Globus 73: 73 – 78. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1915. Die Sonne im Mythos. Aus den hinterlassenen Papieren hrg., bevorwortet und mit Zusätzen versehen von Ernst Liecke. Leipzig. Freie photographische Vereinigung zu Berlin. 1896. “[Bericht:] Sitzung am Fr. 20. 12. 1895”. Photographische Rundschau und Photographisches Centralblatt. Zeitschrift für Freunde der Photographie, Vereinsnachrichten 10(2): 13. Hempel, Paul. 2005. “Das Moment der Bewegung. Zur räumlichen Praxis der frühen ethno­ graphischen Fotografie”. In Andere Körper – Fremde Bewegungen. Theatrale und öffentliche Inszenierungen im 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Claudia Jeschke, and Helmut Zedelmaier, 123 – 147. Münster: LIT.

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Hempel, Paul. 2014. “Anthropologisch-ethnologische Fotografien aus dem Nachlass Paul Ehrenreich.” In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera. Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolff, 66 – 75. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Hermannstädter, Anita. 2002. “Abenteuer Ethnologie: Karl von den Steinen und die Xingú-Expeditionen”. In Deutsche am Amazonas – Forscher oder Abenteurer? Expeditionen in Brasilien 1800 bis 1914. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Ethnologischen Museum, ­Berlin-Dahlem, edited by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethno­logisches Museum, 67 – 85. Berlin/Münster: SMPK/LIT. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. (2004). Die Xingú-Expedition (1898 – 1900). Ein Forschungstagebuch (edited by Michael Kraus). Köln/Weimar: Böhlau. Kraus, Michael. 2004. Bildungsbürger im Urwald. Die deutsche ethnologische Amazonienforschung (1884 – 1929). Marburg: Curupira. Kraus, Michael. 2013. “Ambivalenzen der Bildproduktion. Historische Porträt- und Typen­ fotografien aus dem südamerikanischen Tiefland”. Rundbrief Fotografie 20(2): 10 – 16. Massin, Benoit. 1996. “From Virchow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and ‘Modern Race Theories’ in Wilhelmine Germany.” In Volksgeist as Method and Ethic. Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition, edited by George W. ­Stocking, Jr., 79 – 154. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Neuhauss, Richard. 1894. Die Photographie auf Forschungsreisen und die Wolkenphotographie. Halle a. d. S.: W. ­Knapp. Neuhauss, Richard. 1914. “Photographiesammlung”. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 46: 905 – 907. Penny, Glenn H. and Matti Bunzl (eds.). 2003. Worldly Provincialism. German Anthropology in the Age of Empire. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Sanner, Hans-Ulrich. 1996. “Karl von den Steinen in Oraibi, 1898. A Collection of Hopi Indian Photographs in Perspective”. Baessler-Archiv, N. F. 44: 243 – 293. Schaden, Egon. 1964. “A obra científica de Paul Ehrenreich”. Revista de Anthropologia, 12(1/2): 83 – 86. Schmidt, Max. 1905. Indianerstudien in Zentralbrasilien. Erlebnisse und ethnologische Ergebnisse einer Reise in den Jahren 1900 bis 1901. Berlin: Reimer. Sievers, Wilhelm. 1894. Eine allgemeine Landeskunde. Amerika. Leipzig/Wien: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts. Steinen, Karl von den. 1886. Durch Central Brasilien. Expedition zur Erforschung des Schingú im Jahre 1884. Leipzig: F. ­A. Brockhaus. Steinen, Karl von den. 1894. Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens. Reiseschilderung und Ergebnisse der Zweiten Schingú-Expedition 1887 – 1888. Berlin: Reimer. Thurn, Everard Ferdinand im. 1893. “Anthropological uses of the camera”. Journal of the Anthropological Institute 22: 184 – 203. Stocking, George W., Jr. (ed.) 1996. Volksgeist as Method and Ethic. Essays on Boasian Ethno­ graphy and the German Anthropological Tradition. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Virchow, Rudolf. 1886. “[Rezension:] Karl von den Steinen: Durch Central Brasilien. Expe­ dition zur Erforschung des Schingú im Jahre 1884. Leipzig, F. ­A. Brockhaus. 1886. 4. 372 S.

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88

mit Karten, zahlreichen Text- und Separatbildern von Wilh. von den Steinen, Johannes Gehrts und Otto Clauss”. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 18: 233 – 234. Vogel, Peter. 1893. “Reisen in Matto Grosso 1887/88 (Zweite Schingú-Expedition)”. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 28(4): 245 – 308.

Notes 1 2

3

4

5

Through Central Brazil – an expedition to explore the Xingu in 1884. This article is based on research conducted as part of my dissertation. I am particularly grateful to Richard Haas from the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin and Gregor Wolff from the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin for giving me access to the archives and for their kind support and to Michael Kraus for the inspiring exchange. “Die Ausstattung verdient alles Lob. Leider war es den Reisenden unmöglich sich der Photographie zu bedienen, daher wir auch keine anthropologisch brauchbare Abbildung der neu entdeckten Stämme erhalten mit Ausnahme eines in Rio photo­ graphierten ‘zahmen’ Bakaïrí. Die Illustrationen, meist nach den Skizzen des Malers Hrn. W. v. Steinen ausgeführt, geben indess wenigstens eine Vorstellung von der Natur der durchreisten Gegenden, wenngleich sie das Datail nur wenig berücksichtigen.” Ehrenreich 1886: n. p. Von den Steinen 1886, 168. The two cousins seem to have become more familiar with photography in later years. On 18 December 1895, Karl von den Steinen became a member of the Freie photographische Vereinigung. Ehrenreich and other well-known anthropologists such as Eduard Seler, Richard Thurnwald and Hans Virchow were already active members at the time of von den Steinen’s membership. He was followed by Wilhelm von den Steinen in March 1896 (Freie photographische Vereinigung zu Berlin 1896). Karl von den Steinen took his own photographs on subsequent trips to the Marquesas Islands (1897) and the US (1898). For more information about his images of the North American indigenous population, cf. Sanner 1996. The collection held by the Ethnologisches Museum (formerly Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde) currently comprises a large part of the photographic collection of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (BGAEU). In his lifetime, Ehrenreich left the museum about 600 prints as a gift – including nearly 390 images from the second Xingu expedition. After his death in 1914, the museum acquired more photographs from Ehrenreich’s collection, including some of his own images and images which he had purchased or been given (cf. Verzeichnis der Photo­graphien der BGAEU, 3 volumes). For a time, the sub-collection of Ehrenreich’s works constituted the fifth largest part of this important collection, and amounted to 1,065 images (Neuhauss 1914). In addition to this, the museum also has a collection of around 250 negative and positive glass plates that belonged to Paul Ehrenreich, and which probably arrived in the museum after his death. The photographic collections held in the museum are supplemented by the images from Ehrenreich’s personal estate, which are kept in the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin. Hempel 2014, 68 – 70.

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8

9

10 11

12

13

14

15

16 17 18 19 20

“heute mehr als irgend ein anderer deutscher Reisender vom Innern des gewaltigen Reiches gesehen haben [dürfte].” Von den Steinen 1894, n. p. Only after a particular interest for the history of German anthropology arose mainly among US-American anthropologists and historians in the 1990s, figures like Paul Ehrenreich and their contributions to the history of the discipline come into focus again. Cf. Penny and Bunzl 2003, Stocking 1996. Ehrenreich 1880. For more information about Ehrenreich’s biography, cf. Baldus 1948, Kraus 2004, and Schaden 1964. A handwritten Curriculum Vitae of Paul Ehrenreich until 1899 is part of the collection held by the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. SBB, Col. Darmstädter, acc. Darmst. 1913.5. Bunzl and Penny 2003, 1 – 7. Benoit Massin refers to Ehrenreich as “a member of the progressive Jewish circles around Virchow”. Cf. Massin 1996, 87. Unlike this quotation suggests, Ehrenreich was of Protestant denomination. “Er bringt auch einige ethnographische Beweise für die Richtigkeit seiner linguistischen Schlüsse, leider keine anthropologischen”. Virchow 1886. “Wir werden in erster Linie die anthropologisch-ethnologische Untersuchung der Kulisëu-indianer vorzunehmen suchen. Wir wollen möglichst viele Körpermessungen am Lebenden veranstalten, photographieren, zeichnen, und linguistische Studien machen. […] Wir wollen uns bemühen, eine möglichst grosse ethnologische Sammlung heimzubringen.” Karl von den Steinen to the Comité der A. v. Humboldt-Stiftung für Naturforschung und Reisen. Letter addressed to Herr Geh. Rth. Prof. du Bois Reymond, Düsseldorf, 20 January 1887, BBAdW. Some of the photographs Ehrenreich took of the landscapes towns and excavation sites have been preserved in the Ethnologisches Museum’s collection: cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 514 – 546. Ehrenreich 1887, 595. During his travels, Ehrenreich regularly took the opportunity to acquire images from resident photographers. It is no longer clear whether the Blumenau images became part of the collection held by the BGAEU or the Ethnologisches Museum. Von den Steinen was to note with “great pleasure” that the grooves on a grinding stone used to sharpen stone axes, which he had seen in one of the first villages on the Xingu, were similar to the traces found in one of the middens (Sambaquis) in the state of Santa Catarina. Von den Steinen 1894, 89, cf. EMB, VIII Nls E 517. “Interessant ist die grosse Zahl prächtiger Indianertypen, denen man auf Schritt und Tritt hier begegnet, seitdem die Unterwerfung der wilden Pampas-Indianer und nach den Chaco Expeditionen eine grosse Anzahl derselben in die Stadt weggeführt, die Kinder in Familien untergebracht, die Männer meist unters Militär gesteckt sind. Wir erhielten die Erlaubnis, von den letzteren einige zu untersuchen, Messungen und Photographien anzufertigen, sowie Sprachproben aufzunehmen.” Ehrenreich 1887. P. ­Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entries dated 10 May, 1887 and 13 May, 1887. Edwards 1990, 245 – 249. “leisten sollen, was Messungen und Beschreibungen nicht vermögen” Ehrenreich 1897, 1. Cf. Hempel 2007, 194 – 197. “Bemerkenswerth.” P. ­Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 13 May 1887.

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88 21 22 23 24

25

26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

39

“Die sehr mürrisch und trübseligen Indianer thauen während der Examinirung sichtlich auf.” Ibid. “zwischen den Zielen”, Kraus 2004, 146. Patience. “[Leutnant] Duarte hatte Einige [Bororo] zur Taufe mitgebracht. […] Sie waren barfuss, aber sonst vorschriftmässig bürgerlich angezogen und trugen an einer Schnur um den Hals einen grünen Karton von der Größe einer Visitenkarte, auf dem ihr neuer Name zu lesen stand: ‘Atahualpa’, ‘Montezuma’, ‘José Domingo’ u. s. w. […] Unter der Kleidung trugen sie ihren heimischen Strohstulp; sobald sie vor den Mauern der Stadt waren, zogen sie Alles aus, packten die Herrlichkeit ein und behielten nur ihre grüne Karte noch einige Tage am Halse zum Andenken an ihre Bekehrung.” Von den Steinen 1894, 448. Apart from the image with the semi-ironic title “The Gentlemen” (“Die Herren”) (see Fig. 1), von den Steinen also published a picture entitled “The comrades” (“Die Kame­ raden”) in his account of the expedition. The term comrade should also be understood here as referring to subordinates. Cf. Von den Steinen 1894, Table III and EMB, VIII E Nls 789 (P 6026). “Bakaïrí-Idylle”. Von den Steinen 1894, 55 – 81. “Tabakkollegium”. Von den Steinen 1894, 69. Von den Steinen only mentioned Ehrenreich and Vogel, cf. Von den Steinen 1894, 82. According to Ehrenreich’s diary, they were accompanied by Carlos Dhein and Antonio. Cf. P. ­Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 19 September, 1887. Januario, Manoel and two soldiers, Raymundo and Satyro, remained at the base camp to look after the animals. Among them 45 images, mainly type portraits that depict the same motif, but from two different angles. The distinction between ‘wild’ and ‘tame’ points to the notions of cultural authenticity and purity that were dominant in ethnological research at the time. At the same time, it served as a marker of particular ethnographic pioneering achievements. “[…] die erste von der Exp. angetroffene Indianerspur”. Plattenkatalog des EMB, AP 962. Cf. Ehrenreich 1890b, 82, fig. 1; von den Steinen 1894, 46. Von den Steinen 1894, Table IV. “Empfang auf dem I. ­Dorfe der Bakaïrí.” The other participants from the expedition who are pictured are probably (from left to right): Wilhelm von den Steinen, João Pedro, Antonio, Karl von den Steinen, Peter Vogel and Luis Perrot. Accordingly, the man with the dark trousers, a bright top and the slouch hat in his belt, must be Paul Ehrenreich. The second scene shows Karl von den Steinen and Luis Perrot interacting with a group Bakairí. Cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 790 (P 6028). From his trip on the Rio Araguaia, which he joined after the Xingu expedition only ­accompanied by the Dhein brothers, a further picture exists that possible depicts ­Ehrenreich together with a group Karajá (in the fourth village of the Xambioá). On

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40

41 42

43

44

45

46

47 48 49

50 51

52

this image, however, which was released with the short statement on the panel “Group in the kitchen area in front of the entrance”, he is only to be seen from behind and can only be identified on the basis of his clothes. Cf. Ehrenreich 1891, Table V. Further images exist from the villages belonging to the Nahukuá (EMB, VIII E 1217), the Mehinakú (EMB, VIII E Nls 800 (P 6108)) and the Aweti (EMB, VIII E Nls 789, 802 (P 6156, P 6157)). Eder 1886, 11 – 12. “Der photographische Apparat wurde dem Häuptlingshause gegenüber aufgestellt; Aramöke folgte der Einladung, steckte den Kopf unter das schwarze Tuch, betrachtete sich das Bild mit lebhaftem Vergnügen und schwatzte eifrig darüber. Die Uebrigen trauten der Sache nicht”. Von den Steinen 1894, 90. The picture that was taken on this occasion, was later published by Ehrenreich as a drawing in Ehrenreich 1890b, fig. 2. “Jede Aufnahme wurde den Modellen durch einige Perlen vergütet. Sie hatten einige Angst, allein die Perlen siegten über die Furcht vor der Gefahr. Nur unter Schwierig­ keiten kam die Frauengruppe Tafel 5 zu Stande. Die Frauen hatten sich aufstellen und zurechtrücken lassen, Ehrenreich war im Begriff, die Platte zu belichten, da entdeckten sie plötzlich ihr Spiegelbild in dem Objektiv und stürzten erstaunt auf den Apparat zu, es genauer zu betrachten. Der Photograph in tausend Nöten!” Von den Steinen 1894, 86. The original image has been lost. “Ehrenreich photographierte, was Anfangs grossen Alarm erregte, aber über Erwarten gut verlief. Die Nahuquá, die sich des Lohnes der Perlen freuten, holten schliesslich selbst sogar Frauen aus dem Wald herbei [wo sie sich versteckt hielten, P. H.], damit sie sich den Schmuck verdienten.” Von den Steinen 1894, 100. “Das Photographiren machte keine Schwierigkeiten, ausser dass die Leute dabei vor Angst oft heftig zitterten und so den natürlichen Gesichtsausdruck verloren.” ­Ehrenreich 1890b, 97. “alles Glas, Spiegel, photographische Linsen, das Bild der Visirscheibe des Apparats, photographische Negative (nur solche hatten sie Gelegenheit zu sehen), mit dem Ausdruck ‚Wasser‘ (bei den Bakairi ‚paru‘) bezeichneten. […] die Photographie, wird also ebenfalls als Spiegelbild, d. h. Wasser aufgefaßt”, Ehrenreich 1898, 5. “nach Vogel’s Anweisung mit ihr in der Strohkuppel seines Hauses das erste Fenster ein.” Von den Steinen 1894, 86. Kraus 2013, 13. The most drastic reactions were experienced by Ehrenreich outside of the Xingu region with Indians, who had frequently come into contact with Brazilian travellers near the navigable rivers. Cf. Ehrenreich 1892, 39; Ehrenreich 1892, 105. “Virchow’schen anthropologischen Instrumentarium”, von den Steinen 1894, 15, 159. “Mittags Körpermessungen, wobei zuerst natürlich die Harmlosigkeit der Apparate auseinander gesetzt werden mußte. Es ging indes besser als zu erwarten war 4 vollst. Männer, 1 Weib. Nachher noch photographiert.” Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 23 October 1887. “stoischer Ruhe.” P. ­Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated October 26, 1887.

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88 53

54

55 56

57 58 59

60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69

“als eine Art medizinischer Leistung.” Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 10 O ­ ctober 1887. Cf. also Ehrenreich 1890b, 97. On these supposed attempts at explanation on behalf of the indigenous population, cf. Kraus 2004, 306. “[das Fotografieren] ohne Schwierigkeiten geht […]. Die gestrigen Körpermessungen haben die jungen Leute etwas verschnupft.” P. ­Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 9 October 1887. “[dass sie] das Bild auf der Visirscheibe immer sofort deutlich erkannten, was oft dem ungebildeten Europäer das erste Mal nicht gleich gelingt.” Ehrenreich 1890b, 97. “Ehrenreich musste die photographischen Platten wechseln und war genötigt, die Leute zu bitten, dass sie die kleinen Feuer, die sie bei den Hängematten bis zum Morgen anzu­ halten pflegen, für eine Weile auslöschten. Gutwillig entsprachen sie seinem ­Wunsche, aber es war ihnen unheimlich zu Mute. Als sie die rote Laterne sahen, fragten sie sogar ängstlich – eine sehr merkwürdige Frage – ob die Suyá [eine mit den Kamayurá verfeindete Gruppe, P. H.] kämen.” Von den Steinen 1894, 119. Ehrenreich 1898, 5. Schmidt 1905, 13, 60. The open and partly hidden mechanisms of coercion and the exercise of power have been extensively analysed by Michael Kraus using the example of Karl von den Steinen and his expeditions. Cf. Kraus 2004, 302 – 313. “Wir mussten, so sehr man uns zum Fortgehen drängte, mindestens die wichtigsten Körpermessungen noch vornehmen und liessen auch nicht locker; sieben Männer wurden in der Eile zwischen dem Packen gemessen, und die einzige photographische Platte, die noch übrig war, wurde zu einer – später leider verunglückten – Gruppenauf­ nahme verwendet.” Von den Steinen 1894, 124. Von den Steinen did not state why the group photograph did not materialize. The villagers fled when he barged into the shoot and demanded that a jar of arsenic pills be returned that had been stolen from him. P. ­Ehrenreich, field diary II, entry dated 26 October 1887, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut Berlin, Nachlass Paul Ehrenreich, Kapsel 66. “dass die in der Ethnologie gesammelten ‘Rohstoffe’ um so unbekümmerter […] durcheinander geworfen werden mögen.” Bastian 1881, XXI. Von den Steinen 1894, 241. Von den Steinen 1894, 241. Von den Steinen 1894, 306, fig. 98. P. ­Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 24 October 1887. Von den Steinen 1894, fig. 6. Cf. fig.16 in the introduction of this volume. Von den Steinen 1894, 299, fig. 90. “einen besonderen Wert auf kleine ethnographische Motive, namentlich Abbildungen technischer Methoden und jeder Art charakteristischer Arbeitsthätigkeit zu legen, sowie die lebendige Verwendung der gesammelten Objekte ausgiebig zu illustrieren.” EMB, “Reise-Instruktionen für Herrn Dr. Theodor Koch”, Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Koch nach Amerika 1903/1905, Pars I. ­B. 44. I/MV 190/03. Von den Steinen 1894, 197, fig. 19.

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78 79

80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87

88 89

90

“reizenden Fernblick über üppiges Schilfrohr hinüber auf das von der Sonne beschienene blaue Wasser.” Von den Steinen 1894, 117, fig. 7. Ehrenreich 1890b, Table III. “von eigentlicher Geheim-Photographie nicht die Rede sein.” Neuhauss 1894. “Ein vortreffliches Bild der Gesellschaft […]. Sehr typisch ist die Geberde des kleinen Mädchens in der Mitte, das sich furchtsam die Ohren zuhält, und die Stellung der beiden aneinander gelehnten Freunde. Wie ungemein malerisch sind alle diese nackten Gestalten in ihren zwanglosen Bewegungen!”, von den Steinen 1894, 129. Cf. Thurn 1893, Hempel 2005, 140 – 141. Cf. endnote 45. Cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 788 (P 6033) and von den Steinen 1894, 136, fig. 9. Cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 776 (P 6031). “Indianer als Europäer maskiert”, von den Steinen 1894, fig. 8. Included in the museum’s collection as ‘Bakairí bestowed with gifts’ (“Bakairís beschenkt”), EMB, VIII E Nls 777 (P 6034). “Droschkenkutscher”, von den Steinen 1894, 130 – 131. “Die Abbildung gibt uns einen schwachen Begriff davon, wie schauderhaft die zwei vor Stolz aufgeblasenen Narren in den Kleidern erschienen; beide gewiss nicht die schönsten Typen, sahen sie nun aber plötzlich geradezu hässlich krumm und schief aus.”, von den Steinen 1894, 131. “europäische Kleidung einen Wilden schlimmer entstellt, als ein noch so barbarischer, aber origineller und stylvoller Nationalschmuck vermöchte”, Ehrenreich 1890b, 97. Hermannstädter 2002, 79 – 82. Franchetto 1998, quoted in Kraus 2013. Cf. endnote 74. “lebendige Verwendung.” “die Gelegenheit zum Studium, welche jederzeit möglich ist, sollte, da sie seltenster Art genannt werden darf, nicht unbenutzt gelassen werden.” Letter by K. v. d. Steinen to W. ­Reiss, Cuiabá, July 26, 1887, SBB. Cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 795, 796, 797, 798, 799 (P 6051, P 6052, P 6055, P 6056, P 6059), VIII E 1240. Cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 793, 794 (P 6047, P 6048). Cf. Von den Steinen 1894. Table XXIX. ­A drawing based on one of the photographs exist in Ehrenreich’s estate held by the Ibero-Amerikanischen Institut in Berlin. This was published as chromolithography by Wilhelm Sievers 1894. These images are further discussed in Hempel 2014. Von den Steinen 1894, fig. XXV and EMB, VIII E Nls 792 (P 6049), EMB, AP 912. “ein ebenso kläglicher als lächerlicher Anblick.” Ehrenreich, IAI, field diary, entry dated 24 March 1888. Cf. EMB, AP 916. The photograph of the soldiers at roll call being was mistakenly attributed by Michael Kraus to Theodor Koch-Grünberg, who had incorporated into his own collection alongside other photographs by Ehrenreich. Cf. Koch-Grünberg 2004. This could also be an image of the scene described by von den Steinen from 9 April 1888, when a drunk went on the rampage and eventually had to be overwhelmed by some women, von den Steinen 1894, 464.

Paul Ehrenreich – the photographer in the shadows during the second Xingu expedition 1887 – 88 91 92 93 94

95

96

97 98

Cf. EMB, VIII Nls 791 (P 6046). Ehrenreich 1889a, b; 1890a, c. Vogel 1893. “Geschenksweise zu überlassen” […] “ in Verbindung mit der Xingú-Expedition werde gehalten werden.” Letter by Ehrenreich to the museum, dated 24 July 1889, EMB, 712/89, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung der Sammlung 1. Karl von den Steinen 2. Paul Ehrenreich, Pars I B. ­Litt: K, I/MV 1062. Cf. Max Uhle’s assessment and evaluation of the Ehrenreich collection, EMB 1321/89, Acta betreffend die Erwerbung der Sammlung 1. Karl von den Steinen 2. Paul ­Ehrenreich, Pars I B. ­Litt: K, I/MV 1062. “Es ist wirklich ein Skandal, aber dass er selbst einige Schuld trägt, ist kaum zu bestrei­ ten. Er hat nun einmal eine gewisse Passivität, Bequemlichkeit und dgl., die ihm in dieser Welt des Strebertums schadet.” Letter by Karl von den Steinen to R. ­Andree, Steglitz-Berlin, 24 March 1910, SB, LVVIII, 78. “vorsichtig abwägende, alles vorurteilslos prüfende Forschungsweise”, Sieke in E ­ hrenreich 1915, V. Ehrenreich 1891, 1.

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“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 1

On 8 February 1922, Wilhelm Kissenberth sent a letter to the offices of the Berlin museum general administration in which he asked for a grant for the publication of his research results. In the letter he included the table of contents of this ambitious project that he had given the provisional title Reisen in Nord- und Zentralbrasilien. Ergebnisse einer Forschungsreise in den Jahren 1908 – 10.2 The planned book was divided into two volumes, the first volume describing the travel route and his experiences, the second presenting the ethnographic data that was collected. The largest part of the second volume was to be on the Kayapó, with whom Kissenberth had spent several weeks in 1909. Other chapters would be on the Karajá, the Tapirapé and the Guajajara and shorter sections would be devoted to the Canela (Ramko’kamekra) and the Xerente. Kissenberth estimated the volume to encompass around 850 printed pages and circa one hundred collotype plates, one or two colour plates and 250 – 300 illustrations in the text.3 Towards the end of 1922, Theodor Koch-Grünberg, who had supported the expedition from Germany with advice and contacts, promoted the project to the Stuttgart publisher Strecker & Schröder praising, not for the first time, Kissenberth’s excellent photographs.4 Wilhelm Kissenberth never wrote his book. The creation of the book’s table of contents was the last act in a scholarly drama that was marked not only by the large sums of money that it cost but by the grand – often too grand – ideals and expec­ tations that it awoke, not to speak of the criticism that it received for not meeting these expectations. In 1924, Kissenberth, who only four years previously had been given a position in the newly founded Cultural Development Department 5 of the Museum für Völkerkunde, quit the museum service. In doing so he ended not only his own scholarly career but any hopes that his superiors still had that there would finally be published a detailed monograph of this journey – with 37,000 Marks the most expensive expedition to South America that had been undertaken by the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde until that time.6

Michael Kraus

The short preparation of a long journey Wilhelm Kissenberth was born on 23 April 1878 in Aschaffenburg. When he was three years old his family moved to Würzburg and in 1884 to Landshut, where his father founded a tobacco factory. In 1899 Kissenberth moved to Munich and later to Grenoble to study modern languages. In 1902 he enrolled in the Academie für Sozialund Handelswissenschaften in Frankfurt with the purpose of joining the diplomatic corps. He continued his linguistic studies in Frankfurt as well. In 1903 he was in Berlin, where he heard both law and Japanese at the university. Finally, in 1906 he received his doctorate at the Universität Rostock with a dissertation on Antoine d’Hamilton.7 He applied successfully, presumably in the following year, for an internship in the America Department of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde and began work on 2 January 1908.8 Considering the preparation of Kissenberth’s expedition to Brazil, four points deserve special attention: the quick departure, the selected region, the emphasis on the research nature of the expedition and the importance of photography in it. At the end of February 1908, Eduard Seler, at the time head of the America Depart­ ment, applied to the museum general administration for 20,000 Marks to finance an expedition to central Brazil that would be carried out by Wilhelm Kissenberth.9 This is surprising for two reasons: first, the young intern who was to be entrusted with this complex task had been in the employment of the museum for a mere two months and, secondly, Fritz Krause had left for the Rio Araguaia in the service of the Museum in Leipzig just a month previous. Both aspects proved to be of little advantage for Kissenberth. The copies of his diaries that can be found in the archive of the Ethnologisches Museum 10 reveal how much he was preoccupied by the compe­ tition that Krause represented. And he was soon to admit his scholarly inexperience as well. He began his ethnographic work, for example, by recording the language of the Guajajara, and later wrote to Seler that he had initially thought that he was the first, “to delve a little deeper into the culture of this now completely domesticated Indian tribe.” Having then found that this was not the case, he excused this mistake as a “forgivable error” considering his still limited knowledge of the relevant literature. Since he had only been working as an anthropologist for a short period of time, he argued, “it will occasionally be the case that I make an error or two for which, dear Professor, I humbly apologise and ask to have them rectified as soon as possible.”11 The application that Seler submitted to his superiors spoke explicitly of a “collection and research expedition. ” The phrasing is an indicator of the changing way anthropolo­ gists of this generation saw themselves. Being employed mostly in museums they were increasingly looking to distance themselves as scholars from the academic laymen and

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

professional dealers who also provided the museums with ethnographic collections.12 When Theodor Koch-Grünberg, who was later among those to initiate Kissenberth’s expedition, was sent to the rivers Purús and Ucayali as a young scholar on behalf of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in 1903, the funding application spoke only of a “collection expedition,” even if it was taken for granted that the collected objects would be appropriately described and contextualised.13 Having arrived in South America, Koch-Grünberg changed both the regional focus and the intended duration of his expedition. Instead of travelling to the aforementioned rivers, he studied for two years the native cultures of the upper Rio Negro. In the preface of his two-volume Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern. Reisen in Nordwest-Brasilien 1903/1905,14 Koch-Grünberg distanced himself from having been a mere “collector” but focused on the scholarly nature of the expedition. The research was only possible, he argued, because he spent weeks and sometimes even months in the various indigenous villages.15 An interest in photography and some skill as a photographer were stressed in both applications. In the application for Koch Grünberg’s expedition, which was penned by Karl von den Steinen, not only were Koch-Grünberg’s experience and language skills underlined but also his proficiency as a photographer.16 Seler’s application from 1908 states: Dr. Kissenberth has used his time here well. He has, among other things, photographed and coloured all the more important pieces from the Ehrenreich Collection so as to show these to the Indians and acquire detailed explanations of the masks etc. He has learned Portuguese and studied the literature diligently.17

The receipts in the expedition file verify this focus on photography. By April 1908, Kissenberth had already received 5,000 Marks of the approved funding “to pay for return tickets as well as personal, phonographic and photographic equipment.” 18 Beside the fact that Kissenberth proved unable already in Germany, to work within his budget – Seler had to quickly organise an additional 1,500 Marks – the large amount spent on photographic equipment stands out. Kissenberth invested more than half of the total of 6,197.86 Marks that he spent before leaving Germany on photographic equipment as well as on a darkroom tent. Other expenses included unspecified “personal items,” as well as a double-barrelled shotgun with ammuni­ tion, a Browning pistol, fishhooks, toys, beads, camping equipment, a barometer, a thermometer, medicines, tea, chocolate and so on.19 Both in terms of the preparation that took place in the museum as well as with regard to both the nature and cost of the equipment purchased for the expedition, photography played a key role.

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1 Canela in front of the chief’s house. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 12 October 1908. EMB, VIII E 2949.

Three years in Brazil Kissenberth set sail from Hamburg to Brazil on 16 May 1908. Via Belém, he travelled to São Luis do Maranhão. From there he went further inland by foot at the head of a train of mules. He spent several weeks of September 1908 in Barra do Corda, where he recorded, among other things, the language of the Guajajara and took a number of anthropological portraits.20 He travelled on, stopping in the Canela village of Suri­ dade for a few hours on 12 October to take a further series of photographs (Fig. 1) and purchase a first small collection of ethnographic objects.21 On 19 Novem­ber, he passed the Xerente village of Bôa Vista, and lingered “but a half hour”, despite the kind invitation of Eloteiro, the head of the village, to stay longer. Two quick stereoscope photographs, some brief remarks on the very acculturated nature of the villagers and a short vocabulary list that he could add to the next day were the result of this encounter.22 On 25 November 1908, Kissenberth finally arrived in Conceição do Araguaia. This small town, which had been founded only in the second half of the 19th century by missionaries intent on converting the Kayapó to Christianity, would become his base camp until early 1910. In this time, Kissenberth would make several trips to the

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

2 Brothers Francisco and Antonio in the corridor of the Dominican monastery in Conceição. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 1909. EMB, VIII E 2972.

Kayapó and Karajá. In the following I will discuss the photographs that emerged in the course of these expeditions. But first I will describe the routes taken and some of the more important factors that marked Kissenberth’s travels. Kissenberth was quick to befriend the Dominican missionaries who worked in Conceição (Fig. 2) and for whom he had had a letter of recommendation prepared.23 Several of the eleven Kayapó children and adolescents who lived as pupils of the missionaries in Conceição also became friends and informants. On 30 December 1908, he broke camp to travel, along with three Brazilian companions and a small number of mules to an Indian village. He lived from 1 January to 20 January 1909 – interrupted by a five-day trip to the fazenda St. Roza of the Dominican Mission – in a Kayapó settlement on the Rio Araias. On the trip there he passed another small village and spent five days in late January in a third Kayapó village on the Rio Pau d’Arco. On 9 February the small party returned to Conceição. In the following months, Kissenberth was witness to political unrest and vio­ lent conflicts in Conceição that delayed his plans. An armed conflict broke out in Conceição in February and March 1909 on the question of where the community

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should belong: to the state of Pará or Goiás. Kissenberth was repeatedly witness to shootings and spent many a night with a loaded weapon at his side. Since he had befriended one of the more active members of one of the parties, his mail was mis­ appropriated and partially opened by members of the other. Servants whom he had hired to accompany him on his next trip to Ilha do Bananal quit his service out of concern for their families’ safety. When the conflict began to escalate in early March, Kissenberth was asked to hand over some of the dynamite that they assumed him to have in his luggage – like all the other naturalistas who travelled the region. On 9 March Kissenberth noted in his diary that Leão Leda, the dreaded ringleader of the bands laying siege to Conceição, had been lynched together with his son. After the futile request for dynamite, he was asked again to make his stores available. The diary entry for 10 March reads: “At 7:30 Frei Domingo sent me a note asking to take a photograph of all the revolutionary leaders who would be gathered today. So, so, Frei Domingo! Should this request be for propaganda purposes? Then rather not!” Kissenberth had already once taken a photograph of a group of combatants (Fig. 3), but he refused to get involved further: Diogo, Fortaleza and Pedro Monti came to me and asked that I give them the plate of the photo­graph in front of the Headquarters. Pedro Monti wanted to develop it and make prints – to his advantage. I refused, promising on occasion to send prints thereof later. They left making dour faces.24

After the unrest abated, Kissenberth left Conceição mid-March for the second time. Accompanied by eight Brazilian camaradas, they journeyed by boat this time up the Rio Araguaia. The goal was to visit the Tapirapé and the Javaé that where living on the Ilha do Bananal as well as spend some time in the villages of the Karajá on the return trip. Due to a lack of provisions and conflicts with his men, whom he accused of cowardice and unreliability in the face of the “wild Indians”, as well as difficulties in finding local Karajá guides, Kissenberth finally had to abandon this plan. On 19 April, he left the village of the Karajá chief Kurumaré, which was already a good deal inland on the Ilha do Bananal. But already on that day, Kissenberth saw himself forced to turn back for the mentioned reasons.25 On the return trip he stopped at the Karajá villages they had passed on the way upstream to trade for ethnographic goods. His visits to the respective villages lasted no more than a day or two. On 22 April, he climbed together with three Karajá what he was told was the Aitureheruna, the westerly of two hills at the confluence of the Rio Tapirapé and the Rio Araguaia, to photograph the local topography (Fig. 4). By early May

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

3 “Revolutionaries” in Conceição. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, March 1909. EMB, VIII E 2970.

the expedition had again returned to Conceição. Together with Frei Domingo and a number of companions, Kissenberth undertook in the first half of June a further ten-day trip to the Serra da Conceição. In mid-August 1909, Kissenberth broke camp once again, together with three Brazilian servants. He wanted to visit the Kayapó for a second time. From 19 August to 5 September, he lived in another village on the Rio Araias and from 15 September to 8 October he visited a settlement on the Rio Salobro. In mid-October he returned to Conceição do Araguaia. In February or March 1910, Kissenberth travelled back to Belém. He justified this step as due to the lack of forwarded funding. He saw himself forced to collect the promised monies from the German consulate in Belém personally. After taking the opportunity to send the ethnographic materials he had acquired back to Berlin, he travelled from Belém to Rio de Janeiro in April with the intent to soon return to the field. But it was not to be. A year later, in April 1911, Kissenberth returned to Germany from Rio de Janeiro. He justified his long stay in Rio with kidney problems as well as with the ultimately unfulfilled hope that he might get more funding for his fieldwork from the Brazilian government. He underlined his original intentions

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4 The convergence of the Rio Tapirapé and the Rio Araguaia. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 22 April 1909. EMB, VIII E Nls 181.

to continue his work in Brazil with the fact that he had left much of the equipment financed by the museum – including his cameras and photographic materials – at various locations across the country.26

Attendant circumstances of an expedition Early on, Kissenberth’s decision-making in the field was met with a good deal of displeasure in Berlin. The fact that he had decided, based on advice he received locally, to transport his luggage by land instead of, as had been the plan, by ship up the Rio Tocantins to the Rio Araguaia had led to a huge increase in costs. An estimate sub­ mitted from Brazil showed that the journey to Conceição alone would eat up all the funding that had been planned for the whole expedition.27 Seler spent a good deal of time – and was often successful – in raising more money for the expedition. But he was increasingly annoyed by the fact that Kissenberth was so unreliable in sending him interim reports. The museum often remained for months without news. Those letters that did arrive reported more on personal difficulties, travelling conditions and

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

the political situation than they did on the local ethnography. Often Kissenberth only sent a postcard or reports that ended with the promise that “more news will follow.”28 Koch-Grünberg had left the museum in 1909 and had taken a position at the University of Freiburg. He was also corresponding with Kissenberth. With Seler, who continued to support the expedition but found himself under increasing pressure from his own superiors, Koch-Grünberg agreed to exchange transcriptions of the letters both of them received. Walter Krickeberg, who was research assistant at the museum at the time, noted in 1910 in a letter to Koch-Grünberg that Kissenberth continued to be relatively tight lipped. He concluded, not without irony, that “probably he will need more money soon so that he will write again.”29 Comparing these letters to Kissenberth’s own notes, an ambivalent picture emerges. It appears that he suffered a great deal not only as a result of physical ailments but due to a lack of sanitation facilities. The complete lack of privacy was also distasteful to him. It was not rare that he chased off onlookers, including, at times, Indians who came to visit him. His inexperience also revealed itself in the fact that he never ­haggled over prices. He diligently accepted the sums that were first asked or saw himself confronted with unexpected charges, which he paid wordlessly, albeit with increasing irritability. From his point of view, the reasons for the unexpectedly high costs were not in his own inability to control them but in the local conditions. There­ fore, he asked the German consulate to confirm the political unrest that made the transport of the purchased ethnographic material impossible for a time as well as the high prices in the regions he travelled through.30 Kissenberth’s diary shows how he hid his own inexperience as well as his disappoint­ ment behind regular, sweeping tirades about the local Brazilian population. The In­ dians he characterised repeatedly as “grown children”, an expression both of personal sympathy as well as the projected superiority and inherent arrogance of his time based in the then common evolutionist mindset. What is striking is the difference in his willingness to differentiate based on the identity of the person in question as being Brazilian or Indian. While Kissenberth condemned the residents of Maranhão in their entirety as thieving rabble, he vehemently denied such allegations made against the Indians. In December 1908 he notes in his diary that: “Donna Chiquirinha said to me that the Kayapó were born thieves. I defended them ardently, whether rightly so, I do not know; in any case, they never stole anything from me personally.”31 What made Kissenberth’s studies all the more difficult was his tendency to forge extremely ambitious and unrealistic plans without much knowledge or scrutiny of local conditions. For a while, he thought of travelling from the Rio Araguaia via the Rio Fresco to the Xingu and studying the indigenous peoples in the area between these

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rivers. From Germany he got conflicting advice for this plan: Koch-Grünberg and, later, Konrad Theodor Preuss, who for a time was acting head of the America Department in Seler’s absence, suggested he study the Kayapó and Karajá more thoroughly, focussing on the mask dances, and the transcription of words, grammar and texts. Seler for his part supported these goals, but he also saw a need to travel “new ground”, and thus he encouraged Kissenberth to follow through on his Xingu expedition – which he ultimately abandoned – and his attempt to explore the Ilha do Bananal.32

Three months in Indian settlements In addition to his written notes, Wilhelm Kissenberth documented his Brazilian travels from São Luís do Maranhão to Rio de Janeiro in more than three hundred photographs. The Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin houses today not only the positive prints but the original glass plates. Of the 346 glass negatives acquired by the museum, 291 have sur­ vived.33 These include, in addition to pictures of a classically ethnographic nature, urban panoramas, landscapes and travel photography. Kissenberth had with him two cameras, one that allowed him to take photographs in the format 13 × 18 and one fitted to take 10 × 15 stereoscopic pictures. The plates were developed by him on site. In the course of the expedition he had photographic materials such as unexposed plates or developing chemicals delivered repeatedly from Germany. Even if most of the pictures turned out rather well, his diary is interspersed with complaints about the typical problems of de­ veloping plates in tropical regions and the negative effects these conditions had on the quality of the photographs. The chemicals baths used during development, for example, were often too warm due to the weather and the humidity delayed the drying process. Of the total of three years that he spent in Brazil, Kissenberth spent about three months living in Indian villages. With the exception of his research among the Kayapó, his sojourns in the villages usually lasted from only a few hours to a few days. To this might be added encounters with Indians in the towns, such as during his nearly onemonth-long stay in Barra do Corda, where he stood in contact with several Guajajara. He also got to know the Kayapó who visited Conceição do Araguaia or even lived there over several months, notably the students of the missionaries. Here in town, Kissenberth took above all paired typological portraits, one from the front and one in profile.34 Images of Indians that “laid siege” to his accommodation can also be found in the collection.35 In contrast to the typological photographs that Kissenberth took in the villages, the Indians photographed in the towns were dressed for the most part in a shirt and trousers or a skirt, blouse or dress.36 Indigenous jewellery or objects of traditional material culture cannot be found on any of these images.

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

As for the photographs taken in the villages and among ethnic groups encountered more by chance than anything else, these can be understood in terms suggested by Paul Hempel in his discussion of ethnographic expeditions to South America. These photographs, so Hempel, served less to record social and cultural contexts or processes, “than, like the collection of material objects, to inventorise and document” material conditions and physiognomic traits.37 The ‘economical nature’ of this procedure when used for short visits can be seen in one of Kissenberth’s photographs taken during his brief visit to the Canela (Fig. 1). In the middle of the photograph twelve Indian men can be seen. Eleven of them are for all intents and purposes naked except for a cord belt or a loincloth, and, in one case a pair of trousers. Furthermore, they wear some traditional neck and head jewellery and all the men have the same traditional haircut. On the right, against the wall of the hut, there are some children, youth and women of the village, some of them sitting on a round wooden log. This group portrait was also taken with the intension to produce several individual typological photographs at one time. Kissenberth noted in his diary that he had the Indians stand in a line deliberately, so that “I get a number of good pictures of individuals by means of enlargements.”38 While the photograph was not used in the article that Kissenberth wrote about his brief encounter with the Canela, the text provides more data on the nature of this image. The twelfth male individual at the centre of the image is the village chief. He received the foreign visitor wearing white trousers and a black tuxedo jacket, which, Kissenberth noted, hung dishevelled from his shoulders. “On his head he wore a colourful soldier’s cap that, so he told me with an air of importance, was awarded him as a badge of his rank by the Governor.”39 The chief is also the only person in the photograph to be wearing shoes. That said, he tore his “western” clothes from his body in anger when Kissenberth refused to pay in advance for a collection of ethnographic objects.40 According to Kissenberth, the Canela had no qualms about being photographed. Only in one case did he encounter some difficulties: several women, among them the wife of the chief, opposed being photographed while preparing farinha in the kitchen hut. Kissenberth was able to photograph them eventually, thanks to the “persuasiveness” and “sharp words” of her husband the chief.41 In contrast to the photographs taken among Indian groups visited in passing, the photographs taken by Kissenberth among the Karajá or the Kayapó also include “action shots,” that is, production or ritual processes.42 But considering how these photographs of the Karajá came to be, their nature as an element in the “collection process” of more or less randomly-encountered and otherwise superficial documented impressions dominates.

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5 Closing scene of the Jarehené mask dance of the Karajá. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 19 April 1909. EMB, VIII E 3011.

On his journey up the Rio Araguaia in March and April 1909, Kissenberth repeated­ly found himself a guest in various Karajá villages. But the journey was overshadowed by disputes between the anthropologist and the Brazilian camaradas accompanying him.43 The relations with the Indians were marked in some villages by peaceful barter, in others by mistrust and open hostility. Kissenberth’s own conduct was no doubt an important factor. Worried about the course that the planned meetings might take, even before arriving at the first Karajá village he bought an additional rifle.44 The short, often complicated relationship to the Indians that emerges in the diaries in all its facets is also reflected in the photographs taken in this time. Their number is relatively small and limited to only a few villages. Close-ups of individuals such as that of chief Tamanako and his family are rare. More characteristic are shots taken from distances that provide general impressions of village life or simply the arrangement of houses. The few typological photographs that Kissenberth took among the Karajá are primarily of outsiders, such as those of the Tapirapé women that Kissenberth called the “slaves” of the respective chiefs. He was very interested in these women, especially considering his intention at the time to visit the still unstudied Tapirapé. Thus he was able to make a few phonogram recordings of the Tapirapé language.45

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

6 Karajá wrestling match (Kurumaré village, interior of the Ilha do Bananal). Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 19 April 1909. EMB, VIII E 3099.

A glance at his notes also reveal that those photographs that suggest the observa­ tion of and even participation in a ritual are little more than fragmentary impressions collected by chance. Kissenberth even went so far as to refuse at first to take part in the observation of some events, such as the wrestling matches between the villagers and other visiting Indians in the village of chief Kurumaré, despite the explicit invi­ tation to do so. It was almost by chance that he witnessed a mask dance that same evening and the morning after when he finally set up his camera to photograph a few scenes (Fig. 5). In addition to a brief description of the movements that he recorded photographically, he noted the use of the indigenous terms džalehené and idžadŏ.46 Afterwards, he also took a picture of the finale of a wrestling match (Fig. 6). Despite the fact that the feast had not ended, Kissenberth packed his things and moved on on his journey to the interior of Ilha do Bananal. As already mentioned, he would soon abandon the endeavour. Both his rapid departure and the hostile atmosphere that prevailed as a result of the forced and premature end of his plans prevented a more

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7 Construction of a community house in a Kayapó village on the Rio Araias. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 2 January 1909. EMB, VIII E 2978.

intensive examination of the rituals recorded in the photographs.47 Instead, Kissenberth negotiated hastily the purchase of some of the masks he had photographed and imme­ diately began his return journey. In the villages that he then visited, he most often went straight to the mask house to negotiate to buy the objects stored there. Although his request was refused in some villages, he nevertheless succeeded in purchasing twenty-two Karajá dance masks for the museum. It is interesting to note that some of these masks were subjected to a ritual – they were brushed with a manioc infusion accompanied by some chosen words – prior to being handed over to the scholar. Kissenberth assumed that the objects were being freed of their respective “magic.”48 Just like Paul Ehrenreich experienced it in 1888, the masks were not, once they had been sold, simply wrapped up and handed over. Instead, wearing the masks, the men drove of the women and danced to the boats of their visitors, where they then deposited them.49 Even in later meetings with Karajá in Conceição, Kissenberth was constantly plagued by the thought that the Indians might go back on their agreement to sell him the masks. In his diary, Kissenberth admitted that with the exception of a few comments on the part of Capitão Alfredo, a Karajá, who had supported him in the purchase of the masks, his studies on the importance of the masks had been “almost completely without result.”50

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

8 Doyūn hunting with a club. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 8 January 1909. EMB, VIII E 2980.

The longest and most successful period of work in the Indian villages was during Kissenberth’s sojourn among the Kayapó. It is thus not surprising that the largest number and most expressive photographs were taken in this time. The various villages he visited proved to be very different.51 The first of these that he visited in January 1909 had only three houses and a large community house in construction (Fig. 7). On his second trip to the Kayapó from August to October 1909, the first village Kissenberth came across had thirteen houses, eleven of which were arranged in a circle. Fifty-four people – 34 men and 20 women – lived here. At the Rio Salobro, Kissenberth stopped in another village with a total of 135 inhabitants, 57 men and 22 boys, 41 women and 15 girls. Here Kissenberth recorded the names of almost the whole village population and noted kinship relationships and residence structures.52 An important part of the good relations that emerged with the Kayapó was no doubt due to the contacts Kissenberth had developed with some Kayapó in Conceição. His arrival in the villages was expected and caught no one off guard. This closer

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9 Kissenberth demonstrating a rifle to two Kayapó. Photographer: unknown, 8 January 1909. EMB, VIII E 3072.

relationship can also be seen in the photographs. Indians Kissenberth had already met in Conceição appear repeatedly, such as Doyūn and Kutoĩbá, of whom he had already taken typological photographs. Both of these men he met again in the first village he stopped in on his journey up the Rio Araias. Of Doyūn, who was to help Kissenberth a great deal during his work in the village, he took another photograph here, showing him, armed with a club in a hunting pose (Fig. 8). Doyūn can also be found on a photograph of an Indian shaving another male individual as well as one in which Kissenberth shows two Kayapó how his rifle functioned (Fig. 9).53 A fifth photograph that can no longer be found in the archive of the Ethnologisches Museum 54 is an indicator of the tactlessness that Kissenberth was also capable of. In his diary he writes about the detailed photograph he took of Doyūns “lower abdomen between navel and thigh,” that is, of his penis sheath, and the embarrassment that the Kayapó so clearly felt. In a letter to Germany he noted that “[t]he photograph of Doyūns sexual organs was not easy to come by. It took a bit of trickery and the rear element of the lens. When I showed them the photograph it met with significant disapproval. I’m afraid I violated the moral codex. But the matter was soon forgotten.”55

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

Kutoĩbá can be found, in addition to the typological photographs taken in Con­ ceição, on a photograph taken from behind with his friend Džipu. Both are sitting at the river’s edge, watching the beating of the timbó during the fishing ritual. He can also be found on the roof of the community house under construction (Fig. 7). In this building, Kissenberth also discovered two dance masks, which, as he noted in his diary, “are described by the Kayapó as having been manufactured by them, but are very much like the masks of the Karajá and might very well have been purchased from them.”56 The fish that the masks represent was called aruanã.57 Unlike other Kayapó, Kutoĩbá, who was the owner of the masks, said that he had found them in the woods. He was prepared to sell them and even demanded Kissenberth take a photograph of him with the masks (Fig. 10). He received, in addition to the agreed upon payment for these ethnographic objects, a small amount of tobacco for the portrait.58 Who actually produced the masks can not be said with any degree of certainty based on this description. Kissenberth himself was, despite his initial doubts, eventually convinced that both were in fact of Kayapó manufacture. In a letter he writes: “The two dance masks that Kutoĩbá presented to me with a grin are, I am now confident, Kayapó masks and likely the first of their kind to find their way into a museum collec­ tion.” In a later pencilled comment in his diary he added: “Mariquinha and Carolina [two Kayapó women, MK] both agreed that mask dances were common among the Kayapó and that they had manufactured the masks themselves.” Kissenberth also noted that more masks had been offered to him for sale in the future.59 That said, the Kayapó masks published in the work of later scholars are generally of a different shape than those collected by Kissenberth, which would suggest that these had in fact been produced by members of another group. Gustaaf Verswijver writes that the Kayapó regularly integrated objects from other ethnic groups into their own culture. He himself witnessed, for example, how a feather cap, “was introduced, along with other items, after relatively friendly contacts with the Karaja Indians.”60 Elsewhere, Verswijvers describes how the Kayapó had adopted their naming ceremony bô came me tor (dance with the straw masks) from the Karajá and that the Xikrin subgroup of the Kayapó even continued to use the original Karajá term aruanã for it.61 On his second trip to the Kayapó, Kissenberth was finally able to observe a series of rituals that he also recorded on camera. His notes in his diary, which Günter Hartmann annotated and published in a series of articles,62 are significantly more detailed than those from his visits to the Karajá. Kayapó social and ritual activities were documented both in written and picture form. Kissenberth was witness in the second half of August to a three-day ritual that might very well have been a naming ceremony for young children and an initiation rite for young men.63 The

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10 Kutoĩbá with two dance masks. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 10 January 1909. EMB, VIII E 2982.

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

11 Móte kre in festive dress between other Kayapó in a festival hut. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 20 August 1909. EMB, VIII E 3120.

photographs show, among other things a “festival tree” in the centre of the village as well as one of the two huts built for the purpose of the festivities. At a later stage, Kissenberth photographed the full festival hut with Móte kre, the lead dancer decorated with a lip plug made of white quartz, downy feathers, egg shells, earplugs, and a beeswax hat in the middle (Fig. 11).64 Further images show different parts of the dance (Fig. 12) and ritual scenes that Kissenberth described as being “fictitious disputes” between the groups involved. As the festival progressed, the photographer changed position several times and recorded events that took place outside of the village as well. These included what Kissenberth called the “dance with the wooden log.” Here, on the last day of the festival, 15 young men carried a five-metre long wooden log on their shoulders, turning first, on the axis of the central man (Fig. 13) to later return the ca. 100 metres to the village centre, where they with loud cheers threw the log to the ground in front of the “festival tree” between the two now demolished huts.65

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12 Kayapó in festive dress during a break in the dancing. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 1909. EMB, VIII E 3019.

In contrast to his photographs of the Canela or the Karajá, Kissenberth’s photo­ graphs of the Kayapó show them in various stages of a comprehensive social inter­ action.66 This can also be seen in the photographs of the ngô-re fishing ritual,67 which took place a few days after the just described festivities. Here Kissenberth first photo­ graphed a group of men returning to the village with bundles of timbó that would be used for fishing. Two photographs show the men beating the water with the plants and a further one shows the same activities from behind two observers on the riverbank – the aforementioned photograph of Kutoĩbá and Džipu. Two more photographs show a little dam in the river made of poles, branches and palm leaves on which several Kayapó stand; the latter shows yet another Indian on the shore armed with a bow shooting the larger fish with arrows (Fig. 14).68 In the last village he visited, Kissenberth was also able to document the dancing and singing of the memorial festival of the dead.69 However, Kissenberth’s participation was not always welcomed. During his last stay with the Kayapó he was again able to observe the construction of a festival hut. Yet, on 26 September 1909, he wrote in his diary:

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

13 Dancing with a log. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 1909. EMB, VIII E 3130. When I heard towards sunset a beautiful, solemn singing from the already finished ‘festival hut’ I entered to find in it sitting on the ground a group of festively painted young men, with several medicine men sitting amongst them. To my astonishment, I soon had to realise that my presence had caused a good deal of irritation and that some felt constrained by it. The song, that was accompanied by usual arm waving, stopped abruptly, and a few quick words were exchanged on this matter before the ceremony was continued at Berio’s behest.70

The next day, he was met with the same reservations when he went to the festival hut after a scarification ceremony: “My attempt to take a photograph failed due to the lack of light and the unwillingness of my friends.”71 That said, Kissenberth writes elsewhere that the Kayapó invited him to stay or promised him further opportunities to take photographs.72 Despite these described setbacks, Kissenberth apparently managed to develop a friendly relationship with the Kayapó he visited, which is in turn reflected in

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14 Scene of the collective fishing ritual (ngô-re). Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 1909. EMB, VIII E 3136.

the photographs he was able to take. In addition to the festival and ritual scenes and a number of staged individual portraits that demonstrate the use of a lip plug or the proper use of a hunting club (Fig. 8), spear or stone axe, Kissenberth repeatedly photographed everyday work scenes among the Indians. He docu­ mented the manufacture of a buriti mat, a fire fan and a ceremonial axe, as well as the return of the women and children from fetching water.73 There are also a number of photographs in which some Kayapó are seen looking at the camera of the photographer with relaxed smiles on their faces while dangling in their hammocks, sitting together in front of a house or when shaving a family member (Fig. 15).74 In contrast to the fieldworker who was understood in the words of Bronislaw Malinowski some years later as “a necessary evil or nuisance mitigated by donations of tobacco,”75 these almost anecdotal images suggest the presence in the village of a flaneur whom the people register with benevolence and mild forbearance for his particularities as he roams the village with his camera and a feeling for the aesthetics of the everyday.

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

15 Kayapó woman shaving her husband Kakōrō with a taquara stick. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 1909. EMB, VIII E 3146.

In addition to their ethnographic and aesthetic – and today also historic – value, Kissenberth’s photographs acquired two social functions during the expedition itself. One: Since he developed the glass plates himself in Brazil, he from time to time sent prints to Germany. His photographs impressed not only Koch-Grünberg but his superiors in the museum in Berlin. They contributed, especially since they promised new data on the mask dances, to the faith invested in him that he might conclude the expedition successfully and in turn the willingness to provide him additional funding.76 The Indians in the villages, secondly, also took pleasure in the photographs. They were usually little impressed by the simple tricks Kissenberth used to ease the mood, as he admitted in his diary: “After dinner I produced my magnets, but could only wake the curiosity of my camaradas – the ‘savages’ had already seen them and found them of little interest.”77 But paging through the photographic volumes that he had brought with him, and looking through the photographs he had himself taken were among some of the more popular past times among the Indians during his stay with them.78

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Unstudied materials Neither his photographs nor the extensive collections that Kissenberth had acquired 79 could hide the fact that the grand research results that he had – sometime quite cockily – promised in his letters were lacking. Upon his return his superiors criti­ cised not only his failure to send regular reports but also the fact that he had spent so little time in the Indian villages, his long and in their minds unjustified sojourn in Rio de Janeiro and his abandonment of the expensive equipment financed by the museum. For a time it was discussed whether they should file criminal charges for misappropriation of funds, but decided against it since no one really thought that he had had any really fraudulent intentions. Instead, the files show that the failure of the expedition was attributed to his “sanguine temperament”, his “hubris”, “lack of travel experience”, “ignorance of scientific issues” and “economic recklessness”.80 The collection that had found much praise from among contemporaries had at least covered half of the incurred expenses. Kissenberth was provided several opportunities, initially in an unpaid position and as of 1920 as a regular museum employee, to study his collections further, but he approached the task only half-heartedly. Instead, his correspondence reveals multiple plans to return to Brazil. But these plans end where the proposed monograph mentioned above ended: Kissenberth was until the last more a weaver of grand research designs than one who could realise them. Little is known about Kissenberth’s fate after he left the museum service in 1924. Anita Hermannstädter, who was the first to examine this long forgotten expedition in any detail, wrote that Kissenberth moved to Bludenz in Vorarlberg, Austria with his second wife and died there in 1944. The correspondence between the museum and Kissenberth’s wife Doris as well as the anthropologist Fritz Krause shows that an active interest in the scholarly evaluation of his estate continued at least until 1951. That said, no further data on this discussion beyond a note citing Krause’s interest in this task remain to be found in Berlin. Koch-Grünberg understood in 1903 – 1905 how to transform an expedition initiated by a museum for the purpose of acquiring ethnographic collections into a comprehen­ sive collection and research expedition. Kissenberth did the exact opposite, reducing a comprehensive collection and research expedition into one that focussed only on the collecting activities. The legacy of this expedition in the archive of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin includes today one file of documents pertinent to the expedition, copies of ten diary notebooks, an extensive ethnographic collection, 17 wax cylinder recordings, a box of linguistic data, a folder with transcriptions of historical documents from the archive of the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro and nearly 300 photographs taken in the years 1908 to 1911.81 More letters can be found in the manuscript collection

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, PK and in the Nachlass Theodor Koch-Grünberg held in the Völkerkundliche Sammlung of the Philipps-Universität Marburg.82 A particular curiosity can be found in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. It is Kissenberth’s own copy of Fritz Krause’s 1911 monograph In den Wildnissen Brasiliens. Bericht und Ergebnisse der Leipziger Araguaya-Expedition 1908,83 the margins filled with numerous corrections and – often polemical – comments.84 Kissenberth’s preoccupation with his competitor Krause clearly continued after his return from Brazil. But while he tried doggedly to expose errors made by his colleague from Leipzig, whose fieldwork he ridiculed in his diary as a “hasty summer expedition”,85 he himself was unable to write a comprehensive narrative based on his own results. Thus it remains, more than a hundred years after Kissenberth returned from Brazil, the task of future scholarship to evaluate the material he collected so that at least by this means “more news will follow.”

Unpublished documents [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Kissenberth nach Südamerika. Vom 27. Februar 1908 I B. 76. Acta betreffend die Reise des Dr. Koch nach Amerika. 1903/1905. Pars I. ­B. 44. Tagebücher Kissenberth (Heft II-X, XII) [Völkerkundliche Sammlung der Philipps-Universität Marburg (VK Mr)] Nachlass Theodor Koch-Grünberg. A (= Korrespondenz)

Bibliography Conrad, Rudolf. 2002. “Karajá-Musik zwischen Stammesidentität und Multikultur – Impres­ sionen 2001.” In Amazonasindianer. LebensRäume. LebensRituale. LebensRechte, edited by Doris Kurella and Dietmar Neitzke, 233 – 248. Berlin/Stuttgart: Reimer/Linden-Museum. Dietschy, Hans. 1970. “Die Tanzmasken der Karaja-Indianer Zentralbrasiliens und der Aruanã-Fisch.” Bulletin der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie und Ethnologie 47: 48 – 53. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1891. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde Brasiliens (Veröffentlichungen aus dem Königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde, Band II, 1./2. Heft). Berlin: Spemann. Ehrenreich, Paul. 1892. “Südamerikanische Stromfahrten.” Globus 62: 1 – 4, 33 – 40, 70 – 74, 100 – 106, 133 – 140, 181 – 186, 214 – 221, 259 – 264, 326 – 331. Haas, Richard. 2002. “Brasilien an der Spree. Zweihundert Jahre ethnographische Sammlun­ gen in Berlin.” In Deutsche am Amazonas – Forscher oder Abenteurer? Expeditionen in Brasilien 1800–1914, edited by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Ethnologisches Museum, 16 – 25. Berlin/Münster: SMPK/LIT. Hartmann, Günter. 1977. “Masken der Pau d’arco-Kayapo, Brasilien.” Tribus 26: 103 – 108.

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Hartmann, Günter. 1978. “Totengedenkfest der Pau d’Arco-Kayapo, Brasilien.” Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zürich I: 61 – 66. Hartmann, Günter. 1982a. “Zur Demographie des Pau d’Arco-Gebietes, Zentral-Brasilien, im Jahre 1909.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 107: 259 – 268. Hartmann, Günter. 1982b. “Bei den Mekubenokré-Kayapo, Brasilien. Aus den Tagebuch­ blättern Wilhelm Kissenberths.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 107: 153 – 162. Hartmann, Günter. 1982c. “Fischfest der Pau’Arco-Kayapó, Brasilien.” Tribus 31: 37 – 44. Hartmann, Günter. 1988. “Das nrówa-re-Fest der Pau d’Arco-Kayapó, Zentral-Brasilien.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 113: 239 – 260. Hempel, Paul. 2005. “Das Moment der Bewegung. Zur räumlichen Praxis der frühen ethno­ grafischen Fotografie.” In Andere Körper – Fremde Bewegungen. Theatrale und öffentliche Inszenierungen im 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Claudia Jeschke und Helmut Zedelmaier, 123 – 147. Münster: LIT. Hempel, Paul. 2009. “Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Visual Anthropology in Early ­Twentieth-Century German Anthropology.” In Photography, Anthropology and History. Expanding the Frame, edited by Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards, 193 – 219. Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate. Hermannstädter, Anita. 2002. “Eine vergessene Expedition. Wilhelm Kissenberth am Rio Araguaya 1908 – 1910.” In Deutsche am Amazonas – Forscher oder Abenteurer? Expeditionen in Brasilien 1800–1914, edited by Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum, 106 – 131. Berlin/Münster: SMPK/LIT. Kissenberth, Wilhelm. 1907. Antoine d’Hamilton. Sein Leben und seine Werke (Inaugural-­ Dissertation, Philosophische Fakultät der Universität Rostock). Berlin: Schade. Kissenberth, Wilhelm. 1912a. “Bei den Canella-Indianern in Zentral-Maranhão (Brasilien).” Baessler-Archiv 2: 45 – 54. Kissenberth, Wilhelm. 1912b. “Über die hauptsächlichen Ergebnisse der Araguaya-Reise.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 44: 36 – 59. Kissenberth, Wilhelm. 1922. “Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Tapirapé-Indianer.” Baessler-Archiv 6(1/2): 36 – 81. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1909/1910. Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern. Reisen in Nordwest-­ Brasilien 1903/1905. 2 Volumes. Berlin: Wasmuth. Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 2004. Die Xingu-Expedition (1898 – 1900). Ein Forschungstagebuch (edited by Michael Kraus). Köln/Weimar: Böhlau. Kraus, Michael. 2002. “‘… und wann ich endlich weiterkomme, das wissen die Götter …’  – Theodor Koch-Grünberg und die Erforschung des oberen Rio Negro.” In Amazonas­ indianer. LebensRäume. LebensRituale. LebensRechte, edited by Doris Kurella and Dietmar Neitzke, 113 – 128. Berlin/Stuttgart: Reimer/Linden-Museum (spanish translation: Kraus, Michael. 2004a. “‘… y cuándo finalmente pueda proseguir, eso sólo lo saben los dioses …’ –  Theodor Koch-Grünberg y la exploración del Alto Rio Negro.” Boletín de Antropología (Medellín) Vol.  18(35): 192 – 210.) Kraus, Michael. 2004. Bildungsbürger im Urwald. Die deutsche ethnologische Amazonienforschung (1884 – 1929). Marburg: Curupira.

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

Krause, Fritz. 1910. “Tanzmaskennachbildungen vom mittleren Araguaya (Zentralbrasilien).” Jahrbuch des städtischen Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig 3 (1908/09): 97 – 122. Krause, Fritz. 1911. In den Wildnissen Brasiliens. Bericht und Ergebnisse der Leipziger Araguaya-­ Expedition 1908. Leipzig: Voigtländer. Kurella, Doris. 2002. “Die Karajá – Eine Einführung.” In Amazonasindianer. LebensRäume. LebensRituale. LebensRechte, edited by Doris Kurella and Dietmar Neitzke, 207 – 212. Berlin/ Stuttgart: Reimer/Linden-Museum. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1953 [1922]. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: ­Routledge & Keagan Paul, Ltd. Mekler, Adam. 2005a. “The Karajá.” In Vanishing Worlds. Art and Ritual in Amazonia, edited by Daphne Lane Beneke, 28 – 42. Houston: Houston Museum of Natural Science. Mekler, Adam. 2005b. “The Tapirapé.” In Vanishing Worlds. Art and Ritual in Amazonia, edited by Daphne Lane Beneke, 43 – 56. Houston: Houston Museum of Natural Science. Mekler, Adam. 2005c. “The Kayapó.” In Vanishing Worlds. Art and Ritual in Amazonia, edited by Daphne Lane Beneke, 77 – 99. Houston: Houston Museum of Natural Science. Prinz, Ulrike. 1999. ‘Das Jacaré und die streitbaren Weiber’. Poesie und Geschlechterkampf im östlichen Tiefland Südamerikas. Marburg: Curupira. Prinz, Ulrike. 2002. “Einmal Ursprung und zurück – Die Mythen und Feste der Karajá.” In Amazonasindianer. LebensRäume. LebensRituale. LebensRechte, edited by Doris Kurella and Dietmar Neitzke, 213 – 232. Berlin/Stuttgart: Reimer/Linden-Museum. Santos-Granero, Fernando. 2009. “Introduction. Amerindian Constructional Views of the World.” In The occult life of things. Native Amazonian Theories of Materiality and Personhood, edited by Fernando Santos Granero, 1 – 29. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Souza Filho, Odilon João de. 1992. “Das Großhaus-Fest der Karajá-Indianer.” Jahrbuch des Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig XXXIX: 223 – 245. Turner, Terence. 1998 [1992]. “Os Mebengokre Kayapó: História e mudança social. De comu­ nidades autônomas para a coexistência interétnica.” In História dos Índios no Brasil, edited by Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, 311 – 338. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras/Secretaria Municipial da Cultura/FAPESP. Verswijver, Gustaaf. 1995. Kayapó. Materielle Kultur – spirituelle Welt. Material culture – spiritual world. Frankfurt am Main: Museum für Völkerkunde. Verswijver, Gustaaf. 2002. “Die Rites de Passage der Kayapó.” In Amazonasindianer. Lebens­ Räume. LebensRituale. LebensRechte, edited by Doris Kurella and Dietmar Neitzke, 173 – 205. Berlin/Stuttgart: Reimer/Linden-Museum. Wagley, Charles. 1983 [1977]. Welcome of Tears. The Tapirapé Indians of Central Brazil. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press. Ziegler, Susanne. 2006. Die Wachszylinder des Berliner Phonogramm-Archivs (Veröffent­ lichungen des Ethnologischen Museums Berlin. N. F. 73). Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

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Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10

11

12 13 14 15 16

This article was written within the framework of the project Erschließung, Digitali­ sierung und wissenschaftliche Recherche zu historischen Fotografien aus Südamerika (DFG INST 142/2 – 1). My thanks go to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financing the project. I would also like to thank Manuela Fischer for initiating the project and for her dedicated and collegial cooperation. Travels in northern and central Brazil. Results of a research expedition in the years 1908 – 10. Kissenberth to Generalverwaltung. 8. 2. 1922, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu 1960/11. Kissenberth to Koch-Grünberg, 10. 12. 1922, Koch-Grünberg to Kissenberth 15. 12. 1922, VK Mr A.32; Cf. Koch-Grünberg to Seler 14. 4. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 855/09. Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Abteilung. Cf. Westphal-Hellbusch 1973, 35; H ­ ermannstädter 2002, 129. Kissenberth published three scholarly articles based on data collected during the ex­ pedition (1912a, 1912b, 1922). The museum archive also has copies of more accessibly formulated travel reports that were printed in various Dutch and German magazines. For more biographical details see Hermannstädter 2002 as well as the appendix to Kissenberth’s dissertation published in 1907. Kissenberth’s personnel file is no longer to be found. My thanks to Anja Zenner for finding the exact date at which he started working at the museum in the purchase book. Seler to Generalverwaltung, 27. 2. 1908, Acta Kissenberth, E 410/08. Some of the notebooks containing Kissenberth’s diary can no longer be found. The first notebook documenting his arrival in Brazil and his stay in Barra do Corda is among them, as is notebook XI in which Kissenberth documented his time among the Kayapó from August to mid-September 1909. The last surviving notebook (No. XII) ends on 1 October 1909 while Kissenberth was still living among the Kayapó on the Rio Salobro. The original records of this sojourn are thus also fragmentary. Data on this period can be found in a series of articles by Günter Hartmann, who apparently had all the notebooks at his disposal. “der sich etwas eingehender mit diesen jetzt völlig domestizierten Indianern beschäftigte. Ein leicht verzeihlicher Irrtum […] kann es wohl gelegentlich einmal vorkommen, dass mir einzelne Irrtümer unterlaufen, die ich dann, verehrter Herr Professor, zu entschul­ digen und baldigst zu berichtigen bitte.”, Kissenberth to Seler, 29. 10. 1908, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 92/09. For more details see Kraus 2004, 70 – 90. Von den Steinen to Ethnologisches Hilfscomité. 17. 2. 1903, EMB, Acta Koch, E 190/1903. Two years among the Indians. Travels in Northwest Brazil 1903/1905. Koch-Grünberg 1909/10. Vol. I, II. ­On the purpose of and changes made in the course of his expedition see Kraus 2002. Cf. Hempel 2009, 199. Koch-Grünberg had already been a member of Herrmann Meyer’s second Xingu expedition in 1899 in which among other things he was responsible for taking photographs. Cf. Koch-Grünberg 2004.

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil  17

18

19

20 21

22

23

24

“Dr. Kissenberth hat hier seine Zeit eifrig benutzt. Er hat unter anderem die sämtlichen Hauptstücke der Ehrenreich’schen Sammlungen photographiert und koloriert, um sie mitzunehmen und darauf hin von den Indianern die näheren Erklärungen zu den Masken u. s. w. zu erlangen. Er hat portugiesisch gelernt und die Litteratur [sic] eifrig durchstudiert.”, Seler to Generalverwaltung, 27. 2. 1908. EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 410/08. After his expedition to the Alto Xingu with Karl von den Steinen, Paul E ­ hrenreich travelled up the Rio Araguaia and the Rio Purús. He collected a large number of ­Karajá objects for the museum in Berlin (Ehrenreich 1891, 1892; see also Hempel in this ­volume). The choice of the region for Kissenberth to work in – like the initial attempt to send Koch-Grünberg up the Rio Purús in 1903 – might be found in the intention to build on this collection and in doing so explore new territory (cf. Kraus 2004, 103 – 108). “zur Bezahlung des Billets für die Hin- und Rückfahrt und zur Beschaffung seiner persönlichen, sowie einer phonographischen und photographischen Ausrüstung”, Seler to Generalverwaltung, 2. 4. 1908, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 685/08. Statement of accounts Kissenberth from 13. 5. 1908, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1030/08. The exact sum dedicated to photographic equipment and materials cannot be identified since the expenditures are listed by store and not by article. Much of the photographic equipment was purchased from Stegemann; the darkroom tent from Bram. EMB, VIII E 2938 – 2947. Cf. also EMB, VIII E 3052 – 3055. EMB, VIII E 2949 – 2953, VIII 2955 – 2956. Kissenberth describes this short encounter in one of his three scholarly articles (Kissenberth 1912a). Brief notes on this visit and photographs of both the Canela and the Guajajara can be found in Kissenberth 1912b. See also Hermannstädter 2002. “kaum eine halbe Stunde”, Kissenberth to Koch-Grünberg, 26. 10. 1908 and 20. 12. 1908 (transcription). EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 1088/09. EMB, Tagebuch III, 57 – 58. Cf. EMB, VIII E 3068 – 3069. Kissenberth had originally planned to depart in April but was delayed by his visit to the Papal Legate in Munich, André Frühwirth, to obtain this letter of recommendation. Frühwirth had been head of the Dominican mission at the Rio Araguaia for a time. EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 614/08. “Um 7h30 schickt Frei Domingo zu mir mit der Bitte, eine photographische Aufnahme zu machen, da heute alle Führer und Revolutionsleiter versammelt seien. Na, na, Frei Domingo! Soll diese Zumutung Propagandazwecken dienen! Dann lieber nicht!”, EMB, Tagebuch VI, 110 – 111 (10. 3. 1909). “Diogo, Fortaleza, Pedro Monti kamen zu mir mit der Bitte, ihnen die Platte mit der Aufnahme vom Generalquartier zu überge­ ben. Pedro Monti wollte sie entwickeln und Abzüge machen – zu seinem Vorteil. Ich ging darauf nicht ein versprach aber bei Gelegenheit Abzüge hiervon zu senden. Mit missvergnügten Gesichtern entfernten sie sich.”, EMB, Tagebuch VI, 116 (15. 3. 1909). The photograph was probably taken on 8 March. Kissenberth noted in his diary that he had gone out “with the intention to take some photographs” (“in der Absicht einige Aufnahmen zu bekommen”) and ended up in the “Military Command” (“Kriegsleitung”) Headquarters where he found Diogo Morão and Frei Domingo. On 30 March can be found the statement that Kissenberth sent one of his servants back to Conceição,

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25 26

27 28 29 30

31

32

33

34 35 36

among other things with several prints of the “revolution plate” (“Revolutionsplatte”) for Joaquim Guedes, a wealthy merchant from Goiás. These local political conflicts appear to have accompanied Kissenberth throughout. Already in Barra do Corda he took two stereoscope photographs of federal troops marching into town (EMB, VIII E 3048, VIII E 3049). In Rio de Janeiro in 1910/1911 he took another photograph that bears the inscription: “View from the garden of the Pension Frank across the bay in Rio. Ships of the revolutionary forces besiege the city.” (“Blick vom Garten der Pension Frank auf die Bai in Rio. Kriegsschiffe der Revolutionäre halten die Stadt in Schach”, glass negative, not digitised). Maps can be found in Kissenberth 1912a, 44, 46. The map in Krause 1911 is also informa­ tive. Krause visited many of the same Karajá villages that Kissenberth had stopped in. Koch-Grünberg to Seler, 21.5. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1088/09; Kissenberth, 1. 4. 1910, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 869/10; Kissenberth to Preuss, 1. 2. 1911, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 388/11; Seler to Generalverwaltung. 7. 6. 1910, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1408/10; Kissenberth to Generalverwaltung, 12. 5. 1911, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 814/11; Kissenberth to Generalverwaltung, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 1047/11; EMB, Tagebuch VI, 9, 11, 76 – 78 (27./28.1. and 11./12. 2. 1909). Kissenberth, 5. 8. 1908, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1791/08. The actual sum spent was somewhat less. EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 2572/08. “nähere Nachrichten folgen”, Kissenberth to Seler, 29. 10. 1908, EMB, Acta Kissenberth E 92/09. “vielleicht braucht er nächstens wieder Geld, dann wird er wohl wieder schreiben.”, Krickeberg to Koch-Grünberg, 18. 1. 1910, VK Mr A.7. Kissenberth, 5. 8. 1908, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1791/08; Kaiserlich Deutsches Konsulat (S. ­Luís do Maranhão) to Seler, 10. 4. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1011/09; Deutsche Gesandtschaft (Petropolis), 26. 6. 1909 (transcription), EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1737/09. “Donna Chiquirinha erklärte mir gegenüber die Cayapōs als geborene Diebe. Ich verteidige sie glühend, ob mit Recht, weiss ich nicht, mir haben sie jedenfalls noch nichts gestohlen.”, EMB, Tagebuch III, 96 (19. 12. 1908). On Kissenberth’s expedition, but also his character, his self-perception, his idiosyncrasies and his fascination with mountains and nature see Hermannstädter 2002. Kissenberth to Koch-Grünberg, 26.10.08, 20.12.08 (transcription), EMB, Acta ­Kissenberth, zu E 1088/09; Koch-Grünberg to Seler, 10. 4. 1909, Seler to Koch-­Grünberg. 13. 4. 1909, Seler to Kissenberth, 13. 4. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 855/09; Seler to Kissenberth, 14. 9. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1089/09; Kissenberth, 1. 4. 1910, EMB, Acta Kissen­ berth, E 869/10; Preuss to Kissenberth. 3. 6. 1910, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 869/10. The motifs of several of the lost plates can be reconstructed on the basis of copies held in the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (cf. endnote 54). Two hundred eight of the photographs held in the Ethnologisches Museum have been digitised and are accessible via SMB-digital. Cf. figure 4 in the contribution by Muñoz in this volume. EMB, VIII E 3053–VIII E 3055. Visits to the town were not automatically accompanied by changes in dress. Kissenberth wrote to Koch-Grünberg once that “Naked Indios only make an appearance in certain

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44

45

46

intervals. At the time, no Karajá and only four Kayapó are to be found in Conceição (not counting the residents of the monastery). Unto a few days ago, a troupe of Kayapó from Araias with whom I had the opportunity to work were here for ca. eight days” (“Splitternackte Indios tauchen hier nur zu gewissen Zeiten auf. Gegenwärtig weilt kein Caraja, und nur noch 4 Cayapós in Conceição (außer den Klosterzöglingen). Bis vor kurzem war ca. 8 Tage lang ein Trupp Cayapós aus Arraias hier, an dem ich einige Studien machen konnte.”), Kissenberth to Koch-Grünberg, 26. 10. 1908 and 20. 12. 1908 (transcription), EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 1088/09. “sondern, dem Sammeln von Objekten vergleichbar, zur Inventarisierung und Aufzeich­ nung”, Hempel 2005, 135. “durch Vergrösserung der Platten eine ganz schöne Zahl Bilder von Einzelindividuen bekomme.”, EMB, Tagebuch II, 49 (12. 10. 1908). “Auf seinem Kopfe saß eine bunte zweizipflige Soldatenmütze, die ihm, wie er mir mit wichtiger Miene erzählte, als Abzeichen seines Ranges vom Gouverneur verliehen worden war.”, Kissenberth 1912a, 49; EMB, Tagebuch II, 48 (12. 10. 1908). Cf. Hermannstädter 2002, 112. EMB, VIII E 2953. “Überredungsgabe”, “scharfer Worte”, Kissenberth 1912a, 49; EMB, Tagebuch II, 49 (12. 10. 1908). The mentioned photograph of the Canela women at work is the only one of its kind, either of the Guajajara, Canela or Xerente. Hermannstädter 2002, 118 – 121; Kraus 2004, 242 – 244. EMB, Tagebuch VII, 40 – 42 (25. 3. 1909). Above all, Kissenberth was afraid of a meeting with the apparently very warlike Canoeiro. The first Karajá village reached by ­Kissenberth was that of the chief Valladar, who is probably the same man whose name Krause (1911) transcribed as Walatá. Kissenberth dealt with the Tapirapé he met while visiting other ethnic groups in the third of his scholarly articles (1922). Kissenberth’s photographs of Karajá camp scenes have been published in Kissenberth 1912b, Hermannstädter 2002, 108 and Kurella 2002, 208 – 209. Figure 3 in Kurella (2002) shows Chief Tamanako and his family. EMB, Tagebuch VIII, 50 – 53 (19. 4. 1909). According to Kissenberth, this was a “fish dance,” džalehené (or sometimes Jarehené in the inscriptions on the photographs) being the Karajá word for the Tucunaré while idžadŏ signified the Jaraquí. He called the masks he purchased aruanã. According to later authors, idjassó was a collective term for all the masks used in the aruanã dance, most but not all of them representing fish. The term aruanã signifies both a fish (osteoglossum bicirrhosum) as well as the masked pair dance. The mythical ancestors of the Karajá, fish-like beings who emerged out of the water and are embodied in the pair dance are called aruanã, as are the fish-like beings that remained in the underworld. The Karajá believe that some of these aruanã came to the shore in the mythical past at furo das pedras near the convergence of the Rio Tapirapé and the Rio Araguaia (Fig. 4). Idjalheni is the name of a specific mask and possibly of the fish Kissenberth described as well (Dietschy 1960, 48; Souza Filho 1992, 228; Prinz 1999, 135 – 137; Prinz 2002, 213, 217; Mekler 2005a).

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48

49

50

51

52

53

He wrote on the same day that he took these photographs that: “No one could, wanted to or was permitted to give me any information on the symbolism of this and other dances I observed.” (“Über die Symbolik dieses und der anderen beobachteten Tänze konnte oder wollte oder durfte man mir keinen Aufschluss erteilen.”), EMB, Tagebuch VIII, 52 (19. 4. 1909). To what degree a longer stay at the village might have provided for more detailed data must remain unanswered. Souza Filho (1992, 241), who did fieldwork among the Karajá in 1973 writes that: “The residents of Santa Isabel were almost without exception unwilling to discuss those issues that interested us.” (“Die Bewohner von Santa Isabel waren fast ohne Ausnahme niemals bereit, mit uns über die Themen zu sprechen, die uns interessierten.”). Kissenberth 1912b, 48 – 51. In a more recent publication Santos-Granero (2009, 18 – 19) describes the process in the Amazon of the “de-subjectivation of a subjective, or subjec­ tivized, object in order to turn it into an inanimate thing. Such operations are effectuated, for instance, before transferring personal objects or powerful ritual objects to a third party. In such situations, objects are deprived of their subjectivity to prevent them from harming the receiver or from being used by the receiver to harm the donor.” EMB, Tagebuch IX, 1 (24. 9. 1909). Ehrenreich 1892, 40. Souza Filho (1992, 228) writes that women were only permitted to see the masks in exceptional cases and even then, only when they were being worn by a dancer. For a detailed description of gender relations among the Karajá see Prinz 1999. “fast völlig ergebnislos”, EMB, Tagebuch VIII, 79 (22. 4. 1909). Kurella (2002, 210) describes the restrictive behaviour of the Karajá vis-à-vis their ritual objects: “The destruction of the the aruanã masks after the ceremony and the absolute prohibition of their sale to Whites is again being upheld.” (“Das Zerstören der Aruanã-Masken nach Beendigung der Zeremonie und das strikte Verbot, solche Masken an Weiße zu verkaufen, wird wieder eingehalten.”). Cf. also Conrad 2002, 234. Krause (1910; 1911, 78 – 82, 142, 279, 331 – 332, 374) was permitted to photograph and sketch the masks in 1908, but the Karajá refused to sell them to him. They did offer him reconstructions for sale. Kissenberth’s orthography in his diary is not always clear. He does not mention the indigenous names of the Kayapó villages in his travel report (1912b). Hartmann (1982a, 260 – 261), who reconstructed the two trips to the Kayapó on a map names the villa­ ges that Kissenberth visited on his first trip Adutikikré (Rio Araias), Ōkumre (Rio Araias) and Kaprãpoti módnja (Rio Lageado/Rio Salobro, = left bank of the Rio Pau d’Arco) and the villages he visited on the second trip Mekarōkotukikré (Rio Araias) and Ororogžakamkikré (Rio Salobro). Kissenberth noted that the groups he visited called themselves “Mekubenokré-Kayapó”. On the history of the Kayapó in this region cf. Turner 1998 [1992], 314 – 315. He carried out this “census” on 26. 9. 1909 (EMB, Tagebuch XII, 64 – 76). It was published in detail by Hartmann (1982a). Data on how long this trip took can be found in Hartmann 1982b, 162. Cf. also Kissenberth to Preuss, 1. 2. 1911, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 388/11. EMB, VIII E 2966, VIII E 2980, VIII E 3072, VIII E 3139. The names of the Indians can in part be found written on the parchment glass plate pouches.

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil  54

55

56

57 58 59

60

61 62 63

The photograph can be found in the Nachlass Wilhelm Kissenberth in the Ibero-Ameri­ kanisches Institut Berlin (IAI) under the signature N-0158 s 1. The IAI holds 33 of Kissenberth’s glass plates, this is, contemporary copies of originals held in the Ethnologisches Museum. My thanks to Frank Stephan Kohl and Nadja Ronnisch (IAI) for this information. Cf. also Muñoz in this volume. “Bauchpartie von Nabel bis Oberschenkel”, “Die Aufnahme von Doyuns Sexualpartie war nicht so einfach zu bekommen. Es bedurfte hiezu [sic] einer List und der Hinter­ linse des Objektivs. Beim Vorzeigen dieses Bildes fand ich nicht ungeteilten Beifall. Ich fürchte gegen den Sittencodex verstossen zu haben. Doch nahm man mir die Sache nicht weiter übel.”, EMB, Tagebuch V, 5 (9. 1. 1909, photograph from 8. 1. 1909); Kissenberth, 25. 7. 1909. EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 2291/09. A very similar photograph, a “close-up of the penis band” of a Tapirapé can be found in Wagley (1977, 128). “von den Cayapo als von ihnen selbst verfertigt ausgegeben werden, dem ganzen Habitus nach aber den Karajámasken ähnlich, möglicherweise als Einfuhrartikel zu betrachten sind.”, Kissenberth is reminded of the Karajá masks in the Ehrenreich Collection that he examined before leaving on the expedition. EMB, Tagebuch V, 1 (8. 1. 1909). Cf. endnote 46. Kissenberth notes that the Kayapó term for the fish that the masks represent is kumaliná. EMB, VIII E 2978, VIII E 2982, VIII E 3046, VIII E 3134. “Die beiden Tanzmasken die Kutoĩbá mir grinsend überreicht sind wie ich jetzt zuver­ sichtlich weiss, Cayapomasken und dürften wohl die ersten in einer Sammlung vertre­ tenen sein.”, Kissenberth, 25. 7. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 2291/09. “Mariquinha und Carolina erklärten übereinstimmend, dass Maskentänze bei den Cayapo üblich, die Masken Selbstfabrikat sind.”, EMB, Tagebuch V, 1 (8. 1. 1909). The fact that Kayapó practiced a mask dance does not automatically mean that these two specific masks were manufactured by them. According to Hartmann (1977, 103) the Kayapó told Kissenberth elsewhere that a missionary had explained to them that the masks caused a fever that would kill them all, which is why they had stopped making them. Verswijver 1995, 44. Mekler (2005c, 87) describes masks that are similar, but calls them an “anteater effigy”. Hartmann (1977) differentiates in his analysis of Kissenberth’s diary between (Karajá-)masks that the Kayapó adopted and their own masks, whereas the anteater masks are part of the latter category. In the catalogue, edited by Kurella and Neitzke, the photograph of Kutoĩbá is printed in the article on the Karajá (Prinz 2002, 223) and not in the article on the Kayapó (Verswijver 2002). The comparative study of these masks cannot be done justice here. It must suffice to add a further reference to the images of Tapirapé masks in Wagley (1977, 218 – 219). Cf. also Mekler 2005b, 46 – 47. The fact that also the Tapirapé adopted Karajá masks is confirmed by Conrad 2002, 234. Verswijver 2002, 194, 204. The Xikrin are a Kayapó subgroup numbering, so Verswijver (1995, 24 – 27), ca. 20% of their total population. Cf. endnote 10. The repeated emphasis on the young fathers and their newborn children at the core of the ritual, the festival huts for young men and their temporary seclusion outside of the village, the ties to the maize harvest, the collective and public performance of

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64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78

songs and dances in the village square, the eating of turtle meat and manioc and the immediately following fish ritual are all evidence for this interpretation. On Kayapó naming ceremonies and rites of passage see Verswijver 2002. He does not, however, ever mention the festival tree or the wooden log photographed by Kissenberth. Kissenberth (1912b, 56 – 59) called the ritual the akré-festival, understanding the word akré to be the local term for vulture. Hartmann (1988, 240, 243, 254) has suggested that this is a misunderstanding and interpreted the activities described as a rite of passage, as well as part of the bep ceremony. The bep ceremony is, so Verswijver (2002, 204) a specific Kayapó naming ceremony. Cf. Hartmann 1988, 241. Verswijver (1995) discusses Kayapó material culture at length. EMB, VIII E 3017 – 3022, VIII E 3115 – 3120, VIII E 3122 – 3130, VIII E 3147, VIII E 3148. For a detailed phenomenology of the ritual and an attempt to structure it see Hartmann 1988. Such a narrative structure can also be found in the photograph series of various activities taken by Theodor Koch-Grünberg. Cf. Hempel 2009, 205. Hartmann 1982c. See also Verswijver 2002, 182. EMB, VIII E 3141, VIII E 3131 – 3136. Hartmann 1978. EMB, VIII E 3024, VIII E 3036, VIII E 3149. “Als ich gegen Sonnenuntergang aus der schon nahezu beendeten ‘Festhütte’ einen schönen, feierlichen Gesang zu mir schallen hörte und mich in die Hütte begab, sah ich am Boden eine festlich bemalte Schar von Jünglingen, unter ihnen einige Medizin­ männer sitzen. Zu meinem Erstaunen musste ich bald bemerken, dass man offenbar ungehalten über meinen Eintritt war, sich jedenfalls durch meine Gegenwart beengt fühlte. Rasch wurden diesbezüglich einige Worte gewechselt, nachdem der mit den üblichen Armbewegungen begleitete Gesang ganz plötzlich abgebrochen worden war, – doch setzte man von Berio aufgefordert die Ceremonie fort.”, EMB, Tagebuch XII, 79 – 80 (26. 9. 1909). “Mein Versuch eine phot. Aufnahme zu machen, scheiterte an der mangelnden Beleuch­ tung und dem mangelnden Willen meiner Freunde.”, EMB, Tagebuch XII, 85 (27. 9. 1909). EMB, Tagebuch XII, 50 (22. 9. 1909); XII, 87 (28. 9. 1909). EMB, VIII E 3121, VIII E 2980, VIII E 3040, VIII E 3042. VIII E 3138, VIII E 3070, VIII E 3142, VIII E 3071. EMB, VIII E 2984, VIII E 2985, VIII 3143, VIII E 3146 (the last picture is not to be confused with the shaving scene in which Doyūn can be identified). Malinowski 1953 [1922], 8. Koch-Grünberg to Seler, 10. 4. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 855/09; Koch-Grünberg to Seler, 15. 4. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 1088/09; Kissenberth to Seler, 25. 7. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 2291/09; Kissenberth, 28. 7. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 2458/09; Seler to Kissenberth, 25. 10. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, E 2291/09. EMB, Tagebuch V, 55 (18. 1. 1909). Cf. also EMB, Tagebuch IV, 42 (2. 1. 1909), IV, 63 – 64 (4. 1. 1909). “Nach Tisch produzierte ich meinen Magneten, begegnete aber nur bei meinen Cama­ radas neugierigem Interesse – den ‘Wilden’ war diese Sache schon bekannt, für sie war der Fall längst erledigt.”, EMB, Tagebuch IX, 85 (28. 5. 1909); XII, 3 (16. 9. 1909); XII, 12

“More news will follow” – Wilhelm Kissenberth’s ethnographic photographs from Northeast and Central Brazil 

79

80

81

82 83 84 85

(17. 9. 1909); XII, 95 (29. 9. 1909). Kissenberth had with him a “simple stereoscope” (“ein­ faches Reproduktionsstereoskop”). Kissenberth to Seler, 25. 7. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissen­ berth, E 2291/09. He did not, it appears, take any of the photographs he made of pieces of the Ehrenreich Collection with him; at least, nothing to the contrary can be found in the material. Seler wrote in a letter that “Kissenberth also asked Krickeberg for copies of his photographs of the museum’s Araguaia Collection recently. But he deposited the negatives elsewhere, they are not here.” (“Kissenberth hat auch an Krickeberg neulich die Bitte um Kopien seiner Aufnahmen der hiesigen Araguaya-Sammlung gerichtet, aber die Negative hat er irgendwo andershin, jedenfalls nicht hierher, gegeben.”), Seler to Koch-Grünberg, 13. 4. 1909, EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 855/09. According to the existing documentation, (EMB, Acta Kissenberth, zu E 869/10) Kissen­ berth sent a collection of 759 Kayapó pieces, 386 Karajá pieces and 18 Canela pieces to Berlin. Much of the collection was initially considered lost after the Second World War. It has been discovered in the meantime that much of the collection was transported to Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) and later to Leipzig. After German unification, the collection was returned to Berlin. Cf. Haas 2002; photographs of individual pieces of the collection can be found in Hermannstädter 2002. “sanguinisches Temperament”, “Selbstüberschätzung”, “Unerfahrenheit im Reisen”, “Unkenntnis der wissenschaftlichen Probleme”, “wirtschaftliche Sorglosigkeit”, Preuss to Generalverwaltung, 31. 8. 1911 (incl. addendum Seler, 7. 10. 1911), EMB, Acta ­Kissenberth, zu E 814/11. According to Ziegler (2006, 167) Kissenberth originally recorded 18 wax cylinders for the museum of which only 17 can be found today. With one exception, these are recordings (or copies) of galvanos. On the photographs see endnote 33 and 54, on the diary see endnote 10, on the collection endnote 79 and on Kissenberth’s own publications see endnote 6. For the correspondence held at the Världskulturmuseet (Museum of World Culture) at Gothenburg, cf. Muñoz in this volume. In the Wilderness of Brazil. Report und Results of the Leipzig Araguaia-Expedition of 1908. The book has the signature It.sing. 509 ff. Many thanks to Paul Hempel for making me aware of this extraordinary volume. EMB, Tagebuch VI, 62 (5. 2. 1909).

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FEDERICO BOSSERT AND DIEGO VILLAR

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

German Ethnology and Mato Grosso On 19 March 1900, after spending some months in Cuiabá waiting for the end of the rainy season and listening to the stories of rubber tappers about the hostility of the Xingu Indians, the young Max Schmidt set out on his much-anticipated expedition to Mato Grosso. It was here that he penetrated the forest in search of the Bakairí located on the banks of the Rio Kuliseu. Schmidt was accompanied by a modest retinue: a young man, a boy, three donkeys and a mule. His material resources were rather limited, as was his command of the Portuguese language, which he had only begun to learn during his boat journey from Asunción. As a geographical and linguistic guide, and as a letter of introduction to the natives, he was carrying Karl von den Steinen’s works. Just a few months prior to embarking on this voyage, Schmidt, following in his father’s footsteps, had worked as an official for the provincial court of Blankenese while preparing his thesis on the jural rationale of Roman law. In 1899, Schmidt asked for a leave of absence from work and travelled to Berlin to sign up as a volunteer at the city’s ethnological museum. It was there that he met von den Steinen, his teacher in the then-budding ethnological sciences. Von den Steinen had studied under Adolf Bastian, the great promoter of German ethnology during the last decades of the nine­ teenth century and founder of some of the institutions where Schmidt would study and work: the colossal Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde and the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte.1 Several of Bastian’s fields, which drew on his Humboldtian roots, can be identified in Schmidt’s ethnographic research. These include a non-essentialist definition of Naturvölker and their figuring as a privileged object in ethnological study;2 and the focus on ‘salvage ethnography’ in the face of the colonial advance and the expansion of European cultural influences.3 However, most important of all were his convictions that travel, fieldwork, and the direct observation of cultures were the only genuine ways to gain ethnological knowledge, and that only strictly inductive investigations were valid insofar as documentation was based upon reliable empirical evidence attentive to the slightest details of the culture under study.4 After Bastian’s death, and with the advent of the new German-speaking anthropological schools that proposed ambitious universal models such as Graebner’s Kulturkreise or Pater Wilhelm Schmidt’s primitive monotheism, Max Schmidt remained faithful to

Federico Bossert and Diego Villar

his more cautious commitment to inductive empiricism. He vigorously challenged the diffusionist notions that were prevalent at the time, and at some cost to his academic career.5 Von den Steinen was the most prominent figure among a series of German ethnographers interested in the South American rainforest. By 1884, he had accomplished the remarkable exploit of travelling down the hitherto unexplored Rio Xingu from its headwaters to its confluence with the Amazon. In 1887, he returned to the region to study its then virtually unknown indigenous societies. His resulting publications, particularly Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, stirred up ethnological debate at the time and provided an ethnic and linguistic classification of the Xingu area that, in general terms, was to be endorsed by ethnologists and linguistics during subsequent years.6 Under his influence, a whole generation of German ethnologists became interested in the region, and expeditions to Brazil proliferated: Paul Ehrenreich (between 1884 and 1885, and 1887 and 1889), Herrmann Meyer (in 1896 and 1899), Theodor Koch-Grünberg (between 1903 and 1905, and 1911 until 1913). Schmidt’s interest in Mato Grosso was undoubtedly fuelled by this academic florescence. The region offered unique attractions: on the one hand, to a large extent it was a terra incognita, apt for pioneering exploration (which at the time went hand in hand with ethnology) and for coming into contact with true Naturvölker. On the other hand, it contained a wide variety of ethnic groups that were ideal for studying inter-ethnic contact and the processes of reciprocal transformation among indigenous societies. Although Schmidt started replicating von den Steinen’s voyage in 1887, his first trip was unique in several ways. First, unlike the typical expeditions of the time consisting of several researchers accompanied by a large company, Schmidt travelled by himself with a series of native guides. Second, and most importantly, the goal of his trip was not mere ethnological exploration. Following a plan of research devised by von den Steinen, Schmidt intended to conduct a thorough investigation of the Kamaiurá people and to live among them for several months. His project was rather unusual at the time, as ethnologists only rarely embarked upon extended localised research. Over the years, each of his trips to the Upper Rio Xingu and the Upper Rio Paraguay areas reflected his approach to ethnology – a combination of methodological choice and inner spiritual yearning. However, despite his unremitting endeavours, Schmidt never got to see the Kamaiurá. His account of his trip to the Upper Rio Xingu is a succession of accidents, misfortunes and mishaps, described in Indianerstudien in Zentralbrasilien  7 with a characteristic mix of relentless optimism and scientific meticulousness. Schmidt emerges as a kind of trop­ ical Quixote: thin, very tall, stoical, and always thoughtful, penetrating the forest in the company of natives he could hardly understand and with a pile of books as his sole guide.

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

Jungle travels Forty-four days after leaving Cuiabá, Schmidt finally arrived at the Rio Kuliseu, which together with the Ronuro, Batoví, Kuluene and von den Steinen rivers make up the so-called ‘Upper Xingu’ region. He came across the Bakairí, with whom he adopted a series of diplomatic strategies that he later used on countless occasions during his trips: showing the old engravings in von den Steinen’s books or playing the song Margarethe, Mädchen ohne Gleichen on his violin. Accompanied by a number of Bakairí Indians, he began to paddle down the Kuliseu, sharing their life, food, nakedness, and even having body paintings made on his arm: “Those days in the midst of virgin nature, sharing life in the wild without heed for the cares and needs that I yet felt, are the finest memories I have of that journey”.8 Things would quickly change upon entering the Nahukuá territory. Along their several stopovers, where he was forced to barter, Schmidt started to realise with great dismay that his supply of trinkets, which he was using to buy food, goods and services, was dwindling fast. In addition, his relationship with the Nahukuá guides became rather tense, filled with distrust, pilfering, and sleepless nights with guns at the ready. He then arrived in Aweti territory. This visit had originally been planned as a mere stopover on the way to the Kamaiurá, but it actually turned into the end of his journey. Described with a subtle sense of humour, Schmidt’s and his partner André’s sojourn in this village is one the most memorable scenes in the book. The Aweti invited them to stay and happily descended upon their luggage, offering to carry it. In a state of shock, Schmidt saw his already scarce belongings disappear into the forest. Upon arriving at the village, he checked his inventory and noted that very little was left to exchange with the Kamaiurá. His plans had been frustrated at a blow. Indefatigably, he decided to adapt to the circumstances and remain among the Aweti; but events precipitated. While the travellers were asleep, some of their last possessions disappeared. In the morning, Schmidt tried to reach an agreement with the indifferent headman, which led to a tempestuous finale: Leaving the headman briefly in charge of our luggage, André and I went to bathe in a nearby lake. On returning, we found the headman encircled by natives to whom he was distributing the last items in our clothes bag. All I now had was the shirt I was wearing and some ragged trousers. Everything in the sack had gone, down to the least trifles. I therefore announced to André that we would be leaving at first light to return to the Bakairí.9

The travellers spent the night keeping an eye on their guns inside the hut and listening to the ritual dances held at the plaza without a chance of watching them. On the following day, as they headed for the boats, the Indians made off with Schmidt and

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André’s last personal effects, including their ethnographic collections. Their subsequent trip to Bakairí territory was a dismal and silent flight, during which they avoided contact with the natives as much as possible, except for the purchase of some fish using their last remaining buttons and rings. Their disappointment was not mitigated by the arrival of an Aweti canoe returning their collections. Schmidt actually supposed that it was a measure taken to ward off revenge: “I had not found what I had come in search of: conviviality with the children of the forest. The prodigious effort required and the constant anxiety afforded me scarce moments of pleasure… and now I was leaving”.10 During his last days among the Bakairí, he was unable to devote himself to ethnographic work. Confined to a hammock by a bout of malaria, he was tormented at night by ritual songs and dances that prevented him from sleeping, and during the day by children and women who sat on him and demanded he play Margarethe again and again. On returning to Cuiabá, the epilogue of his adventure ended in a similar manner to the earlier part of his trip. His canoe capsized spoiling his photographic plates, and the ethnographic collections had to be left behind. The last leg of his journey, including a long walk lasting several days, was extremely painful as he was starving and desperate. However, as an example of poetic justice merited by Schmidt’s immutable optimism, the collections he had abandoned in the forest and had considered lost forever arrived in Berlin three years later, after being rescued and conveyed to Cuiabá by his Bakairí friends. Although sick with malaria, he was able to make up for his Xingu defeat soon afterwards, by spending three weeks among the Guató on the upper reaches of the Rio Paraguay. These were the fabled inhabitants of the wetlands mentioned in the chronicles written by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Félix de Azara. In 1901, there were few Guató left and their culture was already demonstrating the impact of their contact with Brazilian society, so much so that Schmidt ascribed the group’s “spiritual indolence” to this contact. In any case, he managed to gather field notes, vocabulary, and numerous items for the museum’s collections, which he would analyse in detail later on while studying the Guató acculturation process.11 He met them again ten years later, when he took advantage of his attendance at the International Congress of Americanists held in Buenos Aires to travel afterwards to Mato Grosso.12 Determined to make the most of his journey and accompanied only by a young Brazilian assistant, he visited the territory of a Paresí group (a southern Arawak group self-designated as ‘Kozarini’) who still enjoyed a life of relative independence and among whom he managed to collect abundant data and take numerous photographs.13

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

1 Guató men. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1901. EMB, VIII E 1411.

This last field experience with an Arawakan group seems to have impressed him most, since on returning to Germany, he devoted his doctoral thesis to an overall study of this linguistic family: From the geographical point of view, this was the last actual remaining terra incognita. Here, in this corner of the Earth, remote from European culture, by living together with the Indians I had the novel chance of experiencing part of the expansion of the Paresí culture (as one part of the Arawak cultures) into the surrounding populations.14

The observations made about the Paresí in 1910–their farming techniques and the conservation of surplus food, the incorporation of captives from neighbouring groups, the division into dominant and dependent social classes, and their legitimation in mythological or ceremonial terms – could now be reinterpreted in the light of a much broader comparative perspective.15 Indeed, Schmidt’s thesis proved to be ahead of his

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2 Guató women from Rio Caracara, Brazil. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1910. EMB, VIII E 2670.

time in several ways. First, because he traced a dense network of borrowings, connec­ tions, and transformations between the Arawak and various Amazonian, piedmont, and Andean cultures that justified regarding the former as ‘high cultures’ according to the evolutionary categories of the time. Second, because Schmidt’s field experience enabled him to admirably contextualise his museographical knowledge of Amerindian material culture, thus anticipating a good deal of the modern archaeological, ethno­ historical, and anthropological findings on this linguistic family.16 Third and most important, his interpretive logic was truly groundbreaking. To Schmidt, the expansion of the Arawak peoples could neither be explained by seemingly mass migrations, as postulated by the old diffusionist theoreticians, nor by ecological factors, as posited by later North American cultural ecologists. Instead, the best way to understand this expansion was to resort to an ‘ethnological political economy’, which was still in its infancy.17 According to this interpretation, the remarkable Arawak diffusion was due to the expansive policy of its ‘dominant classes’, which either through peaceful means (marriage alliances, exogamy) or violent means (warfare, marriage by capture, abduction of children) constantly pursued three goals: occupying land, obtaining labour,

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

3 Group of Paresí-Kabishi in Uazirimi close to source of the Rio Jauru, Brazil. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1910. EMB, VIII E 2721.

and acquiring means of production. Therefore, rather than an expansion, the Arawak diffusion represented a true ‘colonisation’. This form of colonisation was characterised by ethnic intermixing, processes of hybrid identity formation, diplomacy, opposition to endogenous war, sedentism and intensive farming capable of generating surpluses. On the other hand, it was particularly constituted by a hierarchical social structure consisting of a dependent and dominant class, as well as a well-defined ideology that materialised in hereditary rank, genealogical kinship, and the symbolic legitimacy of certain families. Thus, the cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences among the various Arawak groups were due, in each case, to different processes of symbiosis between these elites and their dependent populations. After successfully defending his doctoral thesis, Schmidt was appointed professor of ethnology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität) in Berlin and director of the South American Department of the Museum für Völkerkunde. Until 1926, he devoted most of his time to theoretical and comparative research work, particularly in connection with the issues of material culture. However, he missed the rainforest, and a year later he embarked on his last great journey to Mato Grosso.

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4 Paresí-Kabishi women and girls in Uazirimi close to the source of the Rio Jauru. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1910. EMB, VIII E 2715.

This trip was punctuated by as many unforeseen events as the first one. Schmidt started by visiting his old Bakairí friends at Cuiabá and Paranatinga, where he sadly learnt that many of them had died during a flu epidemic. The son of one of his guides from 1900 was his sole companion during many parts of his journey. By now, the Bakairí had become too ‘pacified’ for his liking. The Telegraph Commissions and the Brazilian Indian Protection Bureau, promoted by the active Mato Grosso explorer General Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, were building many telegraph stations and ‘outposts’ in the forest with the purpose of attracting and ‘civilising’ the Indians. Simultaneously, rubber tappers were moving into different regions and frequently en­ gaged in bloody disputes with the natives. Carrying a letter of recommendation from Rondon, Schmidt travelled down the Rio Paranatinga with the idea of studying the Kaiabi of Tupí affiliation. If the Bakairí seemed to be acculturated, the news brought by the military, explorers and rubber tappers regarding the Kaiabi portrayed them as bellicose and savage, and this undoubtedly appealed to Schmidt. In spite of scarce

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

5 Kaiabi. Pedro Dantas, Brazil. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1927. EMB, VIII E 4885.

supplies, losing his canoe, and having frequent bouts of fever, Schmidt managed to reach the Pedro Dantas outpost, situated amidst Indian territory, and study the Kaiabi as they approached the post in search of food, medicine and metal tools. However, he was soon forced to return to Cuiabá due to a malaria infection.18 Once recovered, in 1928 he visited the Paresí of the Rio Utiariti. Many of these people lived in outposts, and had even worked laying telegraph lines. Schmidt was able to gather plenty of information, but he also heard terrible news of widespread indigenous deaths due to epidemics.19 Although he had a chance to meet some Iranche men who were visiting the telegraph station, his brief interviews were not very productive.20 He then decided to travel south to an Umotina village located near the Humaitá outpost on the banks of the Upper Rio Paraguay. Although he arrived in the middle of the rainy season, his stay was very fruitful; he lived with the indigenous population for two weeks, closely observed their daily interactions, gathered items, collected the vocabulary of a “primordial language”, and in the evenings he delighted his hosts by playing his battered violin, and was allowed to photograph them with­ out further ado. Encouraged by these good results, he resolved to look for a nearby group. Following a confused skirmish between the ‘civilised’ and the ‘savage’ Umotina,

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6 Umotina in Upper Paraguay. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1928. EMB, VIII E 4937.

which nearly ended in a hail of arrows, Schmidt had to resort to all of the aspects of his personal diplomatic arsenal – including, naturally, a display of photographs from previous trips and some songs played on his violin – before he was allowed into the Masepo village. This finally enabled him to witness their daily life for several days, take pictures and gather quite a good collection of items through patient bartering. He also became friends with headman Kaimanepa, a rather grumpy elder, who was highly respected because on several occasions he had bravely confronted the rubber tappers invading their territory. It is therefore not surprising that his new Umotina friend declined Schmidt’s invitation to accompany him to Cuiabá, as he did not want “to look at the faces of the whites”.21 Finally, on his way back to Corumbá, he studied the rock paintings at Morro do Triumpho for a few days. Guided by an elderly expert guide, a 73-year-old “tiger hunter”, the modest party consisting of three men and some hunting dogs paddled up the swampy delta of the Upper Rio Paraguay. Even the heat, fever, exhaustion,

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

schools of piranhas, and clouds of vicious mosquitoes could not deflate Schmidt’s enthusiasm for the rock paintings that today decorate his tombstone at the cemetery in Asunción, Paraguay, and which he described as “the most interesting ones that I have ever seen throughout all my travels”.22 His return to Germany in 1928 marked the end of his scientific expeditions for the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin.

Ethnography and Photography When reading Max Schmidt’s experience in Mato Grosso, one of the first aspects that attracted our attention was his peculiar zeal for photographing Indian life even under the most unfavourable circumstances. During the pioneer expeditions at the end of the nineteenth century, ethnographic photography posed considerable difficulties and was usually limited to items of material culture, travel scenes and physical types. Schmidt’s early endeavours must be understood in this context. It was not an easy task to obtain such photos. On the one hand, the delicate photographic apparatus constituted a heavy burden that had to be carried on his expeditions. On the other hand, although natives appreciated photos and portraits printed in books, they were not too keen to pose in front of a camera, and sometimes long diplomatic parleys were needed to obtain the first image: I managed to convince one of the headmen of the Maimaieti of the inoffensive character of my photographic apparatus. I had him look in the mirror, and I too placed myself in front of the apparatus. On verifying that I suffered no injury, he followed my example and so I was able to photograph the whole group.23

In addition, the technical procedures added to the many difficulties suffered during the journey. The development of photographs required spending tiring nights under a wool blanket, working with a red lamp and photographic instruments, with his body left to the mercy of the mosquitoes. Although Schmidt understood the artistic potential of the technique, it is clear that he also valued photographs as a letter of introduction and, above all, as a way of keeping scientific records. Therefore, his insistence on taking pictures had a prac­ tical motive. His experience with von den Steinen’s engravings (made by his cousin Wilhelm) had taught him that images – either their own or those of their neigh­ bours – were hugely valued by the Xingu Indians, and had facilitated the first contact tremendously. Furthermore, photographs were a scientific end in themselves. Schmidt had reservations about anthropometric analysis, which he never implemented. Quite

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unlike portraits of natives posing naked, facing front or in profile, his photographs attempted to record everyday gestures and situations. In fact, what could be referred to as his professional ethics testifies to Bastian’s and von den Steinen’s long-lasting influence: both the strength and weakness of Schmidt’s work lies in the fact that he nearly always remained a staunch empiricist, and was usually content with p ­ roviding faithful ethnographic information. His perception of Indian life also attests to this legacy. Schmidt often took a moral stance influenced by traces of the romantic exoti­ cism that prevailed in the second half of the nineteenth century. His writings demon­ strate an exaltation of aboriginal life as spontaneous, true to instincts and devoid of the impostures and alienation of bourgeois life; in sum, it was a ‘natural’ existence. Some of his most poetic passages reveal a certain degree of idealisation of life in the forest; undoubtedly, this was one of the reasons he sought the company of natives; indeed, the interest of his academic circle in the Naturvölker also represented a kind of nineteenth century exoticism. Nevertheless, Schmidt’s perception of Indian life, with which he became closely acquainted, was not a simple variation on Rousseauian ideas forged for European consumption. Far from a static or archaic perception of Indian mentality, he frequently underlined the insatiable curiosity of Mato Grosso’s inhabitants, their eagerness to learn words in German, and their seemingly boundless desire to listen to Margarethe played on his violin. He thus conveyed a dynamic image of the contact between the solitary scientist and his hosts, where ethnological curiosity was certainly not restricted to the former and marvel at their mutual ‘discovery’ was always shared. Indeed, Schmidt’s notes usually acknowledge the natives as truly rational agents. Thus, for example, an anecdote from his fieldwork reflects both the notion of humanity’s psychological unity and Schmidt’s respect for Indian social philosophy: During my stay among the Guató Indians, an Indian woman, in unconscious imitation of the Homeric question τίς ποθεν εἰς ἀνδρῶν; [What man are you and whence?], desired to know whence I had come. Her question took the form of ‘Diruadé iókaguahe nitoavi?’ (What are things like on your shore?) She asked further, ‘Are there many people on your shore? Are there many houses there?’ Her question as to the length of my journey was put thus: ‘Was the river large when you travelled? Was the road clear of brushwood?’ Even these few words give us a peep of these Guato, and reveal how deeply the river enters into their thoughts.24

Unlike other notions in vogue at the time, this humanistic conception was the legacy of the German ethnological tradition condensed in the figure of Bastian, for whom Indian culture was a manifestation of the universal spirit and as valid and instructive

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

7 Paresí boy in Utiariti. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1928. EMB, VIII E 4920.

as European culture. Schmidt shared this general stance, which kept him away from the vices of evolutionist or diffusionist postures; although in his case it did not imply replicating their idealistic assumptions and conclusions. Instead, his studies were always localised, based on empiricism in the strictest sense, without turning Mato Grosso into a cultural or psychological laboratory with the aim of generating general assumptions about humanity. Thus, in his accounts of the expeditions, a certain tension exists between the ideal of Naturvölker as a primordial object of ethnology and the more hybrid and complex realities he encountered in the field. This is seen, for instance, in his interest in the acculturation and cultural change that was provoked by contact between Indians and settlers, as shown in his analysis of Guató acculturation 25 or of the contrast between the Bakairí of the Rio Paranatinga (“Europeanised”) and their relatives of the Rio Kuliseu (“wild”).26 Schmidt’s ethnographic writings are, above all, a display of empiricism and respect for the uniqueness of the case. However, they also offer a sometimes overwhelming mass of details, such as the names of oxen, each of

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8 Umotina Kodonepa in a dugout canoe. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1928. EMB, VIII E 4934.

the wild animals seen or hunted, the members of the various expeditions, a description of the landscape, the different types of knots used, each of the dishes tasted, a list of transactions, the items delivered, obtained or lost. Thus, his accounts define rather exuberantly the exact context from which each piece of data was obtained. Far from offering a static description of abstract sanitised indigenous life, Schmidt spares no effort in contextualising the background against which his contact with a certain group of Indians took place, at a specific time and in a specific place. In relation to his studies on aboriginal social organisation, Schmidt’s empiricism is clear from his marked descriptive individualism. For instance, in the case of the Bakairí, some sections recalling Malinowski’s most brilliant remarks depict a headman and his stepson relentlessly competing for political power. Staying well away from the diffusionist interests that dissected culture or conceived of it as museological taxa, and even farther away from racial or evolutionist speculation, Schmidt attempts offer an intimate and thorough sketch of the natives’ interests and psychological motivations as individual agents. Hence, quite a few of Max Schmidt’s ethnographic characteris­ tics attest to his having been a forerunner of the type of scientific ethnographer that would only prevail decades later. These include his determination to travel without

Max Schmidt in Mato Grosso

European companions, his rigorous observations, the genuine relationship he strove to establish with native people, and above all his unrealized intention to settle down among one group for a long time to conduct intensive studies. These intentions were not simply the result of planning in Berlin or the practical organisation of his expeditions (a peculiar combination of personal humility, misanthropy, and limited financial resources), but responded to a philosophical conception of the type of knowledge he hoped to acquire. In 1929, upon returning from his last expedition, Schmidt made a complete turnaround in his life. He retired, gave up his academic positions in Germany, and returned to Brazil with the aim, which he failed to achieve, of settling down near Cuiabá in the midst of Mato Grosso. He never returned to Germany. We do not know the exact reasons for his decision and have little information about this stage of his life, but his old and persistent scientific and personal ideals are still clear.27 He wrote of his personal utopia, which was nurtured by Bastian’s and von den Steinen’s teachings, and above all, of the best recollections of his initial travels: From the shoreline of a vast expanse of water rimmed with mountains and wrapped in the dark­ ness of night, I felt an ardent desire to spend a few months living in that beautiful landscape, amid the contented simplicity of its people. […] A cold gust of wind blew off the surface of the misty water, interrupting my thoughts with strange sensations. From the forest came the distant sound of a viola and song. The natives were beginning another cururú dance, and I was reminded that unfulfilled hopes do not justify dismissing what the present has to offer. So I went and waltzed merrily with young Maria.28

Bibliography Baldus, Herbert. 1951. “Max Schmidt 1874 – 1950.” Revista do Museu Paulista 5: 253 – 260. Bossert, Federico and Diego Villar. 2013. Hijos de la selva. La fotografía etnográfica de Max Schmidt – Sons of the Forest. The Ethnographic Photography of Max Schmidt. Santa Monica: Perceval Press. Bunzl, Matti. 1996. “Franz Boas and the Humboldtian Tradition: From Volksgeist and Nationalcharakter to an Anthropological Concept of Culture.” In Volksgeist as Method and Ethic. Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition, edited by George W. ­Stocking, 17 – 7 8. Madison/London: University of Wisconsin Press. Gingrich, Andre. 2005. “The German-Speaking countries.” In One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology, edited by Frederik Barth, Andre Gingrich, Robert Parkin and Sydel Silverman, 59 – 153. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.

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Heckenberger, Michael. 2002. “Rethinking the arawakan diaspora: hierarchy, regionality and the amazonian formative.” In Comparative arawakan histories. Rethinking languages family and cultural area in Amazonia, edited by Jonathan Hill and Fernando Santos Granero, 99 – 122. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Heckenberger, Michael and Eduardo Goés Neves. 2009. “Amazonian Archaeology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 38: 251 – 266. Hornborg, Alf and Jonathan Hill (eds.). 2011. Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing Past Identities from Archaeology, Linguistics, and Ethnohistory. Boulder: University of Colorado Press. Kraus, Michael. 2007. “Philological Embedments – Ethnological Research in South America in the Ambience of Adolf Bastian.” In Adolf Bastian and His Universal Archive of Humanity. The Origins of German Anthropology, edited by Manuela Fischer, Peter Bolz, and Susan Kamel, 140 – 153. Hildesheim/Zürich/New York: Georg Olms Verlag. Penny, H. ­Glenn. 2002. Objects of culture. Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill/London: The University of North Carolina Press. Schaden, Egon. 1993. “Pioneiros Alemães da Exploração Etnológica do Alto Xingu.” In Karl von den Steinen: Um Século de Antropologia no Xingu, edited by V. ­Penteado Coelho, 109 – 130. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. Schmidt, Max. 1914a. “Die Paressí-Kabiši. Ethnologische Ergebnisse der Expedition zu den Quellen des Jaurú und Juruena im Jahre 1910.” Baessler-Archiv 4(4 – 5): 167 – 250. Schmidt, Max. 1914b. “Die Guató und ihr Gebiet. Ethnologische und archäologische Ergeb­ nisse der Expedition zum Caracara-Fluss in Matto-Grosso.” Baessler-Archiv 4(6): 251 – 283. Schmidt, Max. 1917. Die Aruaken. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Kulturverbreitung. Leipzig: Veit & Co. Schmidt, Max. 1920. Grundriss der ethnologischen Volkswirtschaftslehre. Die soziale Organisation der menschlichen Wirtschaft, vol. 1. Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke. Schmidt, Max. 1921. Grundriss der ethnologischen Volkswirtschaftslehre. Der soziale Wirtschafts­ prozess der Menschheit, vol. 2. Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke. Schmidt, Max. 1926. The Primitive Races of Mankind. A Study in Ethnology. London: George Harrap & Co. Schmidt, Max. 1940. “Nuevos hallazgos de grabados rupestres en Matto-Grosso.” Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 5(1): 63 – 7 1. Schmidt, Max. 1941. “Los Barbados o Umotinas en Matto Grosso (Brasil).” Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 5(4): 1 – 42. Schmidt, Max. 1942a. Estudos de Etnologia Brasileira. Peripécias de uma viagem entre 1900 e 1901. Seus resultados etnológicos. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional. Schmidt, Max. 1942b. “Resultados de mi tercera expedición a los guatós efectuada en el año 1928.” Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 5(6): 41 – 75. Schmidt, Max. 1942c. “Los Kayabís en Matto-Grosso (Brasil).” Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 5(6): 1 – 39. Schmidt, Max. 1942d. “Los Iranches.” Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 5(6): 35 – 40. Schmidt, Max. 1943. “Los Paressís.” Revista de la Sociedad Científica del Paraguay 6(1): 1 – 67. Schmidt, Max. 1947. “Los Bakairí.” Revista do Museu Paulista 1: 11 – 58.

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Susnik, Branislava. 1991. Prof. Dr. Max Schmidt. Su contribución etnológica y su personalidad. Asunción: Museo Etnográfico Andrés Barbero. Susnik, Branislava. 1994. Interpretación etnocultural de la complejidad sudamericana antigua: Formación y dispersión étnica. Asunción: Museo Etnográfico Andrés Barbero. Thieme, Inge. 1993. “Karl von den Steinen: Vida e Obra.” In Karl von den Steinen: Um Século de Antropologia no Xingu, edited by V. ­Penteado Coelho, 35 – 108. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9

10

11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18

Gingrich 2005, 84. Penny 2002, 23; Kraus 2007, 142. Bunzl 1996, 48; Thieme 1993, 45. Kraus 2007, 148; Penny 2002, 19 – 20. Gingrich 2005, 91 – 92; Kraus 2007, 148. Schaden 1993, 112. Schmidt 1942a. “Os dias que passei aí, em meio da natureza virgem, compartilhando de uma vida ­selvagem, sem os cuidados e as necessidades que ainda sobreviriam, são os mais belos na recordação que tenho dessa viagem”, Schmidt 1942a, 55. “Deixei o chefe tomar conta por um instante das bagagens, enquanto André e eu fomos até uma lagoa próxima tomar banho. Ao voltarmos deparamos com o nosso cacíque distribuindo as últimas peças de nosso saco de roupa entre índios que formavam circulo em torno dêle. Possuía eu agora apenas a camisa que tinha sobre o corpo e uma calça esfarrapada. As mínimas miudezas que havia guardado no saco também se foram, pelo que declarei a André a minha intenção de madrugar no dia seguinte, afim de voltarmos para junto dos bacairís”, Schmidt 1942a, 65. “O que eu tinha vindo buscar – uma vida confortável entre os filhos da selva –não encon­ trara. Os esforços sobrehumanos despendidos, a constante inquietação, tudo isso poucos momentos de prazer me proporcionou e agora já estava regressando”, Schmidt 1942a, 75. Schmidt 1942a, 1942b. Schmidt 1914b. Schmidt 1914a, 1943. “Auch in geographischer Hinsicht war dies letztere bisher völlig terra incognita geblieben. Hier in diesem der europäischen Kultur so lange abgelegenen Erdenwinkel sollte sich mir die Gelegenheit bieten, im Zusammenleben mit den Indianern die Ausbreitung der Paressí-Kultur, also eines Teils der Aruak-Kulturen, auf die umwohnenden Bevöl­ kerungseinheiten gewissermaßen mitzuerleben”, Schmidt 1917, 7 – 8. Schmidt 1917. Susnik 1994; Heckenberger 2002; Heckenberger and Goés Neves 2009; Hornborg and Hill 2012; Bossert and Villar 2013. Schmidt 1920; 1921; 1926, 27 – 28. Schmidt 1942c.

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23

24 25 26 27 28

Schmidt 1943, 10. Schmidt 1942d. “que él no gustaba mirar las caras de los blancos”, Schmidt 1941, 9. “Pero la pena era recompensada en abundancia porque los grabados del Morro de ­Triumpho eran los más interesantes que yo había visto en todos mis viajes”, Schmidt 1940, 69. “Desta vez consegui convencer um dos caciques de Maimaieti da inofensividade do meu aparelho fotográfico. Mande que êle olhasse para o espelho, e eu mesmo me coloquei diante do aparelho. Ao verificar que isso não me causára mal algum, seguiu o bom exemplo e pude fotografiar todo o grupo”, Schmidt 1942a, 55. Schmidt 1926, 41. Schmidt 1942a, 264. Schmidt 1947. Baldus 1951, 254; Susnik 1991, 9. “Assim estava eu cismando à noite, na praia tendo diante de mim o vasto lençol de água e as montanhas no fundo. Pensava que o meu desejo mais ardente foi viver alguns meses nêsse pequenino e lindo recanto da terra, entre essa gente simple […] Um vento frio vinha da superfície das águas mergulhadas em neblina. Uma sensação estranha apoderou-se de mim. A viola e o canto lá na floresta soavam de longe aos meus ouvidos, os índios preparavam-se de novo para um cururú, fazendo-me lembrar que, por causa de esperanças perdidas, eu não devia deixar passar o que o presente me ofereceia. Dessa maneira fui até a lá e dansei uma alegre valsa com a pequenina Maria”, Schmidt 1942a, 123 – 124.

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Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg. The exchange of photographs in the beginning of the twentieth century between Gothenburg and Berlin

The provenance of around 800 objects held by the Världskulturmuseet 1 can be traced to the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. Many of these objects were the product of exchanges between the museum in Berlin and the Department of Ethnography at the Göteborgs museum 2 during the first part of the twentieth century. These objects are accompanied by an important amount of photographs that originated from this exchange. At that time, the Department of Ethnography constituted a small section of the Göteborgs museum. However, the exchange of materials, letters and experiences with the Americanist scientific community in Germany, especially in Berlin, is of consi­ derable importance. This collection probably resulted from the aspirations of Erland Nordenskiöld, the former head of the Department of Ethnography, to create a centre for American ethnography in Scandinavia. Today, almost 100 years later, the legacy of this period is important in the manage­ ment of collections, and it remains part of the living history of the museum.

The Department of Ethnography in Gothenburg The Department of Ethnography at the Göteborgs museum was founded in 1862 at the same time as the museum itself out of a need among the city’s bourgeoisie to create a cultural and educational centre in Gothenburg.3 The first collections that formed part of the new museum were from Gothenburg’s natural history collection, which had been described by Carl von Linné, as well as curiosa from the city’s former natural cabinet. An art collection donated to the city was also included as part of the first museum. Similarly, a library, part of the Kungliga Vitterhets- och Vetenskapssamhället i Göteborg,4 came to be part of the first museum. At the very beginning, the objects belonging to the Department of Ethnography were not at all organised. The collection constituted a mishmash of objects from outside of Sweden and had no clear topics. It was quite diffuse, lacked distinct limits and had no obvious system of classification or subdivision. It is important to note, however, that all of its objects were exhibited.5

Adriana Muñoz

In 1865, four years after the opening, the museum undertook the first of many reorganizations. The historical and ethnographical collections were merged, 6 and the archaeological collections were placed under this same department, together with some industrial objects, and those that came to be known as design objects. The collections expanded quickly and haphazardly, and many objects that arrived at the museum without obvious belonging ended up in the historical-ethnographical department. Until this point, ‘ethnography’ and ‘ethnographical objects’ had been interpreted as referring to a particular cosmopolitan feeling. These objects had the function (at least partly) of demonstrating that Gothenburg had contacts with the outside world, especially through the West Indian Company (in the former century) and thanks to the expansive commercial power of the middle class. The museum and its objects were also used to educate and shape the emergent working class 7. The Department of Ethnography was radically restructured in 1891. Its collections were divided into two new departments: the Historical Department (including nu­ mismatics) and the konstindustriella-ethnographical department 8. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the museum’s and the city’s view of ‘ethnography’ started to change. History became associated with the middle class, whereas ethnography began to represent the lower classes.9

The reorganization of 1905: ethnography as class In 1905, a new reorganization once again put the collections in focus. This resulted in the ethnographical collections being separated from the historical ones. The historical collections, which included numismatics, represented the upper social classes and included furniture, clothes, adornments and decorations. In contrast, the ethnographical section represented the lower classes (particularly Swedish rural peasants) and included objects from ‘lower’ non-European cultures.10 Even at this point, there was no division of the objects according to geography. Class society still defined boundaries, and the collections became part of this dilemma. This is why today some non-European collections are held by the Stadsmuseum,11 such as Chinese porcelain, which is considered representative of the upper classes and a high level of cultural evolution. The idea of class began to merge with the idea of evolution. Some cultures were associated with high culture because they too were perceived as having arrived at a higher level of cultural evolution, and this was the case with the Chinese and Japanese. During this period (1900 – 1910), the museum was also refurbished, and new spaces were assigned to every department. The ethnographical exhibitions were moved

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

downstairs to three rooms: one for Africa, America and Australia; one smaller room for Oceania, and a larger room for the Asian exhibition.12 The professionalization of the museum also led to other ways of interpreting the collections, and geography became a more important category in the organization of the materials. Nevertheless, vague concepts continued to be used, and this same discussion has come up numerous times during the museum’s history.

The Erland Nordenskiöld period and the exchange with Berlin With the beginning of the twentieth century, and the incorporation of new theories such as evolution, race and diffusion, the museum started to change its direction. From 1910, the employment of a new group of departmental heads at the museum led a new ideal to become established at the institution. Whereas the Göteborgs museum had been started in the nineteenth century as an entrepreneurial project, during the twentieth century, the museum adopted a professional mission and public education became an important issue. This professionalization of science, as Green has suggested, is a primordial part of legitimizing paradigms of knowledge that are based upon the methodological procedures of a thoroughgoing naturalism. This established the indispensability of such forms of knowledge to the functions of modern society.13 In 1913, Erland Nordenskiöld was appointed head of the Department of Ethno­ graphy; however, he was conducting fieldwork in Bolivia at the time and was unable to take up his post until 1915. Nordenskiöld was to become an important figure not only during his time with the department, but also for the future of the museum.14 Until Erland Nordenskiöld’s period, no storage rooms had existed at the museum; this meant objects were on constant exhibition. According to Nordenskiöld, the chaos and crowdedness, that this caused and the museum’s lack of structure was reminiscent of a curiosa cabinet. Nordenskiöld proposed creating a place to store materials that were more interesting to researchers than the public. This provided the objects in the exhibition with a clear educational purpose, and they were then also organised according to geographical areas and peoples.15 This new structure also reduced the crowdedness of the exhibitions and removed the objects that had no clear function or that only existed as fragments. Nordenskiöld conceived of the museum as a kind of laboratory with exhibitions, storerooms, working spaces for students and academics, a library and close links to primary schools and children through educators. He stated that museums should be housed in inexpensive buildings so that they did not burden the tax payers, and that the money should be used to fund Swedish ethnographical research instead. The edifices

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were not to be colossal; rather they were to suit the needs of the exhibition and include storage. Nordenskiöld specified the need to make exhibition rooms for the enjoyment of the public and in particular to have a place to display new acquisitions.16 He was convinced that exhibitions must employ additional educational tools to explain the objects they displayed, and this included graphics, photographs and texts that would help recreate the objects’ contexts. Accordingly, from 1915 until Nordenskiöld’s death in 1932, the Department of Ethnography became an experimental field where these ideas could be implemented, and photographs became important educational tools. In Nordenskiöld’s first year after returning from Bolivia, the museum’s collection was expanded by 4,000 objects. Nordenskiöld had a passion for collecting, and was attempting to construct a South American encyclopaedia of material culture. He wanted to collect at least one specimen from every culture; he knew that this was impossible, but hoped to at least gain ideal samples from every type of culture. Accordingly, the Världskulturmuseet’s ethnographical collection from South America contains very few objects from ‘mixed’ cultures, and there is no collection from the black population, or at least these objects were not registered as such.17 During his period in Gothenburg, Nordenskiöld established a further role that he believed should be adopted by museums: systematic collecting. Nordenskiöld also developed an environment that resulted in the implementation of ethnography (later anthropology) as a discipline at the University of Gothenburg, and he became Scandinavia’s first professor of Ethnography.18 In order to construct his ‘encyclopaedia’ of South American material culture, the connection with Germany became very important. This was particularly the case with Stuttgart through Nordenskiöld’s personal contact with Theodor Koch-Grünberg; and Berlin, where he was in contact with many of the Americanists at the Museum für Völkerkunde such as Max Schmidt, Konrad Theodor Preuss and Karl von den Steinen. In a way, it seems that Berlin was the model to follow. Even during the First World War, Erland Nordenskiöld travelled through Germany to present his book about South American indigenous culture 19 and to strengthen his contacts with German scholars. One important moment during Erland Nordenskiöld’s period as director of the Department of Ethnography was the organization of the International Congress of Americanists in Gothenburg in 1924. The idea developed that a neutral place should be created after the First World War for scholars from different European countries to meet and hold discussions. As Kraus has shown, Erland Nordenskiöld helped German and French colleagues, such as Koch-Grünberg and Paul Rivet, to maintain contact during the war.20 Nordenskiöld also helped Max Schmidt to contact Rivet. In a letter dated 1 July 1918, Schmidt even asked Nordenskiöld if he could act as an intermediary and send a book to Rivet about his work on the Arawak.21

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

The Americanist Congress in Gothenburg helped Erland Nordenskiöld create solid international links to the Göteborgs museum, and these were to remain important in the future. Nordenskiöld’s position was consolidated after the congress. Many of the congress’ participants were well-known scholars and this placed the Department of Ethnography and Nordenskiöld in an excellent position within the museum,22 and in the international academic world. After the congress, Nordenskiöld’s Americanist school became well established and future generations of scholars continued his work.23 The congress also helped to re-establish contacts between researchers who had been isolated during the war.24 This was especially the case with his French and German colleagues.

The material from Berlin at Världskulturmuseet in Gothenburg Exchanging objects was the way to ‘complete’ collections from areas where S ­ wedish scholars were not working. At least in Gothenburg, the idea of collecting that ­developed under Nordenskiöld’s lead meant having a least one object from every South American tribe (the encyclopaedic goal). An important change can be observed in the way ob­ jects and photographs were collected at this time: Nordenskiöld began to incorporate an object’s ‘cultural context’. He did not merely want isolated objects; he wanted to know their context. As Elizabeth Edwards pointed out after the First World War, the value of anthropological observation became more important during this time, and photographs were highly valued as photographic evidence of fieldwork.25 The exchange with Berlin was not only important to complete this encyclopaedic project but also to deepen the relationship with the city that was considered the centre of ethnographic knowledge at the time. The fact that German ethnologists were wellknown Americanists was an important aspect of Nordenskiöld’s interest in Berlin. The exchange of objects and photographs made by men of science not only provided the possibility to complete the collections and expand the archive, it also created and strengthened personal relationships between anthropologists and institutions.26 The exchange of correspondence between Nordenskiöld and different German scholars working in Germany during the period between 1915 and 1929 was impor­ tant: the archive belonging to Världskulturmuseet holds around 160 letters from this period. The largest volume of correspondence with one individual was with Theodor Koch-Grünberg in Stuttgart. The exchange of letters with him is the largest the museum holds from this period; however, Koch-Grünberg was also the only person in contact with Gothenburg from the Linden-Museum at that time. The tone of the letters with Koch-Grünberg suggests that his relationship with Nordenskiöld

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Adriana Muñoz

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Eduard Seler

Felix von Luschan

Hugo Künike

7

2

1

Karl von den Steinen

Max Schmidt

W. Kissenberth

G. Anzte

12

2

1

Berlin

Georg Thilenius

Hamburg 11

4

Fritz Krause

Theodor KochGrünberg

Leipzig

Stuttgart

20

59

1 Letters by authors or institutions between 1915 and 1929 at the archive of Världskulturmuseerna, Göteborg.

became more personal over time. In some years, Koch-Grünberg sent two or three letters on the same day (for example, the Världskulturmuseet holds three letters dated 26 November, 1915). The conversation with Berlin was important for Gothenburg and the exchange constitutes forty per cent of the volume of letters held by the Världskulturmuseet (Fig. 1). The scholars involved include Karl von den Steinen, Max Schmidt and Eduard Seler.27 The possibility to exchange objects was also important at the beginning of the twentieth century. The category of ‘doubles’ was created during this period. The idea seems to have been that some objects were twins: they were equals that could be exchanged. These objects became a form of currency that was used to gain artefacts from Berlin. This meant several things for Gothenburg; first and most importantly, it enabled the city to complete its collections. Second, it meant that knowledge about South America could be expanded with the help of material collected by well-known German scholars. Third, it deepened contacts with Germany; and fourth, it meant sufficient educational material was available for exhibitions. The contact with Germany and German scholars was important for Nordenskiöld and the Göteborgs museum. Nordenskiöld considered the museum in Berlin and its scholars the model to imitate. The Göteborgs museum, for example, employed Nils Niklasson who had been trained

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

in Germany, as head of its Department of Archaeology.28 Furthermore, many other examples exist that demonstrate the importance of the deep contacts with German museums and science at that moment and this applies to various disciplines. Some letters talk of the things that were ordered from Berlin for exhibitions. This includes casts,29 and drawings of Tiwanaku material from the collections in Berlin.30

The exchange of photography The exchange of photographs (and artefacts) between Gothenburg and Berlin boomed after 1913. By this time, photography had become an established tool among anthro­ pologists and for exhibitions. Since 1860, the display of colonised people in exhibitions (world fairs) had flourished. With the implementation of colonies and modernism, photographs were used in many ways. These roles included producing the identity of the colonised people, domesticating people, and controlling their body and the narrative about them.31 The exhibition of these photographs also had the function of creating European (national) identities.32 The transactions between institutions can be divided into at least two phases: the first stretches from the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century; and the second involves the period after the First World War. The goal of the first phase – as with collecting objects – was to amass artefacts, in this case images. These were then used for different functions, as pointed out above. During the second phase, a professional idea of evidence developed;33 photos took on the role of ‘demonstrating’ reality, and scholars used them as a tool to illustrate their theories. Gothenburg and Berlin commenced exchanging material during the second phase. At least in Gothenburg, Nordenskiöld’s arrival is considered as representing a moment of professionalization in ethnography 34 and as having led to the discipline’s establish­ ment in Swedish universities.35 This was the moment at which the relationship with Berlin (and Germany) became important. Photographic exchange between the museums in Gothenburg and Berlin mainly took place between Max Schmidt, Karl von den Steinen, Konrad Theodor Preuss and Wilhelm Kissenberth. Most of the photographs sent from Gothenburg were from Nordenskiöld’s expeditions in South America and from the expedition by Olof Liljewalch and Otto Thulin to British Guyana. Liljewalch and Thulin’s material arrived in Gothenburg in 1913 and was considered important for a number of reasons. It was not only the first collection from the area it covered; it was also well documented. Olof Liljewalch was a member of an impor­ tant Swedish family, and had lived for part of his life in Chile and Germany. Otto

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2 Mataco hockey player. Photographer: Erland Nordenskiöld, 1908. EMB, VIII E 3551.

Thulin was the expedition’s photographer; he later became curator of the Göteborgs museum’s Historical Department. Olof Liljewalch and Otto Thulin travelled to British Guyana, Venezuela and Brazil and visited the area of Roraima. According to Nordenskiöld, they completed their collection among the Patamona, Arecuna, Makuxi and others, including a small ­archaeological collection from an area inhabited by the Warrau people.36 Nordenskiöld believed baskets represented an important category of objects, and that Liljewalch and Thulin had collected important material showing the materials and techniques used in plaiting. This also included unfinished objects that were still in the process of being constructed. Nordenskiöld wrote that he was delighted with the photographs that Thulin had taken during the expedition.37 In the same letter, Nordenskiöld noted that the photographs from the expedition to Guyana were not only important for understanding the living cultures in the country but also for exchange with Germany, as they were to be copied and sent to Koch-Grünberg in Stuttgart in the same year.38 Nordenskiöld selected the photos for exchange. He chose photographs from his own expeditions and from other expeditions made on behalf of the museum (Fig. 2, 3). The fact that he sent photographs from the Liljewalch/Thulin expedition is

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

3 “Hunting ritual”. A similar image was published by Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1923, table 64, fig. 1). Photographer: Otto Thulin, 1912. EMB, VIII E 3787.

interesting because, as pointed out above, this expedition was not presented to the academic or the public at the time, nor has it been since. In the correspondence between Nordenskiöld and German scholars, there are many references to the Liljewalch/­Thulin expedition. It seems that the mission to Guyana had an im­ portant impact on the academic world at the time. It is likely that Nordenskiöld’s main interest in the pictures that arrived from Germany was their educational use in exhibitions, but they were also useful for the comparative studies of people from South America. Nordenskiöld started a series called Comparative Ethnographical Studies, and the ‘comparative’ issue was very important. In the Göteborgs museum’s annual report for 1919, Erland Nordenskiöld wrote: during this year, the collection of photographs from countries outside of Europe has expanded by 266 pieces (numbers); 250 of them were obtained by exchange with Professor Th. Koch-Grünberg in Stuttgart. This photo collection is of paramount interest; the photographs are excellent, well-taken, and highly illustrative of the customs and practices of Indians in Guyana and north-west Brazil. Professor Koch-Grünberg is not only an outstanding scientist, but also an accomplished photographer (Fig. 3).39

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The results of this expedition were never published by Liljewalch or Thulin, nor have they been published in full since, but part of the collection was published by ­Nordenskiöld and Henry Wassén.40

Photographs and photographers The museum currently holds around 120 registered photographs from Berlin. Some photographs have yet to be included in the common registration system for objects and photographs, which means the real number of photographs is probably higher. The works of Elizabeth Edwards, Suren Lalvani and Anne Maxwell are useful in understanding the nature of the practice of photography in its ethnographical context.41 Following Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, Suren Lalvani explores the relationship between the human body and photography as a practice instituted between the middle of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Historically, the body has been a site where power relationships have been represented and performed.42 In many cases, the photography of bodies has led those bodies to become a “passive medium”.43 In the case of ethnographical photographs, passivity also plays another role: it removes the individual out of a particular time and space and places him or her in a temporal limbo. As Johannes Fabian has pointed out, photo­ graphs can remove people from time through the “denial of coevalness”. This is a way of locating our contemporaries in the past, and suggesting that they require more ‘evolution’, or that they progressed more slowly than us.44 This timeless pre-modern, pre-historical representation is clear from many photos. As David Green has pointed out, the scientific assumption of an existence of pure facts can enforce the notion of objectivity in the photos taken by scientists.45 This enables these photographs to be used to represent other people in a manner that seems to confirm the idea that they are less evolved. In fact, such photography was understood as “reality in itself ”;46 the perfect mirror of reality. At the beginning of the twentieth century, ethnographical photographs were an important tool used to classify people within the framework of modernism, ideas of progress, evolution and a liberal political economy.47 European society at that time not only classified people from outside of Europe as primitive, such as those in the colonies, they also ranked the citizens within their own society. Hierarchy in society was seen as natural and people who were considered to provide no social function were disciplined or excluded.48 Photography was assumed to be the medium of the irrefutable testimony of fact; this of course goes against the understanding that the composition of these photos was often constructed, in this case, by an ethnographer.49

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

4 Kayapó man, called Džipu, front and profile. Rio Araias, Brazil. Photographer: Wilhelm Kissenberth, 17 December 1908. Archive Världskulturmuseerna, Göteborg, no. 3100. EMB, VIII E 2967. 5 a, b Man from the Paresí-Kabishi; front and profile. Atiahirtivirtigi, Rio Guaporé, Brazil. Photographer: Max Schmidt, 1910. Archive Världskulturmuseerna, Göteborg, no. 3046. EMB, VIII E 2694, VIII E 2695.

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Coming back to the archive of the Världskulturmuseet, although the amount of correspondence between Wilhelm Kissenberth and Erland Nordenskiöld is not that large, they exchanged some letters between 1918 and 1919.50 The photographs the museum then acquired are from Kissenberth’s sojourn among the Mebêngôkre (Kayapó). The photographs held by the Världskulturmuseet from Max Schmidt are mainly from Paresí-Kabishi at Rio Guaporé (Fig. 4, 5).51 During Nordenskiöld’s period, all of the material that arrived at the museum was presented to the public in temporary exhibitions under the name of ‘new acquisitions’; photographs were also presented as part of these exhibitions. Later, mainly during the Second World War and towards the end of the 1950s, the photographic archive was reorganised, first by continent, then by folktyper (typology of people); and lastly by topic such as game, landscape or agriculture. The influence of functionalism is clear in the reorganisation of the archive, which was mainly undertaken by Stig Rydén and Henry Wassén. Today, the same organization has been kept, and this makes it difficult to gain an overview of the amount of material that exists, and clearly analyse the nature of the photographs. The photographs that were examined for this article mainly contain motifs such as people in groups, scenes from daily life, work, etc. (Fig. 6), but there are also many photos of individuals (often without names) who are naked or semi-naked. The photographs sent by Kissenberth include a large number of images of decorated penises, and sometimes the face of the young boys and men that were photographed (Fig. 7). It is not only interesting to analyse the ethnographic content of such pictures, but also to explore the interests of the ethnographers. What can such images tell us about the relationship between the people involved – the photographer and the photographed? Which kinds of motifs have been produced? What kind of representa­ tion – or ideology – does this imply? How did the photographers handle, or even manipulate the situation? How did they react to the different states of ‘nakedness’ they encountered? From a European point of view, do the ‘unusual’ looks, postures, outfits and surroundings depicted in the photographs represent a form of exoticism or do they reflect local standards?52 It was common practice for people such as Nordenskiöld to include themselves in their photographs; this often helps to give an idea of where and when they travelled. However, it also showed their capacity to enter the wild, and invited the public to gaze at the contrast between the white, civilised, fully-clothed man, and the naked savage. However, their incorporation in these pictures also helps place the photographed (the observed) in the present time. In Fig. 6, Nordenskiöld

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

6 Erland Nordenskiöld taking photos of an Emberá who visited them at their boat Olga. Photographer: Sigvald Linné, 1928. Archive Världskulturmuseerna, Göteborg, no. 3080.

was photographed by Sigvald Linné during the expedition to Darien. This places ­Nordenskiöld, his camera and the boy in front of him as contemporaneous, and part of the same context. The formation and organization of Göteborgs museum’s photographic ar­ chive at the beginning of the twentieth century had many levels of intention. For ­Nordenskiöld and the group of young ethnographers who worked with him in the Department of Ethnography, it was important to have a good archive ­covering South American indigenous populations. The idea of collecting objects and ­gathering information about their contexts was one of the most important topics for ­Nordenskiöld. This ambitious programme was only possible within a widespread network where the contacts with Germany, especially with his peers at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin provided the expected results. The amount of objects exchanged is the best proof of this, and it led to a large exchange of infor­ mation through correspondence, plaster copies and drawings, and the ­construction of a photographic archive. In 1923 Nordenskiöld wrote:

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Adriana Muñoz

7 Wilhelm Kissenberth taking photographs in his hut. Photographer: unknown, 1909. EMB, Kissenberth glass plate neg. 74.

From older and newer travel works, a large number of images have been photographed or redrawn for exhibition in the collections. My intention is to build the museum an extensive collection of images of ethnographic interest for exhibition in its collections and for education.53

However, it is important to realize that this archive, like other archives from this pe­ riod, are the mirror of a society in the process of transformation, where the ideals of modernism in the shadows of colonialism provided the common paradigm, especially for institutions representing the new nation-states. The photos stored in Gothenburg today are part of this colonial heritage, and therefore it is interesting to review and reflect on the content and context of this archive.

From a colonial context to a legacy for the future Almost 100 years after the exchange of photographs between Berlin and Gothen­ burg, these collections are once again being analysed. In doing so, the intention is to understand the nature of collecting at the beginning of the twentieth century. The

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

8 The Salt Dance at the March Festival in Palomino. Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Photographer: Konrad Theodor Preuss, 1914. Archive Världskulturmuseerna, Göteborg, no. 3851.

aim is not to judge the past but to reflect on the present and future. This contribution focuses on the Erland Nordenskiöld period; although he died in 1932, contacts with Berlin have continued until today. The Second World War represents an important period, particularly due to the repercussions the war had for archive-building and continuity. Berlin was destroyed at the end of the war, and many photographs were dispersed and left their original archives. The legacy of Konrad Theodor Preuss, for example, was partly destroyed during the Second World War as were most of his photographs; only a selection of prints from his research in Colombia with the U ­ itoto and the Kágaba, which he sold to Erland Nordenskiöld in 1923, survived in the archive of the Världskulturmuseet (Fig. 8, 9).54 Today, archives hold pictures of and objects made by people from all around the world. Many of the people in these pictures probably became fathers and mothers. They continued living their lives in these same places, and their families are still there, but with no knowledge of the fact that photos of their ancestors are kept in European museums.

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9 Julio, a young Uitoto, with a mortar and roasted coca leaves in Niña Maria, on the Rio Orteguasa in Colombia. Photographer: Konrad Theodor Preuss, 1914. Archive Världs­kulturmuseerna, Göteborg, no. 3876.

Over the last few years, the Swedish government has put a lot of emphasis on digitalization; the trust in technology in Sweden is huge, and the idea has been raised that greater accessibility can be achieved by making every single object, picture, and piece of information available on the Internet. However, putting these archives on the Internet does not automatically make them more accessible for people in other parts of the world. The information is still organised in the same way as it was many years ago; names are used that can be offensive, old or wrong information is presented and this complicates the issue of accessibility. In the case of photos – and some other objects – it is important to reflect about what they represent, and to be aware of the fact that they were used to prove something. However, many researchers, such as Anne Maxwell, who focused on Hawaiians,55 have demonstrated that photographs taken as imperialist propaganda in one century can be used as a tool of identity construction and to recuperate rights in another historical moment. Consequently, the idea behind this article is not to condemn ethnographers from the beginning of the twentieth century, but to reflect on the possibilities available today. Presenting photographs from archives can link families by connecting the past to the present, and provide people with access to their own histories.

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg

Unpublished documents [Världskulturmuseet arkiv, Göteborg] Correspondence. Letter from Wilhelm Kissenberth to Erland Nordenskiöld, 25. 03. 1913. Correspondence. Letter from Wilhelm Kissenberth to Erland Nordenskiöld, 10. 8. 1918. Correspondence. Letter from Wilhelm Kissenberth to Erland Nordenskiöld, 5. 9.1919. Correspondence. Letter from Max Schmidt to Erland Nordenskiöld.14. 11. Correspondence. Letter from Max Schmidt to Erland Nordenskiöld, 1. 7. 1918. Correspondence. Letter from Eduard Seler to Erland Nordenskiöld, 9. 5.1917. Correspondence. Letter from Karl von den Steinen to Erland Nordenskiöld, 23. 8. 1915.

Bibliography Alvarsson, Jan-Åke, et al. (eds.). 1992. Erland Nordenskiöld. Forskare och indianvän. Stock­ holm: Carlssons. Bäckström, Mattias. 2011. “Museet som centrum i samhällsbygget. Universellt, internationellt och interassociationellt på Göteborgs Museum under 1860-talet.” In Att fånga det flyktiga, edited by Mats Sjölin, 119 – 153. Gothenburg: Carlssons förlag. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2001. Raw Histories. Photographs, Anthropology and Museums. Oxford/ New York: Berg. Edwards, Elizabeth. 2005. “Photographs and the sound of History.” Visual Anthropology Review 21(1 – 2): 27 – 46. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: how Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fischer, Manuela. 2007. “La materialidad de un legado: El viaje de Konrad Theodor Preuss a Colombia (1913 – 1919).” Baessler-Archiv 55: 145 – 154. Fischer, Manuela, and Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo. 2011. “Der zeitlose Rahmen. Fotografien aus der Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Kolumbien.” In Visuelle Medien und Forschung. Über den wissenschaftlich methodischen Umgang mit Fotografie und Film. Visuelle Kultur (= Studien und Materialien 5), edited by Irene Ziehe und Ulrich Hägele, 129 – 139. ­Münster: Waxmann Verlag. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punishment. New York: Pantheon. Frödin, Otto V. ­A., and Erland Nordenskiöld. 1918. Über Zwirnen und Spinnen bei den ­Indianern Südamerikas. Volume 4. Gothenburg: W. ­Zachrissons. Gillberg, Åsa. 2001. En plats i historien. Nils Niklassons liv och arbete. Volume 18. Göteborg: GOTARC. (= Serie B, Gothenburg Archaeological Theses. Gothenburg: Göteborgs universitet. Institutionen för arkeologi). Green, David. 1984. “Veins of Resemblance: Photography and Eugenics.” Oxford Art Journal 7(2): 3 – 16. Göteborgs museum. 1915. Årstryck. Etnografiska avdelningen. Gothenburg: Göteborgs etno­ grafiska museum. Göteborgs museum. 1919. Årstryck. Etnografiska avdelningen. Göteborg: Göteborgs etno­ grafiska museum.

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Göteborgs museum. 1923. Årstryck. Etnografiska avdelningen. Göteborg: Göteborgs etno­ grafiska museum. Hanner Nordstrand, Charlotta. 2003. “Göteborgs museum 1861 – 1900: ett museum mitt i samhällets omdaning.” In Minnets Miljöer. Rapport från de museivetenskapliga dagarna 21 – 22 november 2002, edited by Louise Palmqvist, 55 – 7 1. Stockholm: Akantus Förlag. Kraus, Michael. 2010. “Amistades internacionales como contribución a la paz. La correspon­ dencia entre Paul Rivet y Theodor Koch-Grünberg en el contexto de la primera guerra mundial.” Antípoda: Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 11: 25 – 41. Lagerberg, Sven Carl Pontus. 1911. Göteborgs museum 1861 – 1911: femtioårsberättelse. Göteborg: [n. p.]. Lalvani, Suren. 1996. Photography, vision, and the production of modern bodies. Albany: State University of New York Press. Laurière, Christine. 2010. “Anthropology and Politics, the Beginnings: The Relations between Franz Boas and Paul Rivet (1919 – 42).” Histories of Anthropology Annual 6(1): 225 – 252. Lindberg, Christer (ed.). 1995. Erland Nordenskiöld: en antropologisk biografi. Lund: University of Lund, Department of Social Anthropology 5. Lindberg, Christer. 1996. Erland Nordenskiöld: ett indianlif. Stockholm: Natur och kultur. Maxwell, Anne. 1999. Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the ‘native’ and the Making of European Identities. London/New York: Leicester University Press. Muñoz, Adriana. 2009. The Power of Labelling. Inform to Kulturrådet (Swedish Arts Council). Gothenburg: Museum of World Culture. Muñoz, Adriana. 2011. From Curiosa to World Culture. A History of the South American Collec­ tions at the Museum of World Culture. Gothenburg: Historical Studies, department of Archaeology. Göteborgs Universitet (University of Gothenburg). Nordenskiöld, Erland. 1908. “Våra museer och folkbildningsarbetet.” Social Tidskrift Januari: 15 – 21. Schmidt, Max. 1914. “Die Paressi-Kabiši. Ethnologische Ergebnisse der Expedition zu den Quellen des Jauru und Juruena im Jahre 1910.” Baessler-Archiv 4: 167 – 250. Sjöberg, Jan-Erik 2005. Att återerövra det förflutna: Georg F. L. ­Sarauw: botanikern som blev arkeolog. Göteborg: Göteborgs Stadsmuseum. Sjölin, Mats. 2011. Att fånga det flyktiga. Göteborg: Carlssons förlag. Wassén, S. ­Henry. 1934. “The frog in Indian mythology and imaginative world.” Anthropos 29(5/6): 613 – 58.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5

Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg. From 1862 to 1945, the collections were part of Göteborgs museum. 1946 was created Göteborgs etnografiska museet. 1999 the National government decided the creation of Världskulturmuseet (Museum of World Culture). Museum of Gothenburg. Hanner Nordstrand 2003; Muñoz 2011; Sjölin 2011. The Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg. Muñoz 2011.

Making the ethnographical archive in Gothenburg 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41

Lagerberg 1911, 31. Bäckström 2011; Muñoz 2011; Sjölin 2011. In Swedish the term Konstindustriell was used during this period, it was not until later that the concept of design became more common. Muñoz 2011. Lagerberg 1911, 84. Gothenburgs city museum. Lagerberg 1911, 117. Green 1984, 14. Alvarsson, et al. 1992; Lindberg 1995; Lindberg 1996. Nordenskiöld 1908. Nordenskiöld 1908, 16 – 17. Muñoz 2009; Muñoz 2011. Lindberg 1995. Archive National Museums of World Culture-Världskulturmuseerna. Kraus 2010. Schmidt 1918. Sjöberg 2005. Alvarsson et al. 1992; Cornell 1997. Kraus 2010; Laurière 2010. Edwards 2001, 37, 47. Edwards 2001, 30. Such as letters from Felix von Luschan, Wilhelm Kissenberth and Hugo Künike (during this period of time). Gillberg 2001. Cf. Kissenberth 1913; Seler 1917. Cf. Schmidt 1916; von den Steinen 1915. Lalvani 1996. Maxwell 1999, 1 – 5. Edwards 2001. Muñoz 2011. Lindberg 1995. Göteborgs museum 1915, 80. Göteborgs museum 1915, 81. Göteborgs museum 1915, 85. “[…] samlingen av fotografier, från utomeuropeiska länder, har under året ökats med 266 st. av dessa äro 250 erhållna genom byte med prof. Th. Koch-Grünberg i Stuttgart. Denna fotografisamling är av allra största intresse, då fotografierna äro utmärkt väl tagna och äro mycket belysande för indianernas seder och bruk i Guiana och i nord­ västra Brasilien. Prof Koch-Grünberg är icke blott en framstående forskare utan även en skicklig fotograf ”, Göteborgs museum 1919, 69 – 70. Frödin and Nordenskiöld 1918; Wassén 1934. See Edwards 2001, 2005; Lalvani 1996; Maxwell 1999.

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Adriana Muñoz 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53

54 55

Lalvani 1996, 28. Lalvani 1996, 32. Fabian 1983, 81. Green 1984, 3 – 4. Green 1984, 4. Green 1984; Lalvani 1996. Foucault 1977. Green 1984, 8. Cf. Kissenberth 1918; Kissenberth 1919. Cf. Schmidt 1914. For a detailed discussion of the expeditions by Paul Ehrenreich and Karl von den Steinen, Wilhelm Kissenberth and Max Schmidt cf. contributions by Hempel, Kraus, and Bossert and Villar in this volume. “Ur äldre och nyare reseverk har för utställning i samlingarne en mängd avbildningar fotograferats eller avtecknats. Min avsikt är att på detta sätt för utställning i samlingarna och för undervisning skaffa museet en mycket omfattande bildsamling av etnografiskt intresse”, Göteborgs museum 1923, 74. Fischer 2007, 150; Fischer and Oyuela-Caycedo 2011. Maxwell 1999, 219 – 221.

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MANUELA FISCHER

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

Ten photographs in the collection belonging to the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin are documented by comparatively little information. Although these images were probably archived in 1890 as a consecutively numbered series, it is no longer clear how they were acquired: they may have been purchased, exchanged or provided as a gift to the museum. Unlike with many other photographs in the museum’s archive, there is no correspondence, invoice or memorandum that could help document these photographs. Despite this, it is still possible to retrace their steps through the archive, and so it seems they were reallocated from the general to the regional archive of the Americas in 1904. This move was part of a process that the museum had been implementing since the 1880s due to the steadily expanding collection of photographs from various parts of the world held by the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde.1 The following attempts to retrace the tracks these images have left behind and reconstruct as much of their history as possible. The context in which the photographs were produced is of particular interest, as is the framework of meaning within which they can be read (Fig. 1).

Searching for clues in the records The entries in the inventory correspond to the names written on the back of each of the photographs (Fig. 2). In the case of this batch of images, the photographer has actually been named. Julius Klingbeil produced the photographs, and he also wrote a book about his personal experiences in Paraguay arguing that potential emigrants to the country were being deceived.2 It was published in 18893 under the title: Enthüllungen über die Dr. Bernhard Förster’sche Ansiedlung Neu-Germania in Paraguay. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte unserer gegenwärtigen colonialen Bestrebungen. Nach eigenen Erfahrungen mitgetheilt von Julius Klingbeil.4 Klingbeil used the book to warn potential emigrants that “skilled enticers”5 were waiting for them in Paraguay and that the country faced a hopeless situation: the German government should finally put an end to the workings of these people and particularly to their use of unscrupulous means to encourage emigration to Paraguay. […]

Manuela Fischer

1 The German colonists’ house in Försterrode, Paraguay. Photographer: Julius Klingbeil, 1888. EMB, VIII E 717.

No other nation has even considered colonising such a pitiful country. It is only German and Swiss German speakers who do not consider it beneath their dignity to betray their own people and send them there.6

Although Klingbeil’s aim was to warn people against moving to Paraguay, his book also contains hints that are helpful for understanding the photographs, as well as descriptions of the situations in which the images were created. This enables the photographs to be dated, and it also provides us with information about the reason why these particular motifs were selected for the museum’s archive. Julius Klingbeil had been searching for some time for a suitable emigration project.7 Then he read an article that recommended the book entitled: Deutsche Colonien in dem oberen Laplata-Gebiete mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Paraguay. Ergebnisse eingehender Prüfungen, praktischer Arbeiten und Reisen 1883 – 1885.8 The article was published in issue 22 of the anti-Semitic periodical Der Kulturkämpfer. It was this book that encouraged Klingbeil to move to Neu-Germanien.9 Otto Glagau, the editor of Der Kulturkämpfer, was well known during the 1870s as an anti-Semitic author. Glagau particularly aimed his writing at small entrepre­ neurs, artisans and traders who had become disadvantaged by economic liberalism.

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

2 Excerpt from the catalogue of historic photographs from the Americas. EMB: Archive.

Together with Bernhard Förster, Paul Förster (Bernhard’s brother), Otto Böckel, Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Adolf König and Theodor Fritsch, Glagau be­ longed to the anti-Semitic group Eine Deutsche Sieben 10 from which the Deutsche Volks­verein  11 emerged in 1881. Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg was a founding member of this party, as was Bernhard Förster, who later went on to found Neu-Germanien. These political agitators gained notoriety with their anti-Semitic petition that called for the repeal of Jewish equality laws, which had been in place since 1869. On 13 April 1881, and after several previous attempts, the petition was finally presented to Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s imperial chancellor. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, the petition gained widespread media coverage. Media reports about Förster’s actions and provocations indicate that Julius Klingbeil must have known about and accepted Bernhard Förster’s political agenda, even if he did not explicitly set out his own political views in his book on Paraguay.12 At the time, anti-­Semitic groups linked Jews to parliamentarism, liberalism and the stock markets, and blamed them for the economic crisis that followed the stock market crash in 1873.13 It was the fear of the profound changes brought about by industrialisation that led to the anti-modern attitude espoused by these groups. Accordingly, Förster

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viewed capitalism as the fundamental evil of the time, as he believed it blocked or destroyed ‘German ideals’.14 A wide range of groups that expressed the desire for cultural reform and changes to everyday life subscribed to a ‘völkisch’ worldview, and this included the group that constituted the ideologically masked colony to which Bernhard Förster belonged.

Space without people: the Nueva Germania colony in Paraguay During the political climate of the 1880s, an idea emerged that a place was needed which was far from civilisation and its ‘harmful’ influences. The seclusion of the Para­guayan hinterlands was chosen as the place to rebuild a ‘perfect’ original German society. Neu-Germanien represented a return to the assumed values of the Germanic tribes, and an attempt to prise out a survival in natural surroun­ dings. This was proba­bly the idea behind Bernhard Förster’s chosen motto, “Over all obstacles, stand your ground”, which was to accompany him to Försterroda in Neu-Germanien (Fig. 3).15 During a first exploratory trip to Paraguay between 1883 and 1885, Bernhard Förster found a site located in the depopulated areas of Chaco to build his ‘utopia’: Convinced of the impossibility of reforming life in Germany, Förster’s colony was to put ­Wagner’s ideas into practice by living an alcohol-free, vegetarian lifestyle.16 We understand colonisation as planting our own culture in a new, favourable soil, and, as idealists, we need to remember that this implies putting aside the accidental, contrived and false aspects of our national traditions while consciously emphasising all that is real, eternal and valuable about them.17

It seems that Klingbeil deliberately moved to this völkisch-aligned project instead of emigrating to the US, where two of his younger brothers were living. In fact, his mother and sister moved to the US at this time precisely because Klingbeil had decided to move to Paraguay with one of his brothers.18 Förster had used a pamphlet to develop the colony’s organisational form as a “productive socially based cooperative”. The colony itself was to be settled by groups of at least 20 families of famers, small investors, workers and artisans, who ideally were to form groups in Germany. Each household was to receive a minimum amount of land that could not be sold independently. Uncultivated land fell back to the community.19

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

3 Portrait of Bernhard Förster. In: Förster, Deutsche Kolonien, 1886.

Klingbeil’s emigration Klingbeil himself noted that his search for a suitable colonisation project had not only led him to succumb to the suggestive power of the word, but also to that of the image: In the preface, Förster explains that he added his portrait to the book as a facsimile after numerous requests from friends and former students. His image is imbued with masculine resoluteness, energy, intelligence and perseverance. Förster’s chest is decorated with the iron cross as well as three other medals. The following courageous words are written below his picture: ‘Over all obstacles, stand your ground’. Such an introduction to a highly interesting book could not help but lead to the most favourable of impressions. We had to turn to that man with our fullest, warmest sympathies – we could not avoid doing so – and soon we too were inspired by the wish to support his work and his noble aspirations for our fellow Germans.20

Full of such “warmest sympathies”, Klingbeil began corresponding with Bernhard Förster, who convinced him to participate in his colonisation project. In reply to a letter from Klingbeil, Förster writes:

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I believe that despite a difficult and at times uneasy beginning – and we would certainly try and help you overcome this situation if you were to move here! – we will have quite a contented life in Neu-Germania. We intend to work with seriousness and honesty on the great communal task of building a genuinely German and thus truly human community, and later join other similar communities. In short, we intend to build a strong, youthful, new Germany […]. By undertaking a truly popular colonial policy, we are also implementing practical anti-­ Semitism, because what we are doing is no longer done in the name of profit. This means we are happier when Germans become prosperous, contented and perhaps even rich under our guidance than we are when we ourselves become wealthy […].21

Even if we only see hints as to Julius Klingbeil’s political views in his writing, it seems they were similar to those of the anti-liberal, anti-Semitic Berliner Bewegung. Impor­ tantly, it was only after Klingbeil had undertaken lengthy research that he decided to move to Nueva Germania; this demonstrates the closeness of these colonists’ views to Förster’s ‘practical anti-Semitism’. Despite this, Klingbeil stated that he wanted to leave Germany not because of economic hardship, but because he preferred to live in a better climate than that of Antwerp, a climate that he believed was not conducive to his health.22 Since his business partner, Albert Bartelt, did not want to continue the business, they decided to emigrate together.23

Paraguay’s policy of colonisation The devastating Triple Alliance War (1864 – 1870) between Paraguay and the alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay resulted in the depopulation of large parts of Para­ guay.24 This led the Paraguayan government to develop a policy aimed at encouraging settlement, especially from Europe.25 Consequently, European settlers were offered favourable conditions to acquire land.26 The Paraguayan government provided Förster with 12 square leagues of land on the condition that it would be settled by 140 families within two years. The land would then pass into his possession and the colonists would be provided with ownership titles for the parcels that had been allotted to them. During this period, a farm of about 150 Prussian morgen 27 was available for 300 marks, whereas land for major investors (“capitalists”) of one square league (about 16 square kilometers) was being sold for between 8,000 and 10,000 marks.

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

4 Map of Paraguay in Bernhard Förster’s publication, 1886.

Klingbeil and Bartelt bought one square league in Nueva Germania and paid a deposit of 5,000 marks to the bankers Kürbitz and Schubert in Chemnitz, Germany.28 However, since Förster did not fulfil the conditions that came with the deposit, they never received the title of ownership, and the land that had been assigned by the Paraguayan state was never transferred to Förster. Rather, Förster had to borrow heavily in a short time to cover running costs and build the colony’s infrastructure.29 Daniela Kraus, who conducted her dissertation on Nueva Germania, explains that the project was doomed to failure from the very start due to serious errors of judgement.30 On 3 June 1889, Förster died in San Bernardino near Asunción, presumably due to suicide.31 By the end of 1890, Förster’s wife, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, had sold her inheritance and returned to Germany, where she devoted herself to caring for her brother, Friedrich Nietzsche, and later became well known as the administrator of her brother’s legacy.

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Pictures from Nueva Germania: a different story Julius Klingbeil’s aforementioned book aimed to quickly reach as many people thinking of emigrating to Paraguay as possible, and dissuade them from doing so: “May my book enlighten, instruct and warn!”32 Klingbeil’s book was published shortly after he had returned to Germany. It was printed on cheap paper, and made available for the price of 1 mark 60. There are no images in the book, as these would have made it unnecessarily expensive, but his photographs could still be ordered from the publisher at the price of 1 mark each. These images were available in the sizes 13 × 18 cm and 15 × 24 cm, and were glued onto white card. The 50 photographs that were available are listed on the back cover of the book (Fig. 5). Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine whom he was trying to reach with these images, especially as the descriptions say little about the quality of the photographs. The descriptions in Klingbeil’s book enable the photographs to be dated to after Klingbeil’s departure from Nueva Germania, which means they were taken in Asunción (21 photographs) and during the excursions he undertook to Asunción’s surroundings. The primitive and crowded living conditions Klingbeil faced on arrival in Paraguay must have prevented him from using photography to properly document his trip and the first few weeks of colonisation.33 Only 13 of the 50 photographs listed in Klingbeil’s book stem from Nueva Germania itself. Before his departure for South America, Julius Klingbeil had clearly acquired a basic knowledge of photography. He had also acquired the necessary photographic equipment including a camera, a tripod and the chemicals needed for developing dry plates, and further photographic supplies could be ordered from Buenos Aires whenever necessary.34 Klingbeil used commercially available, durable and storable dry gelatin plates as a medium, and these were probably 9 × 12 cm in size.35 He used albumen paper for enlargements, which was also common at the time. During his short stay in the Paraguayan capital, Klingbeil sold several images. After falling out with Förster, this success led him to consider settling in Asunción as a photographer. However, after finally deciding to return to Germany, he tried to sell his surplus photographic material to a local photographer.36

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

5 The list of 50 photographic motifs on the back cover of Klingbeil’s publication, 1889.

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The selection of Klingbeil’s photographs for the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin Klingbeil’s photographs were the very first images of Paraguay held by the archives of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde, out of what became a total of just over 300.37 The photographic motifs in Klingbeil’s publication, which were probably chosen from a even larger collection, provide an outline of the process of selection undertaken by the museum’s archive.38 There were 50 motifs on offer in Klingbeil’s publication, but the museum did not select any of the 21 views of the capital city, Asunción. Instead, it only archived photographs of Nueva Germania and the “country and its people”. With few exceptions, this trend continued with the museum’s later acquisitions. The museum also acquired the type of photographs that it would be expected to, such as images of ethnic groups from Chaco. These images were purchased during the years that followed or acquired via scientific exchange, and constitute the greater part of the Paraguayan collection. However, in comparison with other South American countries, the collection from Paraguay 39 contains a larger number of photographs than might be expected of German colonies, such as Villa Hayes, Hohenau and Fernheim.40 Fernheim was also an utopian but religious colony. It was founded by ethnic ­German Mennonites who had immigrated after the Russian Revolution via Germany to n ­ orthern Paraguay.41 The series of four photographs from Fernheim demonstrates that fifty years after Förster’s colonisation experiment, Fernheim also faced similar conditions to those previously seen in Nueva Germania (Fig. 6). Today, however, Fernheim is a thriving agricultural cooperative.42 Another series of photographs was taken of the colony of Hohenau, around 36 km north of Encarnación (Itaipú) in southern Paraguay.43 The photographs in this series depict Aché children, from a nomadic ethnic group that anthropologists had been interested in since the 1880s and viewed as a “relic of human history”.44 The history of the roughly 12-year-old Aché boy depicted in Fig. 7 will always remain unknown. His clothes and the fact that he was photographed in a farmer’s household, however, suggest that he was probably one of the many children trapped by the colonists during manhunts and used as servants.45 Before returning to Germany, Klingbeil spent time in Asunción, and used his room in Hotel De La Minuta as a darkroom: It was with great pleasure that we watched the attractive-looking clichés leaving the baths. Now that we had been strengthened by our successes, my associate and I decided to travel around the town and its surroundings for a few days, and when we found a pretty place, we took a photograph. We were able to sell some of these photographs at a good profit.46

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

6 “Germans are cultivating Gran Chaco. This is how it started! Old and young at work making bricks for their houses.” Colony Fernheim, Paraguay. Photographer: unknown, around 1935. EMB, VIII E 5498.

While exploring the surroundings close to Asunción, Klingbeil further strengthened his belief that Paraguay had little potential for emigrants.47 Despite this, the mood presented in the photographs portrays the country in a very favourable light; this of course contrasts strongly with the mood cast in his 216-page text, which Klingbeil used to settle his account with Bernhard Förster, the colony of Nueva Germania and publications that were encouraging emigration to Paraguay. There was green, scenic countryside bounded by forest for as far as the eye could see. Every now and then, we saw large groups of palm trees and the islands of forest that were ­scattered throughout the countryside merely added to its beauty. This magnificent sight, and more so that of the world order as described by Sartorius, did not fail to affect us beneficially and revive our partially lost courage to continue our stay.

This is how Klingbeil reacted to the sight of an estate belonging to a German who had been resident in Paraguay for 19 years, and who lived close to Nueva Germania. Klingbeil described the beauty of the countryside, its breath-taking views, broad hori­ zon and unusual rock formations. In fact, he reproduced this scene in a photograph of

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7 Boy from the Aché. Photograph taken in Colony Hohenau. Photographer: Paul Traeger, before 1924. EMB, VIII E 4246.

Santo Tomás, near Paraguarí, which depicts a flat-topped mountain, a typical aspect of the local landscape.48 Although Klingbeil’s photographic gaze focused on the ‘wild’ undomesticated landscape 49 that the colonists were up against (Fig. 8) and the land that was to be ‘wrestled’ from it and used for agriculture, it also turned to the indigenous inhabitants who had settled the outskirts of the capital.50 An excursion to Paraguarí, Paraguay’s second-largest city, which is located five hours southeast of Asunción, only confirmed Klingbeil’s doubts about Paraguay’s suitability for colonisation.51 A railway line from Asunción ended in Paraguarí at this time, but it was to be extended further south to Villa Rica. During this period, Villa Rica could only be reached by stagecoach: We decided on a trip of several days and took the 72 km-long railway line to Paraguarí, the terminus at the time. We had planned to continue the journey with the only Diligencia in the country to Villa Rica. This part of the railroad was begun in the late [eighteen] fifties and ­opened in 1863. They are currently building the last 18-league stretch to Villa Rica (the wealthy city). The inauguration of the first station was completed during my stay there.52

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

8 Primeval forest close to Neu-Germanien, Chamoro cué, Paraguay. Photographer: Julius Klingbeil, 1888. EMB, VIII E 718. 9 Mr G’s Rancho and Caña-distillery, Paraguarí, Paraguay. Photographer: Julius Klingbeil, 1888. EMB, VIII E 720.

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Klingbeil’s visit to German colonists in Paraguarí acts as a parable about the suggestive power of the image and attempts to use imagery to uphold a particular representa­ tion of a utopia; a utopia which, in the case of Förster’s colonisation experiment, had failed miserably. A colonist who had resided for 17 years in Paraguay, but whose identity is not revealed, had accompanied Hugo Töppen during his journey through Paraguay but worsened Töppen’s critical view “regarding the possibilities for German colonisation” in Paraguay.53 ‘Mr G’, as Töppen referred to him, was among the colonists who owned land and over the years had tried their luck with various enterprises. However, they did so with limited success, as the distillery photographed by Klingbeil, for example, had closed by this time (Fig. 9). This photograph was staged by Mr G, who “even ensured some Paraguayans were included in the photograph. Alongside his daughter, they imbue this laudable photograph with life.”54 At the same time, however, it is also important to mention the type of photograph that was not taken in this case, namely, the one of Mr G’s family for his relatives in Germany, because he had no proper clothing for a representative photograph.

Searching for traces By directly following the traces left behind by these photographs, we arrive at a text that is highly critical of Paraguayan colonisation policy. However, in comparison with this text, the photographs represent or construct the ideologically masked utopia of pristine nature unspoiled by civilisation, combined with the possibility of taming the ‘wilderness’. Furthermore, even though we are no longer able to view Klingbeil’s cityscapes, they also form part of a tradition that promoted colonisation. These photo­graphs mediated the promise that urban infrastructure existed in the ‘new world’, and that its level of development reflected that which potential colonists were familiar with at home.55 Consequently, the selective gaze that is clear within Klingbeil’s photo­graphs is also present in the choice of images from a wider pool produced by the same photographer, and this particular batch of images that was archived by the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde. Unpublished documents [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, E 894/37, Karl-Friedrich Reimer.

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay

Bibliography Benz, Wolfgang. 2012. “Deutscher Volksverein”. In Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 5. Organisationen, Institutionen, Bewegungen, edited by Wolfgang Benz, 182 – 183. Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Förster, Bernhard. 1886. Deutsche Colonien in dem oberen Laplata-Gebiete mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Paraguay. Ergebnisse eingehender Prüfungen, praktischer Arbeiten und Reisen 1883 – 1885. Leipzig: Fock. Fritsch, Gustav. 1875. “Photographische Aufnahmen.” In Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen, edited by Georg Neumayer, 605 – 625. Berlin: Robert Oppenheim. Ireton, Sean, and Caroline Schaumann (eds.). 2012. Heights of Reflection. Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century. Rochester: Camden House. Kelly, Tatiana, and Irina Podgorny. 2012. Los secretos de Barba Azul. Fantasías y realidades de los archivos del Museo de la Plata. Rosario: prohistoria ediciones. Klingbeil, Julius. 1889. Enthüllungen über die Dr. Bernhard Förster’sche Ansiedlung Neu-Germanien in Paraguay. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte unserer gegenwärtigen colonialen Bestrebungen. Nach eigenen Erfahrungen mitgetheilt von Julius Klingbeil. Leipzig: Kommissionsverlag von Eduard Baldamus. Koel-Abt, Katrin, and Andreas Winkelmann. 2013. “The identification and restitution of human remains from the Aché girl named ‘Damiana’: an interdisciplinary approach.” Anatomischer Anzeiger 195(5): 393 – 400. Kraus, Daniela. 1999. Bernhard und Elisabeth Försters Nueva Germania in Paraguay. Eine anti­semitische Utopie. Dissertation an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Univer­ sität Wien. [http://www.fjum-wien.at/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/daniela_kraus_­ thesis_nuevagermania.pdf ] Lehmann-Nitsche, Robert. 1908. “Relevamiento antropológico de una India Guayaquí.” Revista del Museo de la Plata XV: 92 – 101. Martinez, Alejandro. 2012. “Fotografía y hechos científicos. Los guayaquíes y las discusiones de la antropología a fines del siglo XIX.” In Los secretos de Barba Azul. Fantasías y realidades de los archivos del Museo de la Plata, edited by Tatiana Kelly and Irina Podgorny, 97 – 123. Rosario: prohistoria ediciones. Münzel, Mark. 1973. The Aché Indians: Genocide in Paraguay. Copenhagen: IWGIA Document. Neuhauss, Richard. 1914. “Photographiesammlung.” Verhandlungen der BGAEU 46(4): 905 – 907. Nickson, R. ­Andrew. 1993. Historical Dictionary of Paraguay. New York, London: The Scare Crow Press. Nipperdey, Thomas and Reinhard Rürup. 1972. “Antisemitismus.” In Geschichtliche Grund­ begriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache, edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, vol. 1, 137. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Puschner, Uwe, Walter Schmitz, and Justus H. ­Ulbrich (eds.). 1996. Handbuch zur “Völkischen Bewegung” 1871 – 1918. München: De Gruyter Saur. Reber, Vera Blinn. 1988. “The Demographics of Paraguay: A Reinterpretation of the Great War, 1864 – 70.” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 68(2) (May 1988): 289 – 319.

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Schüler, Winfried. 1971. Der Bayreuther Kreis von seiner Entstehung bis zum Ausgang der Wilhelminischen Ära. Wagnerkult und Kulturreform im Geiste völkischer Weltanschauung. Münster: Aschendorff. Schultze, C. ­F. E. 1893. Das Paraguayfieber. Bremen: Schünemann. Schultze, C. ­F. E. 1894. Kolonialverein und Paraguayschwindel. Ein Lehrbüchlein für Kolonialgimpel und solche, die es werden wollen. Ratzeburg i. Lbg.: H. ­H. C. ­Freystantzky. Töppen, Hugo. 1885. Hundert Tage in Paraguay. Reise in’s Innere. Paraguay im Hinblick auf deutsche Kolonisations-Bestrebungen. Available at: https://archive.org/stream/hundert­ tageinpa01toepgoog#page/n6/mode/2up/. Weiland, Daniela. 2004. Otto Glagau und “Der Kulturkämpfer”. Zur Entstehung des modernen Antisemitismus im frühen Kaiserreich. Berlin: Metropol. Whigham, Thomas. 2010 – 2012. La Guerra de la Triple Alianza, 3 vols. Asunción: Taurus. Whigham, Thomas and Barbara Potthast. 1999. “The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone. New Insights into the Demographics of the Paraguayan War, 1864 – 1870.” Latin American Research Review 34(1): 174 – 186.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6

7 8

The photographs were originally assigned the numbers VIII 3285 to VIII 3294. This indicates that they were catalogued before 1904, as the regional signature for the Americas was introduced at this time (letter Boris Gliesmann). The set is now cata­ logued under EMB, VIII E 717 to VIII E 726. Neuhauss 1914 reports about a paral­ lel development that took place in the photographic archive held by the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte; cf. contribution of Junker in this volume. He worked on his manuscript during the night, went to sleep early and got up at 1am to write until daybreak. Klingbeil 1889, 168 – 169. Published by Kommissonsverlag Eduard Baldamus in Leipzig. Revelations about Dr Bernhard Förster’s Neu Germania colony in Paraguay. A contribution to the history of our current colonial endeavours. By Julius Klingbeil, according to his own experiences. Klingbeil 1889, I. “Es wäre zu wünschen, daß die deutsche Staatsregierung dem Treiben jener Leute, besonders auch der mit bedenklichen Mitteln betriebenen Agitation für die Auswan­ derung nach Paraguay ein schleuniges Ende bereitete. […] Keiner anderen Nation kommt es in den Sinn, in jenem armseligen Lande zu colonisiren. Nur Deutsche und deutschredende Schweizer halten es nicht unter ihrer Würde, die Angehörigen ihres eigenen Volkes dorthin zu verrathen”, Klingbeil, 1889, III. Klingbeil was preparing to join a Belgian colonisation society that operated in Argentina, when he was made aware of Förster’s project, Klingbeil 1889, 1. German colonies in upper La Plata region, with particular regard to Paraguay. Results of thorough research, practical work and travels, 1883 – 1885.

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay 9 10

11 12

13 14

15 16

17

18 19 20

This text uses the German (Neu-Germanien), the Spanish spelling (Nueva Germania) and also ‘Neu-Germania’ according to the various contexts described. Otto Glagau and Bernhard Förster were members of the ‘Berliner Bewegung’, which was involved in anti-Semitic agitation. Glagau was a journalist and edited Der Kulturkämpfer (1880 – 1888), Weiland 2004, 53. Benz 2012, 182 – 183. The affair became known as the Kantorowicz Affair; it involved targeted anti-Semitic provocation by Bernhard Förster and Carl Jungfer on 8 November 1880 on a horsepulled tram in Berlin. Kraus 1999, 21 – 22. For a comprehensive analysis of the colonisation project ‘Neu-Germanien/Nueva Germania’, cf. the dissertation by Daniela Kraus and the literature she cites. This includes literature on the development of anti-Semitic groups and their worldviews. Cf. also the influence of the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, who propagated anti-Semitism in bourgeois circles; Schüler 1971; Puschner, Schmitz and Ulbrich 1996; Nipperdey and Rürup 1972. “Allen Gewalten zum Trutz sich erhalten!” Klingbeil mentioned that this motto hung framed in Förster’s house in Neu-Germanien, Klingbeil 1889, 37. “Von der Unmöglichkeit, das Leben in Deutschland selbst zu reformieren, überzeugt, sollte Försters koloniale Gründung auf der Grundlage einer alkoholfreien, vegeta­ rischen Lebensweise die Gedanken Wagners verwirklichen.” By 1876, after the first Bayreuth Festival, Elisabeth Nietzsche had also taken up vegetarianism. She called on her brother “on the whole, if possible, turn your food towards the position of vege­ tarianism. That means don’t eat lots of meat”, (“Ueberhaupt wenn es geht, so neige Dich doch mit Deiner Kost ein wenig zum Vegetariernißmuß das heißt: iß nicht gerade viel Fleisch.”), Elisabeth Nietzsche to Friedrich Nietzsche on 6 December 1876, in Kraus 1999, 108. “Unter Colonisation verstehen wir: Verpflanzung unserer eigenen Cultur auf einen neuen, ihr günstigen Boden, und zwar, wie wir als Idealisten hinzufügen müssen, mit Beiseitelassung alles Zufälligen, Gekünstelten und Falschen unter bestimmter und bewußten Betonung des Echten, Ewigen, Werthvollen in unserem Volksthume”, Förster 1886, 194. Klingbeil on the emigration of his brothers to Chicago, 1889, 8. Förster 1886, 209. “Dem Buche hat Förster sein Bildnis mit Facsimile beigegeben, wie er in der Vorrede ausführt, auf zahlreiche Bitten von Freunden und ehemaligen Schülern. Die männlich entschlossenen Züge dieses Bildes verrathen Energie, Intelligenz und Ausdauer, die Brust ist neben drei anderen Orden mit dem eisernen Kreuze geschmückt. Unterhalb des Bildes liest man die muthvollen Worte: ‘Allen Gewalten zum Trutz sich erhalten.’ Eine derartige Einführung in eine hochinteressante Lectüre kann nur den allervortheil­ haftesten Eindruck erwecken. Wir konnten nicht anders, wir mußten jenem Manne unsere volle, warme Sympathie zuwenden, und bald waren wir von dem Wunsche beseelt, diesen in seinen Arbeiten und edelen Bestrebungen für unsere deutschen Landsleute getreulich zu unterstützen”, Klingbeil 1889, 2.

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22

23

24

25 26

27 28 29

30

31 32

“Ich glaube wohl, dass sich nach schwerem und zum Theil unbehaglichem Anfange, den wir Ihnen indess nach Möglichkeit erleichtern werden! – hier in Neu-Germania ein ganz behagliches Leben entwickeln wird, in dem wir mit Ernst und Ehrlichkeit an der gemeinschaftlich übernommenen großen Aufgabe arbeiten wollen: eine echt deutsche und damit eine wahrhaft menschliche Gemeinde aufzubauen, andere ähnliche dersel­ ben später anzufügen, kurz ein starkes, jugendliches, neues Deutschland zu schaffen [etc.] Indem wir auf diese Weise wahrhaft volkstümliche Colonialpolitik treiben, üben wir zugleich praktischen Antisemitismus, denn unser Thun steht so wenig unter dem Zeichen des Profites, daß wir uns mehr freuen, wenn Deutsche unter unserer Leitung wohlhabend, zufrieden – vielleicht sogar reich – werden, als wenn wir selbst Güter erwerben […]”, Klingbeil 1889, 5 – 6. “For years, together with my associate, Albert Bartelt, I have had a business in Antwerp that not only provides us with a decent existence, but that by living a frugal lifestyle, also puts us in the position to be able to save a certain amount for our old age.” (“Seit Jahren betrieben mein Associé Albert Bartelt und ich in Antwerpen ein Geschäft, welches uns nicht nur eine anständige Existenz gewährte, sondern uns auch in den Stand setzte, bei einer sparsamen Lebensweise, jährlich ein Sümmchen für die alten Tage zurückzulegen”), Klingbeil 1889,1. “During the trip the group grew to 14 people. An American from Virginia also joined, who was familiar with the cultivation of tobacco, as was Klingbeil himself, as for ten years he operated a tobacco factory in Germany.” (“Im Verlauf der Reise wächst die Gruppe auf 14 Personen an. U. a. stösst ein Amerikaner aus Virginia dazu, der sich mit dem Tabakanbau auskennt, so wie Klingbeil selbst, der in Deutschland zehn Jahre lang eine Tabakfabrik betrieben hatte”), Klingbeil 1889, 28. On calculations of population loss, cf. Reber 1988; Whigham and Potthast 1999, who use the 1870 census and estimate that 50% of the Paraguayan population died in the Triple Alliance War. It borrowed its motto from the Argentine politician Juan Bautista Alberdi: “gobernar es poblar”. In addition to free transport from Montevideo to the destination, tools, seeds, livestock and a parcel of land of 16 square cuadras was provided, which passed into the possession of the colonists after five years, Kraus 1999, 132, 160. One square league equalled about 11,000 Prussian morgen. A Prussian morgen corresponds to around 2,500 m2. The receipt of payment was confirmed by Förster on 17 November 1887, Klingbeil 1889 6 – 7. In October 1888, Förster received 100,000 marks and in May 1889, a further 40,000 marks in Asunción, plus 10,000 marks from a mortgage on his brother’s house in Germany, Kraus 1999, 170. Kraus 1999, Chapter 5, 156 – 247. Shortly after the founding of Neu-Germanien, C. ­F. E. ­Schultze provided a critical assessment of the project and colonisation in Paraguay in general, cf. Schultze 1885, 1893 and 1894. On the difficulties with the sources when it comes to Förster’s demise, cf. Kraus 1999, 229. “Möge mein Buch aufklären, belehren und warnen!” Klingbeil 1889, VIII.

Images from the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay 33 34 35

36

37

38 39

40

41

42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

The developer was spoiled and had to be ordered again. Klingbeil 1889, 115. Klingbeil 1889, 178. The archives of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin also hold an original glass plate from this image. This photograph is catalogued under EMB, VIII E 721. The glass plate

has the inventory number O 324 and is in 9 × 12 cm format. The albumen paper was offered to the photographer by an intermediary in Asunción, who had been awarded a contract to supply 200 photographs from Paraguay for 3,000 pesos for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889. Klingbeil 1898, 141. A small series by Guido Boggiani: EMB, VIII E 1447 – 1452, “India Payaguá”, and a number of views of Asunción by Theodor Koch-Grünberg: EMB, VIII E 3328, VIII E 3329, VIII E 3333, as well as the port of Asunción EMB, VIII E 3334. Cf. http://www. smb-digital.de. Fritsch 1875. Ethnic groups from Chaco: photographs by Carl Merkwitz: EMB, VIII E 790 d-i; VIII E Nls 559; J. ­Bohls: VIII E 792 – 798; Guido Boggiani: EMB, VIII E 1422 – 1521, VIII E Nls 73 – 80, VIII E Nls 193 – 197; VIII E Nls 373 – 383, P 12845 – 12782; Theodor Koch-Grünberg: EMB, VIII E 3322 – 3334; Max Schmidt: EMB, VIII E 3377 – 3391; VIII E 4930 – 4997; Paul Traeger: EMB, VIII E 4198 – 4257, VIII E Nls 66; Dennech: EMB, VIII 5485 – 5491; Karl-Friedrich Reimer: EMB, VIII E 5497 – 5500; Guillermo Grüter: EMB, VIII E 201; Carl Künne: EMB, VIII E Nls 1034, 1028 (P 1409 – 1410); Robert Lehmann-Nitsche: EMB, VIII E Nls 1041 (P 11136). This includes examples from the colonies of Villa Hayes from 1895 (EMB, VIII E 798); Hohenau from the Paul Traeger collection (1867 – 1933)(EMB, VIII E 4246 a, b, VIII E 4249); Fernheim taken in 1935 and presented to the museum by Karl-Friedrich Reimer (EMB, VIII E 5497 – 5500). The four photographs from Fernheim (EMB, VIII E 5497 – 5500) were taken in 1935 and were passed on to Karl-Friedrich Reimer, a genealogical researcher who then gave them to the museum. EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, E 894/37, Karl-Friedrich Reimer. Cf. http://www.menonitica.org/lexikon/?F:Fernheim/. By 1914, Encarnación had about 4,000 inhabitants, cf. Nickson 1993, 654. Martínez 2012; Lehmann-Nitsche 1908. For anthropological studies, cf. Koel-Abt and Winkelmann, 2013. Münzel 1973. “Groß war unsere Freude, als wir manches hübsche Cliché aus den Bädern hervorgehen sahen, Durch die Erfolge ermuthigt, zogen mein Associé und ich nun manchen Tag in der Stadt und in der Umgebung umher, wo wir einen hübschen Punkt fanden, machten wir eine Aufnahme”, Klingbeil 1889, 178. Cf. the trip to Trinidad, Klingbeil 1889, 178 – 180. Cf. http://www.smb.digital-de ; EMB, VIII E 719 and 721. Ireton and Schaumann 2012. Cf. http://www.smb.digital-de ; EMB, VIII E 723, 724 and 726. Statement by Klingbeil 1889, 181. Cf. also Töppen 1885.

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“Einen Ausflug von mehreren Tagen machten wir mit der 72 km langen Bahn zur damaligen Endstation Paraguarí; wir hatten vor, von da die Reise mit der einzigen Diligencia des Landes nach Villa Rica (der reichen Stadt) zu machen. Die Eisenbahn wurde Ende der fünfziger Jahre begonnen und im Jahre 1863 dem Verkehr übergeben. Heute ist man beschäftigt, um die 18 Leguas lange Strecke bis Villa Rica zu bauen. Die Einweihung der ersten Station derselben wurde während meiner Anwesenheit vollzogen”, Klingbeil 1889, 180. Töppen 1885. [Mr G] “[holte] sogar noch einige Paraguayer herbei, welche mit seinem Töchterchen der gelungenen Photographie Leben verleihen”, Klingbeil 1889, 182 – 184. Cf. contribution of Onken in this volume.

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Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s. The Tarahumara (Rarámuri) in the photography of the sports reporter Arthur E. ­Grix

In the early 1930s the Tarahumara, an indigenous ethnic group from northern Mexico known today by their self-designation Rarámuri, acquired a certain degree of inter­ national notoriety among anthropologists. Konrad Theodor Preuss, curator at the Museum für Völkerkunde (today: Ethnologisches Museum) in Berlin, knew about them above all through the popular travelogues and photographs that the Norwegian Carl Lumholtz and the German Rudolf Zabel had published in 1902 and 1928 respectively. But after Preuss heard a lecture held by the sports reporter Arthur E. ­Grix in Berlin, he got to know a different side of this Mexican native people: It was a great pleasure to hear such a detailed account of the athletic achievements of these Indians in your presentation about your trip to the Tarahumara. It is in fact also of importance for the discipline of anthropology to have authentic information about things such as stamina, both in terms of the distances covered and in terms of speed.1

Arthur E. ­Grix (1893 – 1966) handed Berlin’s Museum für Völkerkunde over seven photo­ graphs that he had taken during his trip to the Tarahumara in northern Mexican state of Chihuahua in 1932 after attending the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.2 The “Tarahumara Runners”3 as he called them on two of the photographs were the purpose of this spontaneous excursion by train to the town of Creel. The sports re­ porter had travelled across the United States from New York to Los Angeles in July 1932 to report on the Olympic Games in August. In his books Olympische Tage in Los Angeles (1932) and Unter Olympiakämpfern und Indianerläufern (1935) he describes vividly this mass event in which “100,000 people […] scuttle in a giant stone tub like insects on a sweet crust”.4 Grix was himself an athlete “dedicated with every fibre [of my body] to sports and the track and field disciplines” since the age of sixteen.5 He learned to box in a British prisoner-of-war camp during the First World War and became so impassioned about this sport that he founded the boxing division of his hometown Sportclub Charlottenburg.6 He was editor-in-chief of the club newspaper, the Schwarzes C, from 1933 to 1935. Grix had various jobs in the period that followed

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and developed significant influence in sports reporting in Germany during that time, that is, in the politically critical period leading up to and in the early years of the National Socialist regime. In the following, Grix’ photographs of the Tarahumara form a point of departure for an analysis of how sports reporters and functionaries in Mexico and Germany perceived this North American ethnic group in the interwar period. Grix transported in his books using text and image his own personal perspective on the Olympic idea and the globalisation of sports. The indigenous people of Mexico and their concept and practice of ‘sports’7 played an important role in his own concept of the broader social significance of sport. It was no coincidence that the Rarámuri runners caught his eye. Mexican sports officials had heard reports about their spectacular running abilities and identified in them potential participants in international athletics events. In initial competitions in which especially the endurance of the runners was tested, men ran distances of 100 km and more and women showed an almost equally re­ markable endurance. Such distances, comparable to today’s ultra-marathons, were at the time still unusual in international athletics. Rarámuri long-distance runners, both men and women, took part in competitions designed specifically for them at the University of Austin, Texas. These took place in the run-up to the Pan American Games in 1926, which were regarded at the time as the Olympics of the Americas. Rarámuri participated in the regular long distance and marathon competitions in these Pan American Games and in the marathon in the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928. Pictures of the successful indigenous runners decorated the sports pages of the major newspapers in Mexico City and the southwestern United States. One such newspaper found its way into Arthur Grix’ hands after the Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the headline reading “Mexican Indian runners Win in Texas”. The accompanying picture showed, so Grix “a running dark-skinned man in a loin­ cloth” and the article reported on a race over 144-kilometres that the University of Texas had held on 25 March 1927.8 The Rarámuri Tomás Zafiro ran this distance in 14 hours, 53 minutes.9 The German sports reporter decided to “get to the bottom of the racing stamina of this legendary Indian people”.10 He eventually organised in Creel in Chihuahua, Mexico, a marathon-distance race to test the performance of the Tarahumara. His goal was to find out if they could break the then world record of 2 hours, 31 minutes, 36 seconds set by the Argentinian Juan Carlos Zabala at the Los Angeles Olympics.11 Five of the seven photographs found in archive of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin were published by Grix in Unter Olympiakämpfern und Indianerläufern, a book that intended to address a broad audience. One of them entitled Wettläufer der

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

1 A runner named Aurelio. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. EMB, VIII E Nls 487. 2 The cover of Unter Olympiakämpfern und Indianerläufern. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932.

Tarahumara graces the cover of the book as well. On page 144 the same photograph showing the Tarahumara runner Aurelio Francisco has the caption “Aurelio Crosses a River”.12 It shows a young man in a typical summer outfit used when running as well, clothing that is common for many Rarámuri men in the countryside today, that is, a white cotton loincloth (sitagora) held up by a woven belt. Aurelio Francisco’s hair is tied using a wide headband (coyera) also of white fabric. The view selected in this photograph suggests that he is running surrounded by nature alone and is in this instant crossing a river. The runner himself is slightly out of focus.13 This chapter is based on the hypothesis that this and other photographs form part of processes in the course of which in the first decades of the 20th century nations such as Mexico and Germany began to define themselves in terms of athletics and in which, in turn, the Tarahumara were conceded a fixed place, albeit as ‘others’, in a globalised sports community. This indigenous people and their running culture were interpreted and evaluated in diverse ways that I will discuss in the following. By dint of these ascribed meanings to Rarámuri running, Mexico acquired a new status as an international sporting nation. In Germany, interpretations of Tarahumara athletics

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also played a role for an understanding of modern sport which emerged in the 1930s in which National Socialist ideas about human ‘races’ possessing basically different athletic skills were integrated. Photographs provide a particular window on such global dynamics, as Deborah Poole 14 and John Mraz 15 have shown in their discussions about the essential role which the production, circulation and consumption of photographs assume for the develop­ ment of perceptions, ideas and feelings about gender, ‘race’, ethnicity and nation. Poole understands the production, circulation, consumption and possession of images that travel locally and translocally to be part of a “visual economy”.16 This concept takes the fact into account that the field of the visual has always been pervaded by social relations, inequality and power. Sarah Corona Berkin’s analysis 17 shows specifically how the photographic genre of the “Mexican indigene” constructs its object on the basis of temporality (the indigenes are allocated to the past), spatiality (they are part of nature) culture markers (perceived as exotic) and homogeneity (‘the’ indigenes are poor, backward, static). She points out that such attributions are crucial for creating new social realities since photographic images are commonly perceived as representing reality. From the perspective of these three approaches I will examine to what extent Grix’ photographs reproduced, modified or counteracted contemporary stereotypes about the Tarahumara.

The Tarahumara runners as Mexican sports icons First I will discuss the events that contributed to the Tarahumara, a hitherto little-­ known ethnic group, coming to wider public attention in the transnational context of Mexico-USA at the end of the 19th century. Photographs and descriptions based on photographs played here a special role as demonstrated by the international public attention the Tarahumara received in 1902 when Carl Lumholtz’ richly illustrated two-volume work Unknown Mexico was published. This book soon became a standard work on the indigenous peoples of northwestern Mexico. Lumholtz combined scholarly and commercial interests as a travel writer and had already published several popular books on his expeditions, among them, Among Cannibals (1889), an account of his journey to the Aborigines of Australia. In the course of several extended expeditions to northern Mexico he on one hand recorded the way of life of the Tarahumara in a differentiated and sophisticated manner by using ethnographic methods such as participant observation. But on the other hand he appraised this native people through the lens of the prevailing evolutionary paradigm and considered them to be a survival of an earlier stage in human evolution. When he discovered in 1892

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

during his first expedition that many Rarámuri lived in caves, he interpreted this as evidence of them having preserved their primitive state and authenticity. Fascinated, Lumholtz considered the Rarámuri to be “American cave-dwellers of the present age”.18 He hoped that through this research he would be able to attain knowledge about the way of life of the prehistoric inhabitants of the American southwest and the stone-age peoples of Europe.19 In Unknown Mexico, Lumholtz also stylised the Tarahumara by means of photo­ graphs into troglodytes and cave-dwellers. An example is the drawing based on a photograph of a somewhat reserved looking young woman dressed in the common everyday clothing of her day: she wore basically only a woollen skirt tied with a woven belt and went topless, exposing her breasts.20 The choice of the motif and the caption “The Belle of the Cave” stylises the young woman into a timeless cave dweller, even if Lumholtz explicitly denies a direct link to prehistoric cave dwellers in the text. Many other drawings in Unknown Mexico that are based on photographs he took in a documentary style also convey a pristine image of the Rarámuri and their everyday lives untouched by ‘civilisation’. This is also the case for Lumholtz’ photographs of Rarámuri runners taken in the vicinity of the community of Narárachi.21 Their races are discussed in detail in chapter XV of Unknown Mexico, which is dedicated to games, gambling and footraces. Lumholtz reflects on the running skills of the Tarahumara only once from the perspective of Western athletics when he ponders over their degree of competitiveness in track and field events.22 He is more interested in the principles according to which the Tarahumara organised their races. Usually, several men (or women) divided into two teams and competed against one another in a test of endurance and not of speed. The two teams raced along established trails in the wilderness along low-lying ridges kicking a small wooden ball while running. The competitions, which were prepared and convened by specialised ‘managers,’ drew up to 200 spectators, including men, women and children. The spectators divided in two parties and bet goods such as woollen blankets and arrows on the runners and spent the entire morning making these bets, which were taken and memorised by the managers. The drawings based on photographs that illustrate this ethnographic description are documentary in style and are provided with descriptive captions such as “Tarahumares Racing by Torchlight” and “Making Wagers at a Foot-race”. Only the caption of the picture titled “Tarahumare Foot-runners, Photographed After the Race” breaks the mould since it comments on the situation immediately after the race in which the original photograph was taken. The picture shows five men standing in a row, with serious expressions and crossed arms, though not looking at

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3 “Tarahumare Foot-runners. Photographed after the Race.” Photographer: Carl Lumholtz, 1902: 291.

all exhausted. Their appearance does not suggest in the slightest that they could be somewhat out of breath after their ultra-marathon. It can be assumed that they had just finished a race over a standard distance of about 100 km. The drawing/photo­ graph therefore ‘proves’ something that Lumholtz addresses explicitly elsewhere in this chapter devoted to games in relation to the ability of Rarámuri men to run down wild horses: It may take them two or three days, but they will bring them in, the horses thoroughly ­exhausted, while the men, who, of course, economise their strength, and sleep, and eat pinole, are comparatively fresh.23

Unknown Mexico was also read in Mexico and contributed to an appreciation of the Tarahumara as ‘people with culture’ in the eyes of the Mexican politicians, who considered themselves blancos (whites).24 A new kind of interest in the Tarahumara emerged in the course of which the state government of Chihuahua commissioned scholarly research.25 In this period, that is, in 1906, the state Governor Enrique Creel enacted the Ley de Mejoramiento de la Raza Tarahumara,26 one of the first indigenous laws of independent Mexico. During the Mexican Revolution, Chihuahua played a prominent role due to its location in the extreme north of the country on the border

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to the United States. Peasants and other members of the lower class rose up and joined, among others, Pancho Villa, because they had lost their land during the Porfiriato, that is, the rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876 – 1911). After the Mexican Revolution, the Tarahumara and the ethnically mixed region of the Sierra Tarahumara (a part of the Sierra Madre Occidental) were the focus of first pacification measures. The agrarian reform was therefore implemented very quickly after the end of armed conflicts in the rural region inhabited by the Tarahumara.27 New post-revolutionary Mexican government institutions, such as the Secretaría de Educación 28 under José Vasconcelos initiated several anthropological studies in this period. They implemented a national indigenous policy aiming at ‘incorporating’ the native groups into the nation conceived as a homogeneous mestizo entity – that is, to culturally de-indigenise them. Scientific findings on the Tarahumara published in a monograph were to serve these purposes. In 1925, the Ministry of Education commis­ sioned Carlos Basauri to write this anthropological monograph on the “Tarahumara tribe” and collect the necessary data on their “physical, mental and ethnographic charac­ teristics” to do so. The study, which was published in 1926 included documentary-style photographs that had little of the artistic ambition that can be seen in those taken by Lumholtz. The photographs were clearly included as matter-of-fact visual evidence of Tarahumara socio-cultural practices and institutions described in the text. Despite the explicit intention of delivering a neutral documentation, Carlos Basauri and his brother Manuel – a physician – paint an often extremely negative and denigrating picture of the Tarahumara, for example in their discussion of issues of nutrition and the consumption of corn beer.29 They argued, that because of their “deficient diet” based primarily on corn the Tarahumara were obviously a “physiologically degenerated race”.30 In the contemporary Mexican press, by contrast, the Tarahumara were shown in a completely different, much more positive light, namely as modern long-distance runners who would be able to achieve Olympic glory for the Mexican nation.31 The running talent of the Rarámuri was identified in the 1920s by Mexican sports officials as a possible resource for the Mexican nation. The well-known artist and muralist Dr Atl suggested in 1923 that the Tarahumara run in the coming Olympics, arguing that the Mexican national Olympic team, which would take part for the first time in the Olympics in the following year, would otherwise have little chance of winning any medals.32 This reappraisal of the Tarahumara based on their athletic prowess took place in the context of the early globalisation of sports. In the 1920s, modern competitive sport began to develop in close alliance with new communication technologies its very own form of globalisation. With sport’s international diffusion, a whole range of instruments for measuring athletic achievements were developed to standardise

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competition conditions for all contestants; they became part of the mass events wit­ nessed and commented on by a large audience.33 Many countries were eager to join in this development since the successful participation in such athletic competitions promised a gain in international prestige. This sparked ambitions for creating the disciplines and determining athletic parameters on the basis of which athletic excel­ lence would be measured and compared around the world. Countries that wanted to introduce their ‘own’, indigenous athletic disciplines to international competitions did so in the belief that this would allow them to increase their chances in winning sports competitions. The long-distance running disciplines became extremely popular in the beginning of the 1920s, both in the United States and internationally, propelled in part by running star Paavo Nurmi.34 Indigenous runners from the United States who had placed well in national competitions also contributed to their attractivity.35 It was in this context that Mexican sports officials – who were very enthusiastic about the Olympic idea – discovered the Tarahumara running prowess. They wanted to introduce a 100-kilometre race as a new standard distance in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. In the course of this campaign, Mexico hosted in November 1926, jointly with Cuba and Guatemala, the first transregional sporting event in the world, the Juegos Deportivos Centroamericanos,36 a Central American version of the Olympic Games.37 It included a 100-kilometre race from Pachuca to Mexico City to finish in the new National Stadium. The event was specifically designed to test the running talent of two young Tarahumara man. Tomás Zafiro and Leoncio San Miguel completed the course in 9 hours, 37 minutes and became thus the first world record holders. Both the Mexican press and the major newspapers published in the southwestern United States reported at length on this sporting spectacle.38 A few months later this Tarahumara Race was promoted in a fancy pamphlet with the title Pro México that was distributed in a bilingual Spanish-English version and included numerous photographs. The cover of the pamphlet already announced it as “The world’s greatest record-breaking race in the annals of sporting history established by the Chihuahua Mountain Indians of the Mexican Republic”. There Tarahumara were reconceptualised as valuable Mexican citizens because they were physically fit and internationally competitive. The introduction explains that the carrera Tarahumara “will not only make known the extraordinary faculties of the Chihuahua Mountains Indians” but “will oblige the public to abandon the black lies that foreigners as a rule tell of Mexico, through ignorance and calumny, by denying this country all its national achievements”.39 This shift in the image of the Tarahumara after the success of the 100-kilometre event was reflected upon by the journalist Jacobo Dalevuelta in his chapter entitled The Indian, Mexico’s Redeemer:

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

4 “The Tarahumara Race, Tarahumara foot runner in modern jerseys”. In: Pro México, 1927: 7 and 9. What will those people say now when two Indians such as the Tarahumares, whom we thought were only able to get drunk on ‘tixhuino’ or poison themselves with ‘peyote,’ have astonished the civilised world with this puissant physical demonstration of theirs such as the ‘Tarahumara Race’ actually was?40

Pro México transports an innovative image of the Mexican indigenous population, especially in its photographs of the Tarahumara. These photographs have little in common with the aesthetics of the anthropological photographs taken by Lumholtz or Basauri. Rather, in Pro México the runners Tomás Zafiro and Leoncio San Miguel are shown in individual portraits and therefore as modern individuals and in action shots conventional of sports reporting of the time. Portraying them in their jerseys also conveys the image of modern athletes, even if they continue to wear their traditional sandals laced with leather straps.41 Another photograph shows the men wearing straw hats while running into the National Stadium in Mexico City.42 After finishing the

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race both are portrayed together with General Serrano, governor of Mexico City.43 The latter two images had already been published in the 8 November 1926 edition of the newspaper El Universal under the headline “A New World Record in Running”. Only one photo in the book does not conform to this pattern, a group portrait of ten young Tarahumara men wrapped in blankets standing in a photo studio. They are accompanied by José Járis from Siquirichi, who in the caption is identified as gobernadorcillo 44 of his tribe and as having brought these young people to the capital city and the new government boarding house Casa del Estudiante Indígena.45 That said, this photograph also reinforces the overall statement that the Tarahumara were firmly anchored in the present. The photos in Pro México show them as athletic runners, as sports heroes next to the capital’s governor and as ambitious young men eager to visit the government boarding school. The two Tarahumara runners from Mexico performed disappointingly at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928. The legend of their running skills as a globally competitive resource lived on nevertheless. Photographs of the Rarámuri as sensa­ tional runners are popular in Mexico even today, since they convey the image of the Mexican nation’s athletic strength.46

The Tarahumara runners from the perspective of a German traveller and sports reporter These two perspectives on the Tarahumara in Mexico in the 1920s show how dif­ ferent the images were which anthropologists and Mexican journalists conveyed of them: during the same period photographs of the Rarámuri were taken, selected and ­published according to interests in communicating different messages. Since the legen­ dary Tarahumara runners were a key element of the project of winning Olympic gold, Mexican sports officials diffused an image of them as valuable representatives of the Mexican nation at international sporting events, thereby changing the up to then pre­ vailing negative stereotype of this indigenous population in national indigenist policy. The German sports reporter’ Arthur E. ­Grix, in contrast, departed from an image of aboriginal people that was influenced by the then predominant cultural-history school of German anthropology. Karl Weule (1864 – 1926) published in his function as director of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig his then groundbreaking Ethnologie des Sports (1926) in which he cemented a dichotomy between primitive and civilised sports.47 Although there is no direct evidence that Grix read Weule’s work, he argued from a similar perspective. Grix classified the Tarahumara as a Naturvolk (= primitive people) that did not have the same athletic potential as Kulturmenschen or ‘civilised

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

nations’ because of their way of life in the ‘undeveloped craggy mountains’.48 Grix mainly remarked that the two Tarahumara runners, who participated in the marathon at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928 “A. ­Terrazas as well as J. ­Torres [finished] in the field of losers,” running a time “a good piece away from the world record anyhow”. For this reason he concluded that: “The marathon distance requires a certain speed, good pace and intelligent training – all things that are foreign to the Tarahumara”.49 To what extent did the experiences and impressions that Grix gained during his trip to Mexico and organising a marathon in the village of Creel change his mind about the Tarahumara and the role that this Naturvolk had in modern sport? Grix went to Mexico immediately after the closing of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. His experience of this mega sports event therefore gives some clues as to his perspectives on sports. The modern Olympic Games are structured as a competition between nations; in this field assumptions about the relationship between national identity and athletic prowess are negotiated and expressed. Grix too was interested in the link between national identity, ‘race’ and class. In the first chapter of Unter Olympiakämpfern und Indianerläufern he lets the reader in his understanding of these categories as tied to athletic performance. He describes three Olympic track and field medalists: an English nobleman, a farm boy from Kansas, whose grandfather was a ‘half-breed Indian,’ and a young, blond German who, a sickly child, took up track and field at the recommendation of his paediatrician.50 Grix thus draws on a number of common sports tropes of his time such as the belief in social mobility that sport offers even to the most marginalised of people.51 For him the essence of sport consists in the training of a malleable human body, a principle which he summarises as follows: These three so different runners move among many others that have been thrown together from around the globe. Sinister Finns sit on the grass beside grinning Japanese, hot-blooded Argentinians and cool Swedes. Every single person has his own fate. Nothing in their early childhood pointed to that they might once become Olympians. No rank, no protection, no noble origin can help. […] Their only weapon is their body, which they have prepared tirelessly to deliver maximum proficiency.52

The Tarahumara on the other hand, were for Grix a Naturvolk and he saw them as belonging to a completely opposite category to ‘civilised man,’ in which he of course allocated himself as a German white man. The last chapter of Grix’ book is devoted specifically to the question of “(h)ow the athletic prowess of indigenous peoples can be assessed”.53 He discusses several Olympic victories which he considered to

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5 “A cliff-dwelling belonging to a Tarahumara family.” Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. In: Grix, 1935, fig 11. EMB, VIII E Nls 482.

be “surprising” ones, because they had been won by “negroes” and “Indians”. Grix forwarded a binary perspective on sport that discriminated the ‘other’. “Only the completely civilised are able to perform well athletically”.54 That said, he is keen to incorporate and explain away the ‘unexpected’ exceptions, including the Tarahumara ‘running sensations’, in a way that does not undermine his racist assumptions on athletic performances. In the first part of the book, Grix constructs the Tarahumara as a Naturvolk also by using 32 photographs as illustrations. He describes his first encounters with Tarahumara people as the outcome of his urgent desire to locate members in their caves and to photograph them in this ‘primitive’ context.55 He describes his meeting face-to-face with the first Tarahumara as following: My first thought is: God, is this a beautiful, noble race! What a difference between these primitives steeled by air and sun and the pot-bellied, short-armed and sweaty Mexicans from the area! He is small and delicate, no more than 1.60 meters tall, but sinewy and racy, not very muscular, but well proportioned.56

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

6 “Old couple in front of their cave”. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. In: Grix, 1935, fig 12. EMB, VIII Nls 483. 7 “A hundred-year-old man”. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. In: Grix, 1935, fig 14. EMB, VIII E Nls 486.

The four photographs between pages 64 and 65 show “The Cave in the Cliff ”, an “Old Couple in Front of their Cave”, “Mother and Child” and “A Hundred-year-old Man”.57 These images convey an argument akin to that of the text. The “hundredyear-old” – taken in the extreme light of the sun – is a portrait of a grey-haired but fearless and vigorous looking man looking straight into the camera. The photograph is taken from below and frames the slightly tilted head at a slight diagonal slope – all aesthetic means characteristic of the photography of the time that imbues the portrait a dynamic quality. The hundred-year-old man appears again in a chapter titled “Here we go”. Grix mentions him as one of the spectators of a Tarahumara race that he watched on 26 September 1932. In this race over a distance of 265 km, two teams from the communities of San Ignacio (Arareco) and Bocoyna ran against one another. The runners and their

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8 “Running sensations of the Sierra”. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. In: Grix, 1935, fig 19. EMB, VIII E Nls 488.

respective followers met in Creel between the two competing communities. In his description of the event, Grix combines his own observations with information – also of a speculative nature – that he obtained from his mestizo acquaintances in Creel and his own presuppositions. For example: As I have heard, special training for the great carrera [race] is not required. Running is as innate to the Indians as it is for birds to fly.58

Several photographs of the race are reproduced in the book. Figure 16 shows the German reporter on horseback, accompanied by two young Tarahumara men wrapped in blankets (“Young Runners Accompany Me”). Figures 17 and 18 have a documentary character and reveal some of the cultural features of Rarámuri running events, such as the extensive betting and the collection and accounting of these bets by specialised managers (“Wagers Guarded by the Indians”; “The Bookmaker”).59 Figure 19, is entitled “Running Sensations of the Sierra” and is an action shot of two runners seen from the side running against a mountain ridge in the background. (In

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

9 “Juan is massaged”. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. In: Grix, 1935: 96-97, fig. 22.

the photo kept in the museum archive the caption reads “Runners of the ­Tarahumara”.) Figure 20 shows several men standing with bamboo sticks in their hands (“At the Start of the Carrera”). Another action shot – Figure 21 – shows numerous runners and a supporter running alongside cheering them on (“After 18 hours”).60 The motif in most of these photographs was framed in such a way that it does not include any non-indigenous elements, such as the mestizos who made up the majority of the inhabitants of the village of Creel. Figure 22 (“Juan is Massaged”) is exceptional in this series. 61 It is the only photo­graph to show the inter-ethnic context of the race. The portrayed runner Juan Masseira is sitting on a chair typical for a mestizo household and is being massaged by – judging by his clothes and his moustache – a mestizo. Grix men­ tions in the text that the mestizo inhabitants of Creel bet on the race as well, that is, they bet on the runners from Bocoyna (possibly because this community is located closer to Creel).

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As the highlight of the narrative the German sports reporter discusses his ex­ periment in the chapter “Aurelio’s Marathon”. Grix invited six Tarahumara and two mestizos to participate in a classical 42-kilometre marathon which they were to run without kicking the small wooden ball as would have been typical for local races. He offered the winner of this race a sack of beans. Grix was particularly pleased that Tomas Zafiro, who had finished in first place at the 144-kilometre race held at the University of Texas, would take part. He accompanied the runners in an old Ford car and took interim times every five kilometres. Grix is full of wonder of the run­ ning style of these indigenes and of the pace they set at the beginning of the race.62 But he attributes the sharp drop in the pace in the last third of the distance less to inexperience with the marathon format than to a lack of intellect.63 Finally, a young runner named Aurelio Francisco crosses the finish line in a time of 2 hours, 50 minutes. In his subsequent analysis, Grix feels confirmed in a whole series of discriminatory assumptions, including that long-distance runners were “relatively primitive people” in comparison to sprinters. He seems keen to support the escalation in the global development of sports to increasingly quantifiable performances with his arguments. Faster, higher stronger (citius, altius, fortius) was the motto of the modern Olympic Games. Still, Grix admired the freshness with which Aurelio Francisco mastered the marathon distance, the almost playful ease with which he achieved “what our modern runners have only been able to accomplish since one generation, and that only by means of purposeful, intelligent training”.64 But he also assumes that athletic qualities of a Naturvolk like the Tarahumara were determined genetically and less a result of a cultural achievement. In doing so he ignores the fact that the Tarahumara runners do train regularly for the local and regional races that take place according to a specific pattern between spring and autumn.65 Grix’ detailed explanations for the amazing endurance of the Tarahumara, which he does respect as such, betray his difficulties in interpreting these athletic achieve­ ments according to his prefashioned evolutionist and racist model and values. He had to admit, that the runners of the marathon experiment were in good shape even without modern training, in better shape than their civilised contemporaries and in better condition than the Argentine marathon runner Zabala. Grix discusses in great detail the ‘perfect’, inherently athletic bodies of the Tarahumara runners which in his view were naturally given; in contrast modern, civilised men had to train laboriously to acquire such bodies.66 Grix also conveys this inherent dynamism and vitality in individual portraits, such as that of the following young man. He chose to frame the photograph of this young man showing his turning face and one of his naked shoulders slightly from below. This

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

10 “Happy and satisfied”. Photographer: Arthur E. Grix, 1932. In: Grix, 1935, fig 32. EMB, VIII E Nls 484.

perspective from below, the slight blur of the motion, the broad smile and waving hair of the young Rarámuri underline a feeling of dynamism and well-being. In total, the photographs chosen by Arthur E. ­Grix to show the Tarahumara are founded in an aesthe­tic that was already well established in the Weimar Republic that stressed dynamic movement, combative athleticism, physical presence and an enthusiastic zest for life.67 Although he portrayed the Tarahumara as a Naturvolk, the aesthetics common of sports images he employed promote seeing them as the direct precursors of the modern athlete. What effect did these photographs have on the German readers of the mid 1930s if we – as described at the beginning of this chapter – consider them part of a visual economy of an early globalisation of sport in which the Tarahumara were ascribed a fixed place? I have not been able to identify any other reception of Grix’ publication beyond the letter written by Preuss cited above. Grix’ photographs and accounts were published in the period after the Nacional Socialists’ seizure of power and in a time when Nazi popularity was at its highest and they must be understood in this context. The Nacional Socialists saw sport as a secular cult of physical strength and endurance that glorified winners and held losers in contempt.68 Grix was not only a

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member of the Sportclub Charlottenburg but also editor from September 1933 to 1935 of its club magazine Schwarzes C. ­A few months before taking up this position, that is, in the spring of 1933, the Sportclub Charlottenburg had introduced, like so many other clubs in Germany, a so-called Aryan paragraph into its charter and stripped its Jewish members of their membership status.69 The club was also among the first to call into being a military athletics division (Wehrsportabteilung). Grix’ reflections and photographic visualisation of the sports of the Naturvolk of the Tarahumara may from today’s perspective appear as something not directly related with these developments in a German sports clubs and German politics. However, they do fit well into this time since they could easily be read as a confirmation of the different physical attributes that Nazi propaganda saw as separating the ‘human races’ and that it ascribed to allegedly fundamental differences in their athletic prowess.

Bibliography Bahro, Berno. 2009. “Vom Umgang mit der eigenen nationalsozialistischen Geschichte – das Beispiel eines Berliner Traditionsvereins.” In Vergessen, verdrängt, abgelehnt – Zur Geschichte der Ausgrenzung im Sport, edited by Arnd Krüger and Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, 117 – 139. Münster: LIT. Basauri, Carlos. 1929. Monografía de los tarahumaras. Mexiko City: Talleres Gráficos de la Nación. Blanchard, Kendall. 2000. “Anthropology of Sport.” In Handbook of Sport Studies, edited by Jay J. ­Coakley and Eric Dunning, 144 – 156. London: Sage. Bode, Andreas. 2008. Fußball zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Alltag, Medien, Künste, Stars. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Buendía Aguirre, Pablo et al. 1927. Pro México. La Carrera Tarahumara. The Tarahumara Race. Mexico City: [n. p.]. Corona Berkin, Sarah. 2011. “Guía para el análisis visual del sujeto político. La fotografía étnica.” In Pura imágen, edited by Sarah Corona Berkin, 48 – 66. Mexico City: CONACULTA. Dyreson, Mark. 2004. “The Foot Runners Conquer Mexico and Texas: Endurance Racing, Indigenism, and Nationalism.” Journal of Sport History 31(1): 1 – 31. Grix, Arthur E. 1932. Olympische Tage in Los Angeles. Berlin: Emil Wernitz. Grix, Arthur E. 1935. Unter Olympiakämpfern und Indianerläufern. Berlin: Wilhelm Limpert. Krüger, Arnd. 2003. “Germany. The Propaganda Machine.” In The Nazi Olympics. Sports, Politics, and Appeasement in the 1930s, edited by Arnd Krüger and William J. ­Murray, 17 – 43. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kummels, Ingrid. 2001. “Reflecting Diversity: Variants of the Legendary Footraces of the Rarámuri in Northern Mexico.” Ethnos 66(1): 73 – 98. Kummels, Ingrid. 2007. Land, Nahrung und Peyote: Soziale Identität von Rarámuri und ­Mestizen nahe der Grenze USA-Mexiko. Berlin: Reimer.

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s

Kummels, Ingrid. 2013a. “Anthropological Perspectives on Sport and Culture: Against Sports as the Essence of Western Modernity.” In Sport Across Asia: Politics, Cultures, and Identities, edited by Kathrin Bromber, Birgit Krawietz, and Joseph MaGuire, 11 – 31. London: Routledge. Kummels, Ingrid. 2013b. “Indigenismos populares y transnacionales en torno a los tarahumaras de principios del siglo XX: la concepción de la modernidad a partir del deporte, de la fotografía y del cine.” Historia Mexicana (Mexico City) LXII(4): 1549 – 1605. Lumholtz, Carl. 1973 [1902]. Unknown Mexico. 2 volumes. Glorieta, New Mexico: Rio Grande Press. McGehee, Richard V. 1993. “The Origins of Olympism in Mexico: the Central American Games of 1926.” International Journal of the History of Sport 10/3: 312 – 332. Mraz, John. 2009. Looking for Mexico. Modern Visual Culture and National Identity, Durham: Duke University Press. Nabokov, Peter. 1981. Indian Running. Native American History & Tradition. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Ancient City Press. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity. A Visual Economy of the Andean World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Thamm, Susanne. 1999. Von Cliff-Dwellers zu Troglodyten. Das Bild der Tarahumara in Reisebe­richten des Porfiriats. Berlin: Master Thesis, Lateinamerika-Institut der Freien Universität, Berlin. Walther, Christine. 2007. Siegertypen. Zur fotografischen Vermittlung eines gesellschaftlichen Selbstbildes um 1900. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Werron, Tobias. 2010. Der Weltsport und sein Publikum. Zur Autonomie und Entstehung des modernen Sports. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft.

Notes 1

2

3 4 5

“Es war mir eine große Freude, bei Ihrem Vortrag über Ihre Reise zu den Tarahumara eine so eingehende Darstellung der sportlichen Leistungen dieser Indianer zu vernehmen. Es ist in der Tat auch für die Ethnologie von Bedeutung, authentische Angaben über die Laufleistungen sowohl bezüglich der zurückgelegten Wege als auch bezüglich der dabei gebrauchten Zeiten zu haben.”, Grix 1935, 3. So Preuss in a letter to Grix that the latter reprinted in the foreword of Unter Olympiakämpfern und Indianerläufern. The reporter was thrilled about this recognition on the part of academia, noting that he had visited the Tarahumara as a mere ‘traveller, athlete and photographer’ and not as a scholar. I assume Grix took the initiative and offered the photos to the Museum but have not found any correspondence on the subject that might verify this. It may well be the case that Grix and Preuss first met on the occasion of the mentioned lecture. Wettläufer der Tarahumara. “100.000 Menschen […] in einer steinernen Riesenwanne kribbeln wie Insekten auf einer süßen Kruste”, Grix 1935, 6 – 7. “dem Sport und insbesondere der Leichtathletik mit allen Fasern [meines Körpers] verfallen”, Grix 1932, 5.

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7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21 22

23

Cf. http://www.literaturport.de/index.php?id=26&user_autorenlexikonfrontend_pi1[al_ aid]=781&user_ autorenlexikonfrontend_pi1[al_opt]=1&cHash=3c339ce7598076293e9a­ f699a2691b29 To capture the changing place of sports in various societies and cultures over longer pe­ riods, it requires a broad and inclusive definition of sport as physically based competitive activities and body cultures. Until the late 1970s, many scholars assumed a structural difference between religiously motivated “traditional” sports and “modern” competitive athletics, Kummels 2013a. “einen laufenden dunklen Menschen im Lendenschurz”, Grix 1935, 23. Grix 1935, 24 – 25. “den Laufleistungen eines sagenhaften Indianervolkes auf den Grund gehen”, Grix 1932, 26. Grix 1935, 14. “Aurelio nimmt einen Flusslauf ”. While the picture on the cover of the book was retouched with the intent to sharpen the image, the body of the runner and especially his face nevertheless display rough contours. Poole 1997. Mraz 2009. Poole 1997, 8. Corona Berkins 2011. Lumholtz 1973 [1902], 160. Cf. Lumholtz 1973 [1902], XII, 421. Lumholtz used the term cave-dwellers repeatedly in the titles of articles that he published about the Rarámuri. According to Thamm (1999, 11 – 12), the American fascination with this trope at the end of the 19th century can be tied to the desire to associate an American national identity with indigenous origins and thus project it far back into prehistory. To be exact, this photograph was retouched for the publication. Lumholtz (1973 [1902], 170 – 171) does not say anything explicitly about this woman he called Belle, but he does address the relationship of the Tarahumara to their caves. Lumholtz 1973 [1902], 276 – 295. The running prowess of the Tarahumara in their own competitions was first men­ tioned by the Jesuits during the colonial period (Kummels 2001). Lumholtz describes their running skills as follows: “No doubt the Tarahumares are the greatest runners in the world, not in regard to speed, but endurance. A Tarahumare will easily run 170 miles without stopping”, 1973 [1902], 282. Elsewhere he writes: “They do not run at an extraordinary speed, but very steadily, hour after hour, mile after mile. Good runners make forty miles in six or eight hours. At one race, when they covered according to my calculations twenty-one miles in two hours, I timed the leading runner and found that he made 290 feet in nineteen seconds on the first circuit, and on the next in twenty-four seconds. At a race rehearsal I saw them cover four miles in half an hour”, Lumholtz 1973 [1902], 291 – 292. Lumholtz 1973 [1902], 282.

Indigenous long-distance runners and the globalisation of sport in the 1930s 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Until that time the Chihuahuan blancos (whites) discriminated the Tarahumara in the spirit of colonialism as drunken and lazy indios. In scholarship the non-indigenous popu­ lation of Mexico is mostly designated as mestizo in view of the homogenising national model of mestizaje. The dominant population in Chihuahua in contrast identified itself as blancos or gente de razón (rational people). Indios like the Rarámuri were denigrated as ‘others’ and as second class citizens that allegedly lacked a communal, sedentary lifestyle, rationality and other characteristics of ‘civilisation’, Kummels 2007, 140 – 145. Kummels 2007, 155 – 163. Law for the Improvement of the Tarahumara Race. Kummels 2007, 150 – 151, 274. Ministry of Education. Basauri 1929, 35. Basauri 1929, 35. Raza (race) was at that time considered to be based either on inherited and “psychological” (that is, internal) factors or (external) environmental factors. Basauri adhered to neo-Lamarckian ideas according to which an “improvement of the race” was possible by means of “social hygiene,” that is, better nutrition and the avoidance of alcoholic beverages such as corn beer, Kummels 2007, 162. Kummels 2013b. Dyreson 2004, 3. Werron 2010. Paavo Nurmi won the 10,000 metre race in the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp and domi­ nated the long-distance running disciplines until 1932 when he was banned from the Olympic Games due to violating his amateur status. Nabokov 1981, 182. The Central American Sporting Games. McGehee 1993, 314. Dyreson 2004. “[…] pone(r) de relieve las extraordinarias facultades de los indios de la Sierra de ­Chihuahua”, “sirve para llevar al público un aspecto de México, que en el extranjero borrará la leyenda negra que le niega, por obra de la ignorancia y la calumnia, todo motivo de elevación nacional”, Buendía Aguirre et al., 1927, 3. “Qué dirán ahora, cuando dos indios, como los tarahumares, de quienes creíamos que sólo eran capaces de embriagarse con ‘tesgüino’ y de envenenarse con ‘peyote’, han asombrado al mundo entero en la pujante demonstración física como fué la ‘Carrera Tarahumara’?”, Buendía Aguirre et al. 1927, 46. The black legend of the time was based on the fact that some regions of Mexico continued to be insecure after the end of the Revolution. Buendía Aguirre et al. 1927, 7 and 9. Buendía Aguirre et al. 1927, 11. Buendía Aguirre et al. 1927, 13. Little governor. Buendía Aguirre et al. 1927, 17. Kummels 2013b. Blanchard 2000, 146.

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Ingrid Kummels 48 49

50 51 52

53 54 55 56

57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Grix 1935, 26. “sowohl A. ­Terrazas als auch J. ­Torres [endeten] im geschlagenen Felde” und rannten eine Zeit “was immerhin ein gutes Stück vom Weltrekord entfernt ist.” Aus diesem Grund zieht er den Schluss: “Die Marathonstrecke erfordert eben schon eine gewisse Schnelligkeit, gute Tempoverteilung und ein intelligentes Training – Dinge, die den Tarahumara fremd sind”, Grix 1935, 117. Grix 1935, 8 – 9. Cf. Walther 2007. “Diese drei so verschiedenen Läufer bewegen sich unter vielen anderen, die der Welt­ ball hier zusammengewürfelt hat. Finstere Finnen hocken auf dem Rasen, daneben lächelnde Japaner, heißblütige Argentinier, kühle Schweden. Jeder einzelne hat sein Schicksal. Nichts hat in ihren ersten Lebensjahren darauf hingedeutet, dass sie einst Olympiakämpfer sein werden. Hier hilft kein Rang, keine Protektion, keine vornehme Herkunft. […] Ihr einziges Rüstzeug ist ihr Körper, den sie durch unermüdliche Arbeit zur Erzielung besonderer Leistungen hergerichtet haben”, Grix 1935, 9. “Wie sind die sportlichen Leistungen der Naturvölker einzuschätzen?”, Grix 1935, 9. “Es sind immer nur die vollkommen Zivilisierten, die sportlich leistungsfähig sind.”, Grix 1935, 176. Grix 1935, 52 – 59. “Mein erstes Empfinden ist: Gott, ist das ein schöner, edler Menschenschlag! Was für ein Unterschied zwischen diesen von Luft und Sonne gestählten Naturmenschen und den dickbäuchigen, kurzarmigen, fettbrünstigen Mexikanern der Umgebung! Er ist klein und zierlich, nicht größer als 1,60 Meter, doch sehnig und rassig, nicht besonders muskulös, aber durchwegs gut proportioniert.”, Grix 1935, 57. “Die Wohnhöhle im Felsmassiv”, “Altes Paar vor der Wohnhöhle”, “Mutter und Kind” and “Ein Hundertjähriger”. “Wie ich höre, ist ein besonderes Lauftraining für die große Carrera [Rennen] nicht erforderlich. Das Laufen ist den Indianern angeboren wie den Vögeln das Fliegen”, Grix 1935, 85. “Junge Läufer begleiten mich”, “Wettobjekte von Indianern bewacht” “Der Buchmacher”. “Die Wunderläufer der Sierra/Wettläufer der Tarahumara”, “Am Start der Carrera” and “Nach 18stündigem Lauf ”. “Juan wird massiert”, Grix 1935, fig. 22. Grix 1935, 147. Grix 1935, 152. “unsere modernen Läufer erst seit einem Menschenalter durch zielbewußtes, intelligente Training erreicht haben.”, Grix 1935, 154. On the complexity of Rarámuri races see Kummels 2001. Grix 1935, 154 – 155. Cf. Bode 2008. Krüger 2003, 21. Bahro 2009, 129.

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FRANZ THIEL

Abel Briquet’s Photograph Collection

The Frenchman Alfred Saint Ange Briquet (1833 – 1926), better known as Abel Briquet, is considered to have been one of the first modern, commercial photographers in Mexico. Not much is known about his early life in France. He became known to a wider audience through his work in Mexico in the 1870s where he was commissioned to photograph the new railway. In 1885, he opened a photography studio in Mexico City. Over the next 25 years, he published 13 successful photographic series on behalf of different contractors or developed them himself. His works typically show landscapes, cityscapes and ‘typical’ scenes, as well as flora and fauna. Oliver Debroise and Stella de Sá Rego point out that Briquet’s later series, in particular, challenged contemporary clichés about Mexican photography as they extensively depicted economic progress, luxurious buildings and other modern structures.1 Today, various museums in Europe and the United States have prints of his works in their collections. The collection ‘Historical Photography from Latin America’ in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin encompasses 37 albumen prints taken by Abel Briquet. Another 84 can probably be ascribed to the French photographer due to similarities in style, theme, space and numbering in the old inventory books. The photographs in Berlin are mainly from his Vistas Mexicanas (1880 – 1895) and Tipos Mexicanos (mid-1880s) series. They present extraordinary views of landscapes and cityscapes as well as ‘typical scenes’ from Mexico City and Veracruz. All of his works demonstrate a profound understanding of composition and perspec­ tive. He perfectly positioned people along lines of perspective. In some of his pictures, he seems to have meticulously staged entire streets full of people for his long exposure shots. The style of these photographs is based on the visual standards of early travel photography. Casanova showed that standards in this field can be attributed to the Hungarian geologist Pál Rosty.2 Rosty took photographs of landscapes, monuments, ruins and industrious scenes on his journey following Humboldt’s tracks through central Mexico in 1858. By the end of the century, and when Briquet was in Mexico, this genre had evolved into its own art form. Briquet was one of the first photographers to document technical progress in Mexico in detail. Like the US-born photographer Charles B. ­Waite, he was con­ tracted various times to take pictures of new railway lines, harbours and industrial plants that had been built during a time of economic growth in the second half of

Franz Thiel

1 The village of Chalco, Mexico. Photographer: Abel Briquet, before 1888. EMB, VIII E 291. 2 Tunnel of Metlac, Estado de Veracruz, Mexico. Photographer: Abel Briquet. EMB, VIII E Nls 602 (P 4744).

Abel Briquet’s Photograph Collection

3 Indigenous women carrying water. Photographer: Abel Briquet. EMB, VIII E 1803.

the nineteenth century. These images belong to a photographic genre that focused on depicting modern civilization and technical progress. In Mexican Suite, Debroise and de Sá Rego emphasize that these images “show aspects unlike the traditional and more commonplace views made by other photographers for the tourist market”.3 The authors add that Briquet’s images of modern and high-class neighbourhoods in particular show Mexico’s orientation towards the West, which the government of Porfirio Diaz surely supported. Briquet also followed the photographic conventions of the time. A small number of his photos from now held in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, and which form part of his Tipos Mexicanos series, depict supposedly typical professions. The pictures above illustrate how Briquet used the opportunity to photograph two water carriers while actually contracted to document the railroad lines we can see in the background. Briquet precisely arranged the people in this and his other photographs at a 45-degree angle and paid close attention to detail and composition in his images.

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4 A family in front of their hut peeling and drying coffee beans. Photographer: Abel Briquet, before 1907. EMB, VIII E 1812.

Like a modern stock photographer, Briquet created pictures on different topics using the same subjects in a variety of contexts. For instance, the subjects in Fig. 5 can be found on images in different contexts and surroundings in the online photo­ graphic collection of the University of Texas, Austin. Briquet effectively used the same ‘models’ to appear in different scenes, for instance, as workers on a coffee plantation or extras in a landscape. Like other professional photographers, Briquet was probably interested in p­ roducing a range of typical or extraordinary scenes and landscapes along the road, which tourists, travellers and collectors would be willing to buy. Since the 1860s, a network of exchange for this kind of photography had started to develop between various photography studios.4 Briquet’s images were sold in a handcraft and souvenir shop belonging to D. ­S. Spaulding in Mexico City.5 Among the customers were collectors, travellers and patrons that later contributed to the collection in Berlin. As in other parts of Latin America, these customers probably purchased images for scientific purposes from local photographers and publishing houses during their travels.6 More than half of Briquet’s pictures held by the Ethnologisches Museum were among the 342 photographs that were given to the institution by Arthur Baessler.7

Abel Briquet’s Photograph Collection

5 Two persons crossing a bridge. Estado de Veracruz, Mexico. Photographer: Abel Briquet. EMB, VIII E 2242.

Baessler had acquired them along with thousands of other objects of interest during his third research trip, which led him to the United States (1885 – 1898). He carefully noted down short descriptions of the images on their mounting boards as well as in old inventory books. Briquet’s beautiful images of cities, landscapes and tipos seem to be of little use to modern ethnography because of the lack of cultural context these objects provide for research. From a modern point of view, it seems that these images were acquired due to their aesthetic power rather than their ethnographical value. The fact that customers were interested in Briquet’s images sheds light on the contemporary culture of collecting and the value ascribed to photographs at the time. Travellers interested in ethnography often bought objects that simply caught their attention in some way. Considering the revolutionary, scientific and practical qualities ascribed to photography as a medium, it is easy to imagine how well these images might have served travellers as presentations of the cultures and countries they aimed to document.

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Bibliography Casanova, Rosa. 2005. “De vistas y retratos: la construcción de un repertorio fotográfico en México, 1839 – 1890.” In Imaginarios y fotografía en México 1839 – 1970, edited by Rosa Casanova, Alberto del Castillo Troncoso, Rebeca Monroy Nasr and Alfonso Morales, 3 – 23. Barcelona: conaculta-inah/Lunwerg. Debroise, Oliver and Stella de Sá Rego. 2001. Mexican Suite: A History of Photography in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fischer, Manuela. 2006. “Arthur Baessler (1857 – 1907): Visionär und Mäzen der Amerika­ nischen Archäologie.” Baessler-Archiv (Berlin): 17 – 28. Jäger, Jens. 2009. Fotografie und Geschichte. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus. Krase, Andreas. 1994. “‘Von der Wildheit der Scenerie eine deutliche Vorstellung.’ Die Foto­ grafiesammlung von Alphons Stübel und Wilhelm Reiss aus Lateinamerika 1868 – 1877.” In Spurensuche. Zwei Erdwissenschaftler im Südamerika des 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Andreas Brockmann and Michaela Stüttgen, 145 – 159. Unna: Kreis Unna und Latein­ amerika-Zentrum der Universität Münster.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Debroise and de Sá Rego 2001, 82. Canova 2005, 11. Canova 2005, 81. Krase 1994, 147. Debroise and de Sá Rego 2001, 81. Jäger 2009, 175. Fischer 2006, 24.

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Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

Many travellers and explorers dug around the famous Mayan ruins in late nine­ teenth-century Mexico, but no other was as thorough, imposed upon himself such high standards and was such an enigmatic personality as Teobert Maler (1842 – 1917). Maler did not come to Mayan archaeology through formal training in the field or related disciplines or because he had been commissioned by one of the big European or North American museums or learned societies. Nor was he sent to the Yucatan as honorary consul and instead used the majority of his time to dig up antiquities. Quite the contrary, Maler dedicated roughly thirty years of his adult life to exploring the Mayan area out of personal and intrinsic interest. He forged his own career as a photographer, archaeologist and Mayan specialist, reaching out to different museums and individuals in order to support his efforts. This brief account of Maler’s life and work focusing on his efforts to promote his photographic oeuvre among ethnological museums, such as the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, demonstrates the ways in which Maler successfully advanced his archaeological career and fame as an explorer and photographer, but also how his very success ­hampered his commercial project of selling a grand atlas of Yucatecan antiquities. It also provides a glimpse into the beginnings of a new discipline and how early archaeology was being undertaken by adventurous travellers such as Teobert Maler, who went out of his way to create a detailed inventory of Mexican ruins. Maler was born in Rome on 12 January 1842. The Malers were natives of the Grand Duchy of Baden, where they belonged to a well-established, educated bourgeoisie with careers in the military, civil service, medicine and teaching.1 Before Teobert had reached two years of age, his mother passed away, and he and his sister remained under the sole care of their father, whom he remembers with bitterness in his autobiography, Life of my Youth (Leben meiner Jugend).2 In 1859, aged 17, Teobert left the town of Baden-Baden to enrol at the Polytechnische Schule in Karlsruhe, where he studied engineering and archi­ tecture from 1859 to 1861, taking classes in construction and engineering as well as in the arts.3 In 1862, he left Karlsruhe for Vienna, where he joined the studio of Heinrich von Ferstel, an architect who had risen to fame by building the Votivkirche and who was involved in the construction of many of the new historical-style buildings on Ringstrasse.4

Claudine Leysinger

When he came of age in 1863, he sued his father for his share of his mother’s inheri­ tance, which according to the civil code of Baden (Badisches Landrecht) constituted half of his mother’s assets. He managed to obtain 15,750 gulden (8,978 taler) out of the 21,000 gulden (11,970 taler) his mother had left him.5 This newly gained financial security enabled him to quit his job at Ferstel’s studio and travel to Paris and London. In late August 1864, aged twenty-two, he went to Laibach, where he enrolled as a cadet with the first pioneer company of Maximilian von Habsburg’s Austro-Belgian volunteer corps, which were destined to leave for Mexico. In mid-November of the same year, he was aboard the ship Boliviana, which brought him to Veracruz.6 The documents on Maler’s life do not clearly indicate why he left Germany for Mexico, and even more so, why he ended up staying in Mexico for the greater part of his life. It is possible that he enrolled in the Austro-Belgian volunteer corps in search of adventure and a military career. It is just as plausible, however, that he chose to support an Austrian prince because he admired the Austrian Habsburgs. His autobiographical manuscripts, on the other hand, provide clearer indications about why he stayed in Mexico and dedicated most of his life to the exploration of this country. Fascination with the country’s ancient past is already apparent in his first manuscript. It mentions the ruins in Papantla and his desire to study Nahuatl, and more generally demonstrates how he became increasingly interested in examining Mexico’s ancient past. Maler arrived in a country that was unstable in numerous ways. Since its in­ dependence from Spain in 1821, Mexico had witnessed dozens of regime changes, insurgencies, military uprisings, civil wars, foreign intervention, and different consti­ tutions that ranged from liberal federalism to conservative centralism. The presence of a Habsburg as emperor of Mexico in 1864 was the result of foreign intervention, led by the French in 1861, to enforce the debt payments that the republican presi­ dent, Benito Juárez, had defaulted on. The French army entered a divided country that had just emerged from the Three Years War, which had pitted liberals against conservatives. The liberals had won in 1860, and Juárez had been elected president in early 1861. When the French army entered Mexico, many conservatives saw them as liberators, preferring them to the liberals, and thus granted them their support. The French expeditionary force took the capital in 1863, and Juárez fled to the north of the country, where he kept his government running. Napoleon III, in concert with the Mexican conservatives, installed Maximilian von Habsburg, the younger brother of Franz Joseph (the Austrian Emperor), as Emperor of Mexico. This left Juárez and his troops to fight a long guerrilla war. In order not to depend fully on the French expeditionary forces, Maximilian organized a volunteer corps to provide support

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

to his empire, which eventually constituted the nucleus of the new national army.7 Teobert Maler enlisted with these volunteers. In 1865, Maler was active in the Sierra de Puebla – a mountainous area in the northeast of the state of Puebla – and participated in the advance on several towns. He earned a number of medals for military merit in that year. He then changed to the auxiliary troops belonging to the National Imperial Army, where he was promoted to lieutenant on 11 November 1865.8 In the first half of 1866, he enjoyed a quiet assignment in Chapultepec, around Maximilian’s castle, and he used its relative tranquillity to study the Aztec language with Don Faustino Galicia Chimalpopoca, a descendant of Aztec nobility and a scholar of pre-Columbian history.9 Early on during his Mexican adventure, Maler had systematically approached the Mesoamerican past. Although by the end of 1865, the French expeditionary forces had managed to push Juárez further north to Paso del Norte, a town on the border with what is now the United States, known today as Ciudad Juárez, the military situation turned against the empire in 1866. Napoleon III decided to withdraw his troops as a result of ex­ ternal and internal pressures, and Maximilian was unable to engage more Austrian volunteers as his brother, Emperor Franz Joseph, was facing the threat of imminent war with Prussia, and pressure from the United States, which was no longer embroiled in civil war.10 Republican troops started moving towards central Mexico, where the shaky empire maintained its greatest control. The French expeditionary corps and the Austro-Belgian volunteers left Mexico at the end of 1866, but Maler stayed on and became a captain in the Imperial Mexican Army. In February 1867, only four cities were still loyal to the Emperor: Querétaro, Mexico, Puebla, and Veracruz. Maler’s last task was the defence of the capital, where he fought until 19 June 1867, when news of the death of Maximilian and his generals reached Mexico City.11 As republican troops entered Mexico City, Maler refused to surrender and went into hiding, unlike the remaining European volunteers. In March 1868, after a few months of hiding, he returned to the capital. By that time, it was safe again for him to move around freely. He then crisscrossed the Mexican countryside, first travelling to Querétaro by stagecoach, and later to Celaya, Salamanca and Irapuato. Until 1873, he spent most of his time in the Bajío, in today’s states of Querétaro, Guanajuato, Michoacán and Jalisco.12 In September 1873, he took a steamer from Manzanillo to Acapulco, from where he continued to the Mixteca baja – a region along the Pacific coast and the Sierra Madre del Sur – in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. He spent the following years in Oaxaca, staying several months in a row in different towns and taking a variety of photographs – mostly studio portraits of indigenous people. In early March 1876, he received news of his father’s death and decided to travel to

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Mexico City in order to sign a proxy for his lawyer in Baden-Baden.13 The same year he returned to Tehuantepec in the Isthmus region. He lived in Tehuantepec from late May 1876 until 4 February 1877, when he c­ ontinued on his journey into the state of Chiapas. He visited the Cañon del Sumidero near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, and was deeply impressed by its natural beauty; he then continued to San Cristóbal de las Casas – the old capital of Chiapas – only to proceed a few days later to Palenque, where he stayed for two months. In Palenque he conducted his first substantial archaeological exploration, which he used for two articles published a couple of years later. In mid-August 1877, he returned to San Cristóbal, where he remained until 10 January 1878. At that point, he decided to return to Europe in order to collect his inheritance and visit the World Fair in Paris. This decade, which Maler dedicated to explorations of central and southern Mexico, constituted the grounds for his first articles, as well as his unpublished manuscript Voyage of Captain Maler from Mexico City to Tehuantepec, 1876,14 and it gave him time to hone his skills in photography. Maler began taking photographs in Mexico during a time when journeys of all kind – be it of imperialistic, exploratory, scientific, artistic, or leisurely nature – had to be documented. Photographic technology, which had been fast improving since its relatively recent invention in 1839, offered new possibilities to record the vistas and foreign people encountered. When François Arago announced Daguerre’s invention in 1839, he explicitly pointed out the usefulness of this new medium for archaeologists to reproduce hieroglyphs in Egypt. Photography quickly became the most popular medium to reproduce archaeological constructions.15 Archaeological travellers most appreciated photography’s precision, accuracy, and the speed of reproducing monu­ ments, glyphs and sculptures. In Mexico, it was the French explorer Désiré Charnay who took the earliest surviving images of archaeological constructions during his first exploratory journey between 1857 and 1860.16 Even though the political situation in Mexico became a lot calmer after the vic­ tory of the liberals in 1867, the time between 1867 and 1876, known as the Restored Republic, was nevertheless agitated. Armed conflicts, ranging from local rebellions to large-scale uprisings erupted all over the country. In addition, banditry was ram­ pant. When Porfirio Díaz, a republican army general who had helped Benito Juárez to regain control in 1867, took power in 1876, he put internal stability on top of his agenda. The Porfiriato (1876 – 1910) was an era of relative domestic peace, political stability and economic progress; it was orchestrated by Díaz and the political elite through a mix of patronage and coercion.17 Maler did not directly experience the early years of the relative peace of the ­Porfiriato. He stayed in Europe between 1878 and 1885, where he travelled a great deal, visiting

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Trieste, Venice and Baden-Baden, and went on an almost two-year long journey to Constantinople and the Caucasus. He also used the time in Europe to read primary and secondary sources on Mexican history, to contact French and German Americanists, to learn the newest trends in photography, purchase state-of-the-art equipment, and above all to engage in several protracted lawsuits with the Prussian government to obtain his father’s assets. During the time he spent in Europe, Maler gave a talk at the Société de Géographie in Paris in January 1880, accompanied by “40 projections”,18 and published five papers in French scientific journals, suggesting that his early network was strongest within the French scientific community.19 These papers increased his standing among European Americanist circles and enabled him to start carving out a place in this scientific community. Not only did he use his time in Europe to give talks and publish papers, he also reached out to scientific establishments such as the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. In September 1878, he gave several photographs of Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Tehuanas, people from Chiapas, as well as photographs of Palenque and Mitla to the museum in Berlin “as a gift for the ethnographic department”.20 The roughly 35 photographs of the 1878 bequest were mostly of indigenous women and of a small size (roughly 10 × 6 cm), typical of cartes de visite.21 This visual sample of his work was surely intended to market his exploratory efforts and maybe to gain support for his future explorations, which after 1885 were focused on the Mayan area. These photographs represent a visual companion to his early travels through Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas and to the articles that resulted from these trips. They represent an interesting mix of photographs of Palenque and Mitla – both panoramic views and close-ups of reliefs like the one of the foliated cross in ­Palenque (EMB, VIII E Nls 359, IV Ca 4626)–as well as a majority of studio portraits of indigenous people. The studio photographs of indigenous people were taken in the typical style of cartes de visite. These small photographs were produced en masse all over the globe; their production was relatively cheap and their distribution wide­ spread.22 His carte de visite photographs of indios from Mixteca baja, Tehuantepec or Chiapas seem to have been produced mostly for the people who solicited his portraits. He did not attempt to commercialize his pictures of indigenous people on such a grand scale as C. ­B. Waite or A. ­Briquet. Instead, he sold or gave some of them to museums (such as the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University), but the scarcity of these early portraits of indigenous people as vintage prints in the various archives reveals that they were primarily produced for the local, individual market and not to feed armchair anthropologists in Europe.

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1 Tehuana women. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1876. EMB, VIII E Nls 343.

A closer look at two of these studio photographs further underscores the impression that the images were produced for the local market. The Tehuana women (Fig. 1) are posed in elaborate dresses: according to the description by Maler, they are wearing their “Festtracht”, festive regalia typical of their town. The women are standing next to a curtain, which was one of the typical props of bourgeois portraits in nineteenth-­ century studio photography. The Zapotec women stand rigidly, partly due to the fact that they are balancing large gourds on their heads. Their gazes reveal concentration and awareness of their posture. The photograph’s caption also indicates that Maler wanted to emphasize their costume. By doing so, he highlights gender-specific and cultural aspects that were simultaneously an indication of type and place as well as the women’s way of demonstrating their individuality. The focus on their attire most certainly reflected these women’s preferences: the sumptuousness of their costumes,

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

2 Zapotec boy from the Tehuantepec region. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1876. EMB, VIII E Nls 351.

their lace headdresses and lavishly embroidered huipiles.23 Dresses that were made of splendid textiles and their abundant jewellery reflect the economic strength of the Zapotec Indians of the Isthmus, who dominated commerce in the region.24 The two Tehuana women may well have solicited their own portrait. The portrait of a Zapotec boy from the Tehuantepec region (Fig. 2) is one of very few studio photographs from the time of a boy or of men.25 The photograph has a documentary and an ethnographic feel. As opposed to the two Tehuana women (Fig. 1), the boy is not staged in an elaborate studio setting; he stands in what appears to be an untidy room, suggested by dust and a rag on the floor. The unadorned setting evokes the candidness of a documentary image, but the narrow focus on the naked boy, as well as his pose and well-proportioned body, which seem to mimic a classical Greek sculpture, are the staged elements of a studio photograph. The image of the boy

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3 Partial view of the “Pyramid of the Magician”. The main temple and the front temple on the west side of the third building, Uxmal, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1893. EMB, VIII E 883.

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

4 The northern side of the Palace of Columns with the expedition members, Mitla, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1875. EMB, VIII E Nls 366.

fetching water comes close to a type photograph showing different local occupations. Yet, the boy’s proud posture nevertheless suggests ownership of the image. There are few vintage prints of studio portraits available in the different reposi­ tories that own photographs by Maler, which makes this bequest all the more valuable. Only the Peabody Museum at Harvard University has a larger holding of Maler’s early photographs, certainly also due to the fact that they acquired Maler’s personal photo album in 2003.26 The photographs in Berlin reveal Maler’s early focus, which in very important ways was of ethnographic as well as archaeological nature. The depiction of people and buildings as vestiges of a past grandeur very much represent his early approach to exploring Mexico. Later on, he would focus more narrowly on depicting archaeological sites, and the people portrayed therein became extras. Figure 3, which focuses on a pre-structure of the central “Pirámide del adivino” in Uxmal, features an aide leaning against the façade, and exemplifies this kind of later photography. The aide’s main function was to convey a sense of height and the size of the structure – a role typical of archaeological photography of that time.

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The photographs of archaeological sites that Maler had visited early on in Mexico, such as Mitla and Palenque, were larger than the cartes de visite described in figure 1 and 2, which suggests that he chose a more elaborate way to produce photographs of archaeological structures than the almost mass-produced cartes de visite of indi­ genous people. It is possible, that he chose a bigger size of reproduction due to the larger dimension of archaeological sites. But it is also plausible that he decided to produce bigger and more artisanal large-format prints of archaeological sites because he had a different project in mind than just selling cheaply made images of ruins to local patrons. The early archaeological images of Mitla and Palenque foreshadow his later in­ terest and project, which he started in Yucatan in 1885: the meticulous depiction and description of Mayan ruins through beautifully staged and carefully printed photographs. Mitla was located in a rather open and arid area, and this may have induced Maler to shoot a panoramic view of these ruins so as to render them within their natural context. He may also have wanted to provide a bird’s eye view of the ruins, and combine them with more detailed close-ups to produce a good overview of the site. His later photographs of large archaeological cities such as Chichén Itzá or Uxmal were also characterized by panoramic views as well as images of more specific details. Early photographs of Mitla, such as figure 4, or the other photographs owned by the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin 27 of the same site suggest that he established his repertoire of how to take photographs of archaeological sites early on. Maler’s photographs of Mayan sites are not only remarkable because of their documentary character, the meticulous rendering of the entire site as well as the specific details they provide; they also have clear artistic value. Maler mastered the art of staging his photographs and bringing out the beauty of the places as well as their monumentality. The famous cities of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá presented great opportunities for monumental and panoramic vistas. Chichén Itzá and Uxmal were well known at the time and had been visited by scores of foreign explorers, such as John Lloyd Stephens, Frederick Catherwood, Désiré Charnay and Augustus Le Plongeon, as well as more and more tourists.28 Because of these two cities, the Yucatan was often referred to as the “Egypt of the Western Hemisphere”.29 Many of Maler’s photographs of these ruins captured their splendour. Instead of stressing an aspect of one particular structure, Maler underscores the sense of magnificence that was inspired by these monumental sites (cf. for example figures 5, 6 and 7). This grandeur is heightened by the frontal take of the images and by the fact that the architecture looms large; the temples generally fill the composition, as Maler chose to depict them with a low foreground.

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

5 “Pyramid of the Magician”, western facade, Uxmal, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1893. EMB, VIII E 894. 6 The Temple of the Jaguar. In the background on the right: “El Castillo”, western façade, Chichén Itzá, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1891/1892. EMB, VIII E 854.

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7 “El Castillo.” View from the west, Chichén Itzá, Mexico. Photographer: Teobert Maler, 1891/1892. EMB, VIII E 851.

Maler certainly sought to transmit the feeling of monumentality that Chichén Itzá and Uxmal had on visitors by taking panoramic vistas. Alfred M. ­Tozzer, a young Harvard-trained archaeologist and anthropologist who stayed with the US consul and archaeologist Edward Thompson at Chichén Itzá from January to March 1902, chronicled the impression these ruins left upon him. In a letter to his family, he described seeing the main structure, El Castillo, for the first time: “It is that of a wonderful temple-like structure built on a very high series of stone terraces. […] The whole effect is one of untold ages combined with wonderful beauty and grandeur.”30 Maler sought to capture this awe visually. He tried to convey a clearer sense of the size and scale of the pre-­ Hispanic cities themselves. The alternation between panoramic vistas and closer takes of the most spectacular structures of certain sites takes the viewer on a vicarious tour. The photograph, entitled “The Temple of the Jaguar” (Fig. 6), for example, focuses on this palace, but the fact that he included El Castillo in the background helps the viewer to situate the temple and to contextualize the site. Despite the artistic and documentary value of Maler’s archaeological photographs, he was not very successful at marketing them. After conducting his early explorations

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

of the Yucatan Peninsula individually without institutional support and in secret, he searched for ways to make his extensive oeuvre known. He wanted to publicize his photographs, maps and drawings, and made first attempts through Otto R ­ osenkranz, Germany’s ex-consul in Yucatan, whom he hoped would promote his work in Germany. Maler had set his mind on selling a Gran Atlas de Antigüedades Yucatecas; however, he never managed to publish this work as a book, because, as he indicates in his first letter to Rosenkranz dated 15 November 1893, the “oeuvre is so magnificent and comprehensive that [he] could never find a publishing house for it”.31 The way he envisioned his Gran Atlas as a loose assembly of interchangeable cardboard pages shows that he had an alternative plan that enabled him to sell his photographs to collectors without having to go through formal publication. In the mid-1890s, Maler was thus trying to market his artistic and exploratory oeuvre by producing a homemade atlas for sale. He told his friend Rosenkranz exactly how he intended to proceed. His explanations demonstrate his attempts to achieve perfection in publicizing his images and that he considered himself to be an artist. Maler planned to develop platinum, silver-chloride, or silver-bromide prints, which he viewed as “indestructible” and which indeed today are still very well preserved. He would paste one, two or four prints onto one piece of cardboard of 48.5 × 66 cm, depending on the size of the photographs (he suggested photographs of 20, 25 and 40 cm).32 Below each image, Maler added the “indispensable description”, which was deemed essential if the photograph were to be understood. In order to save space, he proposed pasting photographs on each side of the cardboard.33 This homemade atlas was the most suitable way for Maler to publish and dis­ seminate his images and texts because it provided him with maximum control over the outcome of the prints (quality, size). His plan to sell pages individually reduced the costs of production and maximized his audience, which was both European and Mexican. He informed Rosenkranz that only impeccable prints would be included in the Gran Atlas and that all inferior prints would be sold to the local market. From the outset, then, he strove for saleability in both markets, although on different levels. He noted that locals who bought these inferior photographs and attempted to assemble their own atlas of Mayan sites would be at the disadvantage as they lacked the very important explanatory descriptions of the ruins written beneath the images.34 In 1894, Maler was contacted by Dr Richard Andree, the editor of the German journal Globus and director of the Städtisches Museum in Braunschweig. Andree wanted to publish a series of articles on Maler’s exploration of the Yucatan, including several photographs. Maler proudly informed Rosenkranz that Andree had “a high opinion of [his] Yucatecan explorations”.35 In 1895, Maler reported that he sent a batch of 130

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photographs, “interesting pieces and mounted on nice cardboard”, to the museum in Braunschweig.36 Eventually, Maler published a total of three large articles in Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde, two of which were published in 1895 and one in 1902.37 In his introduction to Maler’s first article, Andree stresses the importance of Maler’s thoroughness. He praises him as an indefatigable explorer of ancient ruins who discovered “at least one hundred completely unknown ruined sites, so that his collection of photographs, drawings and maps of temples, palaces, small buildings, and sculptures of all kinds, as well as mural paintings and graffiti, must be considered as unique.”38 From more than one hundred and thirty photographs, Andree chose a small but significant selection which he published in Globus 1895. In 1895, Maler speculated that his Gran Atlas would find great acceptance among the German and Austrian public, aided by his increasing fame due to his scientific publications. He was optimistic that a European audience would honour the quali­ty of his photographic work.39 Yet, it is unclear how successful Rosenkranz was in pro­ moting Maler’s Gran Atlas in Europe. And it is doubtful that its sale picked up quickly, despite the articles in Globus. Instead, Maler seems to have enjoyed greater success in the Mexican market, selling less durable and cheaper photographs to locals. Maler also promoted his atlas in other (scientific) markets. He sent a batch of images to Charles P. ­Bowditch, treasurer and benefactor of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, to inquire if the museum was interested in his work. In his letter to Bowditch of 1 January 1897, he explained that he was “publishing a Gran Atlas de Antigüedades de México y de la América central”, and that he “could only give it [in its entirety] to a government or a scientific society etc., willing to contribute to [his] general expenses.”40 There is little doubt that Maler’s correspondence with the mu­ seum was aimed at gaining a new patron for his work. The fact that he approached Bowditch in early 1897 and asked for financial support suggests that the sale of his Gran Atlas was slow-moving at best. Even though he had managed to publish in important scientific journals in Europe and had sent batches of his photographs to different individuals, the same ones he was preparing for his Gran Atlas, Maler was unable to earn a livelihood from selling his photographs. Rather, he was commissioned by the Peabody Museum to explore the Lacandon area and the Petén. On 25 October 1897, Bowditch offered Maler a sum of 6,000 Mexican pesos (or approximately 3,000 US dollars) to conduct a one-year exploration, which was to include eight months in the field and four months at one of Maler’s bases in Mérida, Ticul or Tenosique to evaluate his findings, develop his photographs, and write up his report.41 In his response to Bowditch of mid-December 1897, Maler accepted the offer.42 He later agreed to subsequent commissions by the

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

Peabody Museum, which resulted in several publications in the museum’s memoirs. The fact that Charles Bowditch paid Maler to explore uncharted territory rather than buy his Gran Atlas suggests that the museum was interested in unique work and not in a publication that could be reproduced many times over. Accordingly, the reproducibility of photographs was not just a boon for Maler’s enterprise. When it came to marketing his work, the various museums preferred unique photographs. This became clear again later in his life when he approached the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris with some of his photographs. Whereas the director of the anthropological department of the museum in Vienna wrote to Maler that he was not interested in buying his photographs, as most had already been published in the Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, Maler sold 152 photographs for a total of 750 French francs to the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1913.43 The response of the museum in Vienna suggests that the articles published in Globus and in the Memoirs thwarted his efforts to sell his more comprehensive atlas. Only very few museums seem to have purchased photographs from his Gran Atlas. The museum in Berlin did not buy photographs from Maler either. The more than 130 photographs of the Yucatan Peninsula that belong to the Berlin collection, which includes figure 5, 6 and 7, were given to the museum by Richard Andree, the editor of Globus and director of the Städtisches Museum Braunschweig. In May 1898, Andree proposed that the museum in Braunschweig swap objects with the Königliches ­Museum für Völkerkunde, and contacted Eduard Seler, who at the time was the assistant of the director of the museum in Berlin, in order to do so. Andree informed Seler that he “owned far more than one hundred original photographs of Yucatecan ruins from T. ­Maler, a majority of which had never been published”. He offered to send the photographs he had received from Maler for the Globus articles to the museum in Berlin, if the latter would give the Braunschweig Museum “an approximate equivalent of American antiquities or ethnographic objects from [the museum’s] duplications”.44 On the next day, 11 May 1898, Seler wrote a quick reply to Andree’s letter, stating the Königliches Museum’s interest in Maler’s photographs and accepting the idea of sending a rough equivalent in duplicates to the ethnographic department of the museum in Braunschweig. Although the objects that were given to Braunschweig were of inferior quality and of heterogeneous origin compared to the photographs by Maler, Andree does not seem to have minded.45 For the museum in Berlin this swap was a stroke of luck, as it enabled the museum to acquire a large collection of unpublished photographs from one of the most important German photographers active in nineteenth century Mexico.

380 381

Claudine Leysinger

For Maler, however, the success of his explorations as defined by a growing num­ ber of publications in scientific magazines eventually meant having fewer scientific institutions, including museums, interested in purchasing his photographs. Reactions of the Peabody Museum or the museum in Vienna to his efforts at marketing his Gran Atlas show that at the time, ethnological museums did not assume that original (vintage) prints were artistic and uniquely collectable. In general, they were more interested in images of ruins (visual documentation), and it did not matter whether these stemmed from mass-produced copies in published articles or original, artistic prints. Museums were unwilling to pay for original photographs if they could access the same image in printed articles. The fact that Maler died in 1917 with very little assets 46 also demonstrates that his commercial enterprise, selling the Gran Atlas on a large scale, was unsuccessful. Although Maler considered his photographic oeuvre as having artistic and documentary value, the patrons of the time – most importantly the museums – seem to have been mostly interested in the documentary aspects of his work. As such, a good copy of an original photograph in a scientific journal easily met the expectations of the time. With a background in engineering and architecture and an early career as captain in the army, Maler became one of the Mayan area’s most important early archaeo­ logists. He developed the art of photography to perfection and became one of the most meticulous explorers of Mayan ruins. His attempt to commercialize photo­ graphs of ruins reveals an important tension in his work: he had aspirations for his photographs to be unique works of art, yet photography’s ubiquity and endless reproducibility interfered with this. Maler ended up catering to different markets with varying quality and aims. His cartes de visite portraits of indigenous people and cheaply made prints of ruins were made for the local market; his more elaborate prints of ruins were aimed at making him famous and respected in an increasingly scientific archaeological milieu. Yet, he did not manage to commercialize his artis­ tic Gran Atlas, nor does he seem to have been particularly successful at selling his photographs to museums around the world.

Unpublished documents [Generallandesarchiv, Karlsruhe (GLA, Karlsruhe)] Wilhelm Maler, Die Familie Maler im Grossherzogtum Baden (Ettlingen: Druck der Buchdruckerei von Fr. Diehm, 1864) to be found under Nachlass Winter. Testament of Major Maler, Venice, 7 May 1875. 233/23756, Ministerium des Grossherzog­ lichen Hauses und der auswärtigen Angelegenheiten, Diener; Geschäftsträger Rittmeister.

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making

[Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (IAI/PK)] Teobert Maler, Fortsetzung meiner Selbstlebensbeschreibung, Aufzeichnung von Merkwürdigkeiten, u. s. w.  9 – 11, MS. ­In “Teobert Maler: MS. ­PENINSULA YUCATAN I. ­Descripciones de las Ruinas antiguas de la civlización Maya”, Maler papers, Ibero-­ Amerikanisches Institut, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. [Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold (LL, Detmold)] Teobert Maler to Otto Rosenkranz, Ticul, 15 November 1893, Coll. Rosenkranz, Teobert Maler to Otto Rosenkranz, Ticul, 1 August 1894, Coll. Rosenkranz. Teobert Maler to Otto Rosenkranz, Ticul, 10 February 1895, Coll. Rosenkranz. [Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg (MfV, HH)] Teobert Maler, Leben meiner Jugend, TS, 1, Band A73 Teobert Maler, Sammlung v. Manuskripten, Abschriften, Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg. [Peabody Museum Archives at Harvard University (PMA, Harvard University)] Teobert Maler Album; List of Contents, 2003.5.1. Temp ID Graham 153.1. T. ­Maler to Bowditch, Ticul, 1 January 1897, Papers of Charles P. ­Bowditch, Box 7, Folder 9 T. ­Maler to Bowditch, Tenosique, 14 December 1897, Box 7, Folder 9 [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz – Ethnologisches Museum (EMB)] Akten betreffend die Erwerbungen ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Pars I B. vol. 19, E 540/1898. [Tozzer Library, Harvard University, Cambridge] Alfred M. ­Tozzer to his family, Chichén Itzá, 12 January 1902, A. M. ­Tozzer’s letters from the field to his family.

Bibliography Andree, Richard. 1895. “Teobert Maler und seine Erforschung der Ruinen Yukatans.” Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde, 68: 18 (Oktober 1895). Bazant, Jan. 1998. “From Independence to the Liberal Republic, 1821 – 1867.” In Mexico since Independence, edited by Leslie Bethell, 1 – 48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cornaro, Andreas. 1961. “Oesterreich und das mexikanische Freikorps.” Mitteilungen des österreichischen Staatsarchivs XIV: 64 – 79. Davis, Keith. 1981. Désiré Charnay: Expeditionary Photographer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Debroise, Oliver. 1989. Claude Désiré Charnay. 150 años de la fotografía. Mexico City: CONACULTA, INBA. Debroise, Olivier. 1998. Fuga Mexicana: Un recorrido por la fotografía en México. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.

382 383

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Durán-Merk, Alma and Stephan Merk. 2011. “I declare this to be my last will: Teobert Maler’s testament and its execution.” Indiana 28: 339 – 359. Heilbrun Françoise. 1998. “Around the World: Explorers, Travelers, and Tourists.” In The New History of Photography, edited by Michel Frizot, 148 – 166. Köln: Könemann. Hoffmann, Beatrix. 2012. Das Museumsobjekt als Tausch- und Handelsgegenstand: Zum Bedeutungswandel musealer Objekte im Kontext der Veräußerungen aus dem Sammlungsbestand des Museums für Völkerkunde Berlin. Berlin: LIT. Katz, Friedrich. 1998. “The Liberal Republic and the Porfiriato, 1867 – 1910.” In. Mexico since Independence, edited by Leslie Bethell, 49 – 124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maler, Teobert. 1879a. “Un vêtement royal de l’ancien Mexique.” La Nature: Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie 7(1): 207 – 208. Maler, Teobert. 1879b. “Nouvelles explorations des ruines de Palenque (Mexique).” La Nature: Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie 7(2): 299 – 302. Maler, Teobert. 1881. Les palais sacerdotaux de Mictlan, au Mexique.” La Nature: Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l’industrie 9(1): 49 – 50. Maler, Teobert. 1885. “Mémoire sur l’état de Chiapa (Mexique).” Revue d’Ethnographie III: 295 – 342. Maler, Teobert. 1895a. “Yukatekische Forschungen.” Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länderund Völkerkunde, 68(16): 247 – 252. Maler, Teobert. 1895b. “Yukatekische Forschungen (Schluss).” Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde, 68(18): 276 – 284. Maler, Teobert. 1902. “Yukatekische Forschungen.” Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länderund Völkerkunde, 82(13 – 14): 197 – 230. Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Reina Aoyama, Leticia. 2004. “Caminos de la luz y sombre. Historia indígena de Oaxaca en el siglo XIX.” Revista Pueblos y Fronteras digital; www.pueblosyfronteras.unam.mx/. Sapper, Carl. 1895. “Die unabhängigen Indianerstaaten von Yucatan.” Globus: Illustrierte Zeitschrift für Länder- und Völkerkunde 68(11): 197 – 201. Schorske, Carl E. 1981. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage Books. Steitz, Walter (ed.). 1980. Quellen zur Deutschen Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte im 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Reichsgründung, Vol. 36. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Notes 1 2

3 4

Cf. the family genealogy in Maler, 1864 under Nachlass Winter at Generallandesarchiv, Karlsruhe (hereafter cited as GLA, Karlsruhe). Teobert Maler, Leben meiner Jugend, TS, 1, Band A73 Teobert Maler, Sammlung v. Manuskripten, Abschriften, Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg (hereafter cited as Maler papers, MfV, HH). All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. Jahresberichte Ingenieurschule, academic years 1859/60 and 1860/61, 448/1637 + 448/1638, Grossherzoglich Badische Direction der Polytechnischen Schule, GLA Karlsruhe. Maler, Leben meiner Jugend, 1, Maler papers, MfV, HH. ­On Ferstel, cf. Schorske 1981, 40.

Teobert Maler and Mexican Archaeology. An Exploration of a Discipline in the Making 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21

22 23 24 25

26

Testament of Major Maler, Venice, 7 May 1875. 233/23756, Ministerium des Gross­ herzoglichen Hauses und der auswärtigen Angelegenheiten, Diener; Geschäftsträger Rittmeister, GLA Karlsruhe. Between 1851 and 1860, the subsistence minimum for a fourto-five-person household was between 110 and 130 taler a year. Cf. Steitz 1980, 442 – 444. Maler, Leben meiner Jugend, 2, Maler papers, MfV, HH. For a general overview of early nineteenth-century Mexico, cf. Bazant 1998; for a detailed account on the Austrian volunteers, cf. Cornaro 1961, 66. Cf. ‘Officer Book’, Box 46, Alte Feldakten 05, österreichisch-belgisches Freikorps, Kriegsarchiv, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Vienna. Maler, Leben meiner Jugend, 26, Maler papers, MfV, HH. Cornaro 1961, 70 – 71. Maler, Leben meiner Jugend, 67 – 68, Maler papers, MfV, HH. Maler, Fortsetzung meiner Selbstlebensbeschreibung, Aufzeichnung von Merkwürdigkeiten, u. s. w., 9 – 11, MS. ­In ‘Teobert Maler: MS. ­PENINSULA YUCATAN I. ­Descripciones de las Ruinas antiguas de la civlización Maya’, Maler papers, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (hereafter cited as FmS, IAI/PK, Berlin). Maler, FmS, IAI/PK, Berlin 9 – 11, MS. Maler, FmS, IAI/PK, Berlin, 13 – 14, MS. ­I. Maler 1879a; 1879b; 1881; 1885; 1895b. Cf. Heilbrun 1998, 149. Debroise 1989; 1998, 117; Keith Davis 1981, 8. Cf. Katz 1998, 69 – 70. Maler, FmS, IAI/PK, Berlin 35, MS. He mentions in his manuscript that he met Désiré Charnay, Count Charencey and other French Americanists, and that his talk was a triumph. Maler, FmS, IAI/PK, Berlin 35, MS. ­Cf. endnote 14 for his French papers. “[…] als Geschenk für die Ethnographische Abtheilung”. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin (hereafter cited as EMB), EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbungen ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Pars I B. vol. 19, E 540/1898. Cartes de visite, or calling card photos, were small and easily printed and produced on a large scale. They marked the beginning of mass production in photography. Cf. Poole 1997, 107; cf. also Prussat in this volume. Poole 1997, 107 – 113. The huipil is the traditional blouse worn by indigenous women. Cf. Reina Aoyama 2004, 50 – 51. Among Maler’s early images (1874 – 1878), individual photographs of indigenous men are scarce; one exception is Maler’s photographs of indigenous boys, such as figure 2, or more ethnographical type photography such as photograph EMB, VIII E Nls 342, in the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. ‘Teobert Maler Album; List of Contents’, 2003.5.1. Temp ID Graham 153.1, Peabody Museum Archives at Harvard University (hereafter cited as PMA, Harvard University). Maler’s personal photo album was inherited by a family from Mérida and acquired by the Peabody Museum in 2003.

384 385

27 28 29

30 31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

41 42 43

44

45 46

Cf. EMB, VIII E Nls 365, or VIII E Nls 367. Carl Sapper mentioned in his article, Die unabhängigen Indianerstaaten von Yucatan, 1895, 200, that the ruins of Yucatan were of particular interest to foreign tourists. Cf. for example a short tourist guide, Yucatan: The Egypt of the Western Hemisphere, compiled by W. P. ­Young and published by the United Railroads of Yucatan (n. d.), Maler papers, IAI/PK, Berlin. Alfred M. ­Tozzer to his family, Chichén Itzá, 12 January 1902, A. M. ­Tozzer’s letters from the field to his family, Tozzer Library, Harvard University, Cambridge. “Das Werk ist so grossartig und reichhaltig, dass dafür nie ein Verleger gefunden werden könnte”. Teobert Maler to Otto Rosenkranz, Ticul, 15 November 1893, Coll. Rosenkranz, Lippisches Landesmuseum, Detmold (hereafter cited as LL, Detmold). List annexed to letter from Maler to Rosenkranz, n. d., ‘Der grosse Atlas von Altertümern aus México und Centralamerika. Teobert Maler, vormaliger kais[erlich]. Mexik[anischer]. Hauptmann. Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Coll. Rosenkranz, LL, Detmold. “unverwüstlich”. “[…] die unumgänglich nötige Beschreibung”. Maler to Rosenkranz, Ticul, 15 November 1893, Coll. Rosenkranz, LL, Detmold. Maler to Rosenkranz, Ticul, 15 November 1893, Coll. Rosenkranz, LL, Detmold. “Er hat eine grosse Meinung von meinen yuc. Entdeckungen”, Maler to Rosenkranz, Ticul, 1 August 1894, Coll. Rosenkranz, LL, Detmold. “[…] interessanten Stücken, und auf hübschen Cartonen aufgespannt”, Maler to ­Rosenkranz, Ticul, 10 February 1895, Coll. Rosenkranz, LL, Detmold. Cf. Maler 1895a; 1895b; 1902. “[…] auf mindestens hundert gänzlich unbekannt gebliebene Ruinenstädte, so dass dessen Sammlung von Lichtbildern, Zeichnungen + Plänen der Tempel, Paläste, Kleinbauten und Sculpturwerken aller Art, der Wandmalereien und Wandeinkrizungen als geradezu einzig dastehend betrachtet werden muss.” Andree 1895, 246. Maler to Rosenkranz, Ticul, 10 February 1895, Coll. Rosenkranz, LL, Detmold. Maler to Bowditch, Ticul, 1 January 1897, Papers of Charles P. ­Bowditch, Box 7, Folder 9, PMA, Harvard University. Maler’s correspondence with officials from the Peabody Museum was kept in English. Bowditch to Maler, Boston, 25 October 1897, Maler papers, IAI/PK, Berlin. Maler to Bowditch, Tenosique, 14 December 1897, Box 7:9, PMA, Harvard University. Cf. Franz Heger, director of the anthropological section of the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, to Teobert Maler, Vienna, 16 December 1912, Maler papers, IAI/PK, Berlin; Teobert Maler, ‘Notas 1913’, Maler papers, IAI/PK, Berlin. “Ich besitze weit über hundert Originalphotographien von Yukatekischen Ruinen von T. ­Maler; ein sehr grosser Teil ist unveröffentlicht…” and “ein ungefährer Äquivalent an amerikan. Alterthümer oder ethnographische Gegenstände aus Ihren Dubletten…”, Richard Andree to Eduard Seler, Braunschweig, 10 May 1898, EMB, Akten betreffend die Erwerbungen ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Pars I B. vol. 19, E 540/1898. Hoffmann 2012, 84. “I declare this to be my last will: Teobert Maler’s testament and its execution”, cf. ­D urán-Merk and Merk, 2001, 352.

386 387

HEIKO PRÜMERS

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

The collections of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin include 190 glass plate negatives of photographs taken between 1899 and 1925 by the German engineer Hans Heinrich Brüning. The great majority of them are of archaeological sites in the Lambayeque Valley and are among the earliest photographs of such archaeological sites in Peru. They are of an immense documentary value, especially in combination with Brüning’s written notes, which still await detailed scholarly analysis.1 Hans Heinrich Brüning was born in Hoffeld, Holstein in 1848. Traditionally, as the eldest son, he should have taken over the family farm. But after private lessons and a university degree from the Polytechnic Institute in Hannover, service in the Prussian Navy and employment in the HAPAG, he took a job on the Hacienda Pátapo in Peru in 1875. Most sugar cane plantations on the northern Peruvian coast were slowly mechanising their operations in the course of the Industrial Revolu­ tion and Ingeniero Brüning’s knowledge about steam engines and other technical devices was probably his key qualification for getting this job. He also appears to have been a talented inventor. On page 17 of his notebook from 1925 he wrote that he had submitted to the Prefecture of Lambayeque, his military passport and two certificates of medals, as well as “two verifications of patents from the German Consulate from 1885 and 1894”.2 Brüning remained in Peru for almost 50 years and intensively studied the culture and history of his new home, the region of Lambayeque. Scholars such as Wolfgang Haberland and Richard Schaedel, who carefully examined Brüning’s work in the past, have already commented on its scope and diversity.3

“I still have about 200 plates” It cannot be said with any degree of accuracy what moved Brüning to offer ca. 200 of his photographs to the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (BGAEU). Both difficulties in the negotiations with the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg on the purchase of ‘duplicates’ from his collection of Peruvian antiquities and financial worries are likely to have played a role. In any case, it was Brüning who took the initiative. A letter dated 29 August 1927 seems to have initiated the transaction that was only completed by his nephew after Brüning’s death.4

Heiko Prümers

In my many years living in Peru I took thousands of photographs as an interested researcher. The plates of my collection of antiquities have been purchased by the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg in exchange for which I received two prints of each plate. I still have about 200 plates of which except for the accompanying examples, no prints have been made. I ask with this letter whether your museum would be inclined to take these plates with the same terms. The attached prints show the ruins of ancient indian castles; the rest show landscapes, indian phenotypes, etc. Since the plates have suffered a bit of damage due to long storage and transport, they will need some restoration and will need to be treated very carefully when making the prints. Those plates with too little contrast well need to have this intensified using the appropriate copying methods; the prints would have to be seen with numbers of the respective plates.5

The letter provides an indication of another possible motive that might have moved Brüning to start the negotiations: He was interested in obtaining good quality posi­ tive prints of his photographs. The statement that he still had about 200 plates “of which, except for the accompanying examples, no prints have been made” is certainly to be taken literally. He apparently never made prints of his photographs himself but had them made by professional photographers when needed. This is corroborated by statements in his letters like the following: “The plates 473/1 to 481/9 […] have already been printed by the photographer in Hamburg”.6 Elsewhere he wrote: 516/44 and 517/45 and 521/49 and 523/51 to 539/67 were made by my late friend Bandelier in 1893 in Trujillo, of which he took with him only the prints; I later purchased the plates from the photographer in Trujillo.7

The following lines point in the same direction: As for the description of the plates, I would ask you to content yourself for the moment with a general description, because in my list I have only recorded from whence they were obtained; I will only be able to provide further details after viewing the prints.8

After receiving the first series of prints from Berlin, Brüning compiled lists with descrip­tions of the respective motifs. It was only after the photographic prints were compared to the lists in Berlin that it became clear that Brüning had numbered them wrong. Asked about this error, he explained that:

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

The doubling of numbers came to be as follows: I was in Germany for a year in 1897 and brought the photographs and plates I had taken until that time with me to put in safe storage. The repeated packaging resulted in a great deal of confusion and some breakage. After my return to Peru, I began a new list for the new photographs starting with No. 1. I will make a new list of the plates I actually have left here starting from No. 473 = No. 1 to No. 540 = No. 68. I have the plates Nr. 473/1 to 481/9 here because they were already printed by a photographer in Hamburg.9

For scholarship today, the transfer of the negative plates to Berlin was thus a double stroke of luck. On the one hand, the correction of the doubling of the numbers ensured the unambiguous identification of the photographs. On the other hand, Brüning created lists with relatively detailed descriptions of the respective motifs from memory. This information would otherwise have been lost forever.

“Now I’m too old” Archaeology was among the most prominent of the many disciplines that Brüning devoted himself to as an “interested researcher”. The most visible evidence of this is his collection of pre-Columbian artefacts that was purchased by the Peruvian state in 1921. Encompassing more than 5,000 objects, it formed the core of the collection of the archaeological museum in Lambayeque. Its first director was Brüning himself and the Museum would later carry his name. This collection, which Brüning was extremely proud of and which cost the Peruvian state a small fortune, has to date not been evaluated scientifically. Unlike many collectors of his time, Brüning was not only interested in archaeo­ logical artefacts, but he also conducted extensive studies at the sites where these had been found. His notebooks include descriptions, sketches and cross-sections of numerous archaeological sites in the region of Lambayeque. They often document ruin complexes the remains of which are only rudimentary today. The photographs Brüning made of the archaeological sites are to been seen in this context as just one part of a broader documentation process. As he remarked in a letter to the BGAEU “the photographs were taken so that I could later write something more comprehensive about Peru – now I am too old”.10 It is most unfortunate that Brüning did not have the time to publish any such work on archaeology in Peru. The critical voice that scholarship thus lost echoes in the following statement on Max Uhle’s excavations in Pachacamac taken from one of his notebooks:

388 389

Heiko Prümers

45

41

40 35 30 25 20

Chotuna

2

3

2

1

1 Pomalca - Kanal

3

Hda. Galindo

2

Huaca de Eten

2

Chanchan

5

Co. de la Virgen

10

Pátapo

10

15

3

Túcume

Sepamé

Pampagrande

Moche

Mocce

Collús

Borró

0

1 Number of photographs per location in the Brüning collection held in Berlin. Pachacamac was a pilgrimage site and is thus a poor choice for determining the age on the base of huaco-types because the people came as pilgrims from all along the coast, each with their specific types of huacos. It could very easily have been the case that people were buried in quick succession, each with their local huacos and indeed one above the other. A few excavations are not enough to serve as reference. It is only when a large number of excavations provide the same results that one might think to establish a sequence.11

In the course of his 50-year-long stay in the Lambayeque Valley Brüning probably managed to visit each and every archaeological site in this relatively small region at least once. Nevertheless, the photographs held in Berlin are only from 14 of these sites (Fig. 1). The collection thus represents a conscious selection, which is verified in other statistical data. Of the 2,115 surviving photographs taken by Brüning only 350 show archaeological motifs. These include 81 photographs of artefacts from the collection Brüning left in Peru. The remaining 269 are photographs of archaeological sites. More than half of these, that is, 124, are in the collection in Berlin and thus make up two thirds of its total of 191 photographs. Each of Brüning’s photographs could tell its own story. A few examples, from four selected sites, will have to suffice here. The reasons for choosing the respec­ tive sites vary. In the case of Cerro Borró it was the fact that the site has not yet been thoroughly investigated. For Túcume it is a panorama stretching across four individual photographs. In the case of Mocce and Huaca de Eten, Brüning’s photo­ graphs, maps and descriptions are of a particular value since these sites have now largely been destroyed.

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

2 Panorama of a mountain ridge covered with pre-Hispanic architectural remains. Southern section of Cerro Borró. Schaedel 1988: Col. 2, 226a, b. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, June 1904. EMB, VIII E 5734, VIII E 5590.

Cerro Borró Cerro Borró is a rock formation 8 km east of Chiclayo on the northern shore of the Río Reque. It measures about 3 km along its north-southerly axis and at its highest point it is 220 metres above sea level. The entire southern part of the rock massif called ‘Temple Mount’ by Brüning, is covered with ruins. On its southwestern flank is located the formative site of Ventarrón, which has been excavated by a Peruvian team led by Ignacio Alva Meneses since 2007.12 However, the architectural remains at Cerro Borró that were documented by Brüning are relics of later cultures, probably dating back to the Chimu and Inca periods. Similar constructions made of stoneand-mortar walls of a clearly defensive nature are also known from other sites in the Lambayeque Valley such as the mountains of Pátapo, Saltur and Collique. The first photos of the ruins at Cerro Borró were made by Brüning in May 1891, among them a panorama of the southern tip of the fortifications (Fig. 2). In later years Brüning kept coming back to the ‘Temple Mount’ to take more photos and to make sketch drawings for a map. The last and also the most detailed entries for Cerro Borró are found in his notebook Nr. 12 dated 1909. That Brüning also drew a map of the Cerro Borró is verified in a letter to the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin in which he writes: “I would ask you to wait a few months for the description of the images of the Cerro Borró because I am myself waiting for a copy from Peru”.13 The mentioned ‘copy’ (Ger. =Pause) is undoubtedly a map that – unfortunately – has been lost. Brüning made sketches that could have served as the basis for such a map at dif­ ferent times, among them the one reproduced in Figure 3, which was made in late November or early December 1905.14

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3 Sketch made by Brüning for a map of the buildings at the eastern foot of Cerro Borró. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 8: 26-27.

Brüning’s notes on the archaeological remains at Cerro Borró are very intermittent observations and they are scattered across several notebooks. In August 1904 he noted, for example: “Many large shells were found in the tombs at the foot of the southern slope of the Cerro Borró. In one of them (No. 4) only six large shells beside the body as grave goods. Vessels representing humans holding these shells between their hands are frequently found near Chiclayo.”15 A little later he noted: “At the highest fortress on the southern slope of the Borró a great many round stones of 5 – 7 cm in diameter (for slingshots?). Are not usual hear; perhaps from the coast.”16 Brüning addresses the architectural remains of Cerro Borró in a prolonged note dated 4 May 1909: The temple is flush with the hillside on its western and eastern sides so that you can not walk around it. On the southern side [there are] two terraces, each with a square stone in the middle.

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

4 Photograph of the stone fortification of a ravine on the south side of the Cerro Borró. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, August 1904. EMB, VIII E 5627. 5 Sketch of a cross-section of the fortified ravine in figure 4. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 6: 34.

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6 Panorama of the pyramids of Túcume. Schaedel 1988: Col. 2, 531-534. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, 17 January 1913. EMB, VIII E 5700, VIII E 5690, VIII E Nls 413, VIII E Nls 414.

Stones are a natural part of the bedrock, but it seems as if they had been chipped at so that an altar-shaped stone remains. This is, at least, the case for the lower terrace; on the upper terrace the stone does not seem to be part of the bedrock. They are cubical, approximately 90 – 100 cm square and without decoration. Terrace height = 745 cm. Temple and terrace walls are out of clay mixed with broken stones. The north side has a larger courtyard that seems to have been connected on the western side by a narrow passage to the lower terrace on the southern flank. In the huaca or temple the broken stones seem to have been arranged in thin layers. The walls had been blended on the outside with a drywall, but most of it has crumbled away. Access to the huaca was from the courtyard (north); all approaches from the plateau have been closed with walls, even a narrow ridge at almost the same height as the court has been ­blocked by a wall to make access via it impossible. Further down, there are many square rooms enclosed by low stone walls that perhaps once served as dwellings. The protective walls had narrow entrances, but as some of them have collapsed it is sometimes impossible to detect them. Were these entrances defended, getting up [to the fortress] would have been impossible. The walls are inclined inwards slightly and 4 – 5 metres high. Since an ascent from the northern and western sides would have been the easiest, these were much better protected than the other two sides.17

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

Brüning seems to have been strongly fascinated by the fortifications of the Cerro Borró and their imposing nature becomes all too clear in his photograph of a fortified ravine on the south side of the Cerro Borró (Fig. 4). He sketched a scale cross-section of this ravine as well (Fig. 5) The latter two images illustrate Brüning’s technique to combine photographs and drawings to document archaeological sites. It cannot be said how much of what Brüning documented at Cerro Borró still exists today since no further topographical surveys of the ruins have taken place since. However, the Ventarrón project website includes descriptions and new photo­ graphs of these impressive fortifications and verify that Brüning is considered to have discovered them.18

Túcume A great deal has been written about the ruins of Túcume, and archaeological work has been done recently at the site.19 Their importance needs thus not be reiterated here. The expansive site of imposing adobe buildings grouped around the Cerro Purgatorio was captured by Brüning in a total of 39 photographs that, with one exception, are held in the collection in Berlin. These photographs were taken on at least three occasions in December 1904, August 1907 and January 1913.20 Brüning solved the problem of docu­ menting the groups of buildings spread across the vast site by means of photographic panoramas. In three cases, these consist of two photographs,21 in one case taken on 17 January 1913, four photographs are combined to form a panorama (Fig. 6). The creation of such panoramas with the plate cameras used by Brüning required a significant amount of technical skill and the excellent results demonstrate Brüning´s meticulousness once again.

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7 Sketch of a map of Mocce; north is to the right. The five buildings are marked with letters. The locations from where Brüning took photographs are indicated. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 1889/90: 2-3. 8 Sketches of a floor plan and cross-section of the Huaca ‘D’ in Mocce. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 1889/90: 4-5.

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

9 Sketch of a cross-section of Huaca ‘A’ in Mocce. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 1889, 1899/90: 16.

Mocce The ruins of Mocce fell prey to their location on the Panamericana and their proximity to the growing city of Lambayeque. The buildings of this little-known late pre-Colum­ bian site 1.5 km north of Lambayeque are now largely destroyed. Brüning’s descrip­ tions thus become all the more important. The platforms of Mocce are undoubtedly the monuments best documented by Brüning in drawings. The first 19 pages of his notebook for the year 1899 are devoted almost exclusively to this archaeological site and contain numerous sketches, maps and cross-sections of its five largest buildings (Fig. 7 – 9). Additionally, ten photographs of the site made by Brüning have survived, six of which were taken in October 1899 and four in January 1913 (Fig. 10 – 11). It is only possible to speculate about what prompted Brüning to document this site in particular in so much detail. However, it is quite conceivable that his atten­ tion was directed to Mocce by Max Uhle, who visited the site on 30 March 1897. A photograph of Huaca A in Mocce made by Max Uhle held in the archives of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut in Berlin is virtually identical to a photograph of the same building made by Brüning two years later.22 The following description of Mocce can be found between the many aforementioned sketches in Brüning’s notebook from 1899: North of Lambayeque, capital of the synonymous Peruvian district, at a distance of about 1600 metres there can be found some fairly well-preserved remains of buildings from the pre-Hispanic period. These are known as the Huacas de Mocce. Five of these huacas dominate and are

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the core of what is known by this name. Although time and human agency have significantly disfigured them, they are still in such a state that it is possible to identify their original form.23

Brüning lettered these five huacas on a highly schematic sketch (Fig. 7). He refers to these letters when he continues: The walls are of adobe bricks without any systematic offsetting. Each layer is placed a small bit towards the inside (as is most apparent on the west side of B), so that the walls incline inwards. Two main forms of adobe bricks can be found, one of them prism-shaped. Some more inclined than others. C seems to be a fortress. The enclosure wall [is] made of adobe bricks[;] the interior is filled with loose earth.24 The enclosure wall of (C) is well conserved to a height of 200 [cm] above the inner earth filling. The inclination of the wall inwards is about 20° respect to the vertical.25 It is probable that the outside wall of the base of huaca D was used to make adobe bricks for modern buildings, as is now the case with the one of C.26

The above mentioned sketch in which north is to the right (Fig. 7) also shows the positions from which four of the photographs taken in 1899 were made.27 “Foto Nr. 1” (Fig. 10) is a view of the buildings A, C and D from a small rise in the south­ west. Brüning marked the mentioned buildings and the entrance to the cemetery of ­Lambayeque on a print of this photograph. He wrote the following on the print as well: The lining wall, that enclosed the lower basis and of which only the southwestern corner remains was probably reused to form adobe bricks for modern buildings. The loose filling material has in part been washed away by the rare rainfall; the earth has very high nitrate levels. A large number of low mounds of no particular shape can be found around these five larger huacas. Some reveal the remains of adobe walls, but they are in such a state that they can no longer be mapped.28

How exactly Brüning went about his work cannot be retraced easily on the basis of the sketches since these are not always to scale and thus distorted in their propor­ tions. They were meant to be redrawn later in their proper dimensions on the basis of the measurements indicated in the sketches. In Figure 12 a floor plan of huaca A redrawn to scale according to the measurements included in the sketch drawings of Brüning is confronted with a floor plan elaborated by Reindel using stereoscopic arial photograhs taken in 1949.29 Their general agreement is evident, as are deviations, among them the different lengths of the southern ramp, which is significantly shorter

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

10 Mocce. Photograph of the Huacas (from right to left) ‘A’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ from the south-westerly position identified in Fig. 7 (“Foto No. 1. 5h pm Sonne”). Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, October 1899. EMB, VIII E 5589. 11 Mocce. Photograph of Huaca ‘B’ taken from Huaca ‘A’; position identified in fig. 7 as “Foto N. 4”. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, October 1899. EMB, VIII E 5606.

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12 Floor plan of Huaca ‘A’ of Mocce. (A) Redrawn to scale on the basis of the sketch made by Brüning and (B) from Reindel 1993: 281, fig. 98.

on Reindel’s floor plan. Since Brüning measured the ramp, it is probable that the difference is due to later interventions. The missing part of the ramp was probably destroyed to obtain adobe bricks for new buildings. The value of Brüning’s documentation of the ancient constructions of Mocce becomes most apparent when compared to later descriptions of the site. These also reflect its progressive destruction. A. ­L. Kroeber visited Mocce in 1926 and published a highly stylised map of the site showing four platform-constructed buildings as well as the following cursory description in which only three buildings are mentioned: At Mocce, pronounced Mokse and said to be a native name, about a kilometer out of L ­ ambayeque north, is a group of three oblong mounds, essentially one-storied, or at least unterrraced on the sides. All seem to have contained burials and are badly washed. A bears a small superstructure like Purgarorio I. ­B has its adobes laid in a whitish mud, so that it looks at first glance like a Colonial structure with lime mortar The interior of B is only in part of adobes; there is also fill with whitish soil.30

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

13 Plans of the Huaca de Eten. (A) Middendorf (1973 [1894]: 296), (B) Kroeber (1930: Pl XXX, 2.), (C) Shimada (1981: 412), (D) Brüning (redrawn to scale according to the dimensions provided in his drawings) and (E) Reindel 1993: 221, fig. 65.

Bennett, who visited Mocce in May 1936 described four buildings: At Mocce, about 1 kilometer from Lambayeque, are four artificial adobe structures and various other small mounds in the surrounding fields. The four structures are large platforms of small adobes with a great quantity of mud-like plaster. […] This property is owned by the Oneto brothers who presented me with one Colonial glass beads said to have been excavated in the mounds.31

In the 1960s, when Horkheimer briefly discussed the site in his list of the most im­ portant pre-Columbian sites in Peru, Mocce was so badly damaged that he described it as a “group of three pyramids principally made of adobe. Very damaged”.32 The most detailed descriptions of the buildings of Mocce can be found in ­Reindel,33 who visited the site 100 years after Brüning and found it virtually destroyed. Today, huacas D and E have been completely levelled and the huacas A, B and C are ­destroyed to a degree that their original form is hardly discernible.

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14 Photograph of the Huaca del Taco from the southeast. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, 24 November 1904. EMB, VIII E 5634. 15 Photograph of the Huaca del Taco from the south. Photographer: Hans Heinrich Brüning, 24 November 1904. EMB, VIII E 5635.

Huaca de Eten The Huaca de Eten is a small, three-level platform building with a central ramp located on the old road between Eten and Reque (6º53’14” S–79º50’33” W). For Middendorf, Huaca de Eten was “the best preserved temple I encountered in Peru”34 and Reindel, who visited the site in 1989, also stressed its good state of preservation and the possi­ bility this provided to reconstruct the form of the platform building.35 This makes it all the more surprising that the published plans of Huaca de Eten differ greatly from one another (Fig. 13, A-C, E). Today, only remnants of the building remain since it was largely destroyed by the flooding of the Río Reque after heavy rains in 1998. Brüning knew the Huaca de Eten under the names Huaca del Padre Carrillo and Huaca del Taco. On the latter name he wrote that it was the “name of a sambo living there”.36 Brüning must have made at least four photographs of the platform building, of which two that he took on 24 November 1904 have survived (Fig. 14, 15).37 The two riders on the top platform, which give them a special charm, were probably meant by Brüning just to serve as an indicator of scale. Sketches made on the same day as the two surviving photographs include a floor plan and an east-west cross-section of the Huaca de Eten. Two years later, on 19 September 1906 he drew another much more detailed floor plan that includes the wall sections on the southern terrace of the building (Fig. 16). On the basis of these sketches and the measurements indicated in them by Brüning a ground plan as well as an east-west cross-section have been drawn (Fig. 13 D). When compared with

Hans Heinrich Brüning and Archaeology

16 Sketch of a floor plan of the Huaca de Eten made by Brüning on September 19th, 1906. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 8: 78-79. 17 Sketch of details of the Huaca de Eten; in the top, an adobe brick, below, an east-west cross-section of the building. Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg, NB-Brüning 9: 7.

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the published plans (Fig. 13 A-C, E), various differences can be identified, which is surprising considering that the building was relatively simple in form and was also described as being particularly well preserved. Around the same time several smaller sketches were made, including a cross-sec­ tion of the building with a measurement that was missing in the earlier versions and sketch-drawings of a clay brick shaped like a loaf of bread (Fig. 17). Next to the sketch of the adobe brick Brüning noted its dimensions as “35 × 20 × 13” and commented on the fact that the adobe bricks although not uniform in shape and size, were similar to the measured one in their majority. Brüning furthermore noted that “the clay in the adobe bricks, as opposed to that made into mortar, is mixed with sand”.38 This is not the only time that Brüning addresses the clay bricks of the buildings he exa­ mined. Elsewhere in his notebooks he sketches and describes conical, loaf-shaped and rectangular bricks, and mentions the particular grooves characteristic of adobe bricks made in molds of bamboo. All this together suggests that he was the first – or at least one of the first – to recognise different brick types could be traced back to different “cultures”.

Unpublished documents [Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg (MfVHH)] MfVHH / NB-Brü – Notebooks of Hans Heinrich Brüning. [Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin (EMB)] EMB / AcBrü – Correspondance between Hans Heinrich Brüning and the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte redirected to the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin regarding the acquisition of his photographs: Pars I B. ­Akten betref­ fend die Erwerbungen ethnologischer Gegenstände aus Amerika, Band 42; vom 1. 1. 27 bis 31. 12. 29, E 961/1927.

Bibliography Alva Meneses, Ignacio. 2010. “La excavaciones en Huaca Ventarron y el Complejo Collud Zarpán: del Periodo Arcaico en el valle de Lambayeque.” Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 12, 97-117. Alva Meneses, Ignacio. 2012. Ventarrón y Collud. Origen y auge de la civilisación en la Costa Norte del Perú. Chiclayo: Ministerio de Cultura del Perú. Bennett, Wendell Clark. 1939. Archaeology of the North Coast of Peru: an account of exploration and excavation in Viru and Lambayeque Valleys (= Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 37(1)). New York: American Museum of Natural History.

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Hans Hinrich Brüning und die Archäologie Nordperus. In Schätze der Anden. Die InkaGalerie und die Schatzkammern im Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg (= Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg, N.F. vol. 37), 86–111. Hamburg: Hamburgisches Museum für Völkerkunde. Haberland, Wolfgang. 1990. “Enrique Brüning – ein deutscher Forscher in Perú / ­Enrique Brüning – un investigador alemán en el Perú.” In Fotodokumente aus Nordperu von Hans Heinrich Brüning (1848 – 1928), edited by Corinna Raddatz, 11 – 17, 29 – 35. Hamburg: Hambur­ gisches Museum für Völkerkunde. Haberland, Wolfgang, and Leticia Gonzáles. 1982. “Hans Heinrich Brüning y un Museo en Lambayeque.” Boletín de Lima 24: 47 – 51. Horkheimer, Hans. 1965. “Identificación y bibliografía de importantes sitios prehispánicos del Perú.” Arqueológicas 8. Museo Nacional de Antropología y Arqueología. König, Eva. 2002. Hans H. ­Brüning (1848–1928). “‘Photographische Wegelagerei’ im Norden Perus.” In Indianer 1858–1928: Photographische Reisen von Alaska bis Feuerland, edited by Eva König, 55 – 59. Heidelberg: Edition Braus im Wachter Verlag/Museum für Völkerkunde. Middendorf, E. ­W. 1973 [1894]. Peru. Observaciones y estudios del país y sus habitantes durante una permanencia de 25 años. Tomo II. ­La Costa. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Narváez, Alfredo and Bernarda Delgado. 2011. Huaca Las Balsas de Túcume. Arte mural Lambayeque. Túcume: Museo de Sitio Túcume. Raddatz, Corinna. 2007. “Zum Sammler Hans Heinrich Brüning und zu seiner Sammlung im Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg.” Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Ethnographischen Sammlungen Sachsen, vol. XLIII: 105 – 109. Berlin: LIT. Reindel, Markus. 1993. Monumentale Lehmarchitektur an der Nordküste Perus. Eine repräsen­ tative Untersuchung nach-formativer Großbauten vom Lambayeque-Gebiet bis zum Virú-Tal. Bonner Amerikanistische Studien 22. Bonn: Holos. Salas García, José Antonio. 2004. “Introducción.” In Hans Heinrich Brüning, Mochica Wörterbuch / Diccionario Mochica, edited by José Antonio Salas García, VII-XXIV. ­Universidad de San Martín de Porres, Lima: Escuela Profesional de Turismo y Hotelería. Schaedel, Richard P. 1988. La Etnografía Muchik en las Fotografías de H. ­Brüning 1886 – 1925. Lima: Cofide. Shimada, Izumi. 1981. “The Batan Grande-La Leche Archaeological Project: The First Two Seasons.” Journal of Field Archaeology, 8(4): 405 – 446. Schmelz, Bernd. 2003. “Hans Heinrich Brüning – Ethnographischer Dokumentar der Nordküste Perus.” In Booklet zur CD Walzenaufnahmen aus Peru 1910 – 1925 (= Historische Klangdokumente 2), edited by Susanne Ziegler, 28 – 34. Berlin: Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv.

Notes 1

Brüning’s papers stored at the archives of the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg have been studied repeatedly for anthropological information. His notes on the archaeological sites of the Lambayeque region, in contrast, have not gained the attention they deserve, except in the paper of Chávez 2006.

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“Der Prefektur übergeben: / Militärpass / 2 Diplome über Medaillen / 2 Protektionen über Patente des Deutschen Konsulats 1885 und 1896”, MfVHH / NB-Brü, n. No. [1925], 17. Brüning’s notebooks were transcribed by Eva König within the framework of a ZEIT-Stiftung-financed project to analyse photographic documents held in the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg. My thanks go to Eva König for making these notebooks available to me. Cf. Haberland 1990; Schaedel 1988. Cf., in addition, Haberland and Gonzalez 1982; König 2002; Raddatz 2007; Salas 2004 and Schmelz 2003 for details on Brüning’s life and work. The documents concerning the purchase are stored in the archives of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. My thanks go to Manuela Fischer for providing me copies and transcriptions of the relevant letters. “Während meines langjährigen Aufenthaltes in Perú habe ich dortselbst als interessier­ ter Forscher tausende von Photografien genommen. Die Platten meiner Sammlung der Altertümer drüben hat das Hamburger Museum für Völkerkunde übernommen, als Entgelt bekam ich von demselben von jeder Platte je zwei Abzüge. Ich habe noch etwa 200 Platten; von denen ausser den anliegenden Probeabzügen weiter noch keine Abzüge genommen sind. Ich frage hiermit an, ob das dortige Museum geneigt wäre, diese Platten zu gleichen Bedingungen zu übernehmen. Vorliegende Probeabzüge sind Ruinen alter Indianerburgen, die übrigen Platten sind ebenfalls Aufnahmen von Landschaften, Indianertypen usw. Da die Platten infolge langen Liegens und durch den Transport etwas gelitten haben, müssen sie z. T. ausgefleckt werden und muss bei Entnahme von Abzügen besonders sorgfältig verfahren werden. Bei Platten welche zu wenig Kontrast zeigen muss derselbe durch geeignete Kopierverfahren herausgeholt werden auch muss auf den Abzügen die Nummer der Platten angegeben sein”. Letter by Brüning dated 29 August 1927; EMB / AcBrü, 1. “Die Platten No 473/1 bis 481/9 […] sind bereits beim Photographen in Hamburg gemacht worden.” Letter by Brüning dated 17 January 1928; EMB / AcBrü, 15. “516/44 u. 517/45 u. 521/49 u. 523/51 bis zu 539/67 sind von meinem verstorbenen Freunde Bandelier im Jahre 1893 in Trujillo gemacht worden, von welchen er nur die Abzüge mitnahm und ich habe später die Platten beim Photographen in Trujillo gekauft”, EMB / AcBrü, 12. Letter by Brüning dated 29 October 1927, EMB / AcBrü, 6. “Die Doppelnummern haben sich folgendermassen ergeben. Im Jahre 1897 war ich zu einem einjährigen Besuch in Deutschland und brachte die bis dahin genommenen Photographien resp. Platten mit, die hier dann zur Aufbewahrung blieben, durch vieles Hin- und Herpacken dann ziemlich durcheinander geraten und leider auch teilweise zerbrochen sind. Nach meiner Rückreise nach Perú habe ich dann für die neu genommenen Photographien eine neue Liste wieder mit No 1 anfangend angelegt. Ich lege nun wieder eine neue Liste an von den Platten, welche ich z.Zt. hier gelassen habe beginnend bei No 473 mit No 1 bis 540 gleich No 68. Die Platten No 473/1 bis 481/9 habe ich hier, denn die sind bereits beim Photographen in Hamburg gemacht worden”. Letter by Brüning dated 17 January, 1928. EMB / AcBrü, 15.

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“Die Fotografien sollten mir dazu dienen später über Perú etwas Vollständiges zu Schrei­ ben, jetzt bin ich zu alt dazu.” Letter by Brüning dated 29 October 1927, EMB / AcBrü, 6. “Pachacamac war ein Wallfahrtsort und ist deshalb schlecht ausgewählt zum Bestimmen der Alter nach den Typen der Huacos, denn da kamen von der ganzen Küste Wallfahrer zusammen, alle mit ihren bestimmten Typen. Es konnten schnell hintereinander Leute mit ihren Huacos von verschiedenen Regionen begraben werden und zwar übereinander. Ein pa[a]r Ausgrabungen können noch nicht als Regel dienen. Nur wenn eine grosse Anzahl Ausgrabungen dasselbe Resultat geben, könnte man vielleicht eine Regel auf­ stellen.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 18 [1913], 53. Alva Meneses 2010; 2012. Letter by Brüning dated 24 January 1928, EMB / AcBrü, 21. MfVHH / NB-Brü 8, 26 – 27. “In den Gräbern am Südfusse des Cerro Borró, viele grosse Muscheln gefunden. In einem (No. 4) bei einer Leiche als Beigabe nur 6 grosse Muscheln. Häufig kommen bei Chiclayo Gefässe vor eine menschliche Figur darstellend, welche diese Muschel zwischen den Händen hat.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 6, 32 – 33. “Auf der höchsten Festung am Südabhange des Borró viele Rollsteine von 5 – 7 ctm Ø (Für Schleuder ?). Kommen hier sonst nicht vor, vielleicht vom Meeresstrand.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 6, 33. “An der W und E-Seite schneidet der Tempel grade mit den Bergabhängen ab, so dass man nicht herumgehen kann. An der S. ­Seite zwei Terrassen jede mit einem viereckigen Stein in der Mitte. Diese Steine gehören zu natürlich gewachsenem Felsen, aber es scheint als wenn anderes Gestein rundherum weggebrochen, so dass dieser Altarförmige stehen bleibt; wenigstens bei dem der niedrigen Terrasse, der öbere scheint unabhängig von gewachsenem Fels; sind ungefähr würfelförmig von 90 – 100 ctm Seitenmass. Sind ohne Bearbeitung. Terrasse 745 cm Höhe. Tempel und Terrassenmauer aus Ton mit Bruchsteinstücken gemengt. Nordseite grösserer Hof, welcher nach der niederen Terrasse der S.-Seite, an der W-Seite mit einem schmalen Gang verbunden gewesen scheint. In der Huaca oder Tempel, scheinen die Bruchsteine in dünnen Schichten angelegt gewesen sein. Die Mauern sind aussen mit einer trockenen Steinmauer verblendet gewesen, welche aber grösstenteils abgerutscht ist. Der Aufgang zur Huaca ist von der Hofseite (Nord) gewesen; Alle Schluchten von der Ebene an sind vermauert, selbst ein schmaler Berg­ grad in der ungefähren Höhe des Hofes, ist noch besonders mit einer daraufgesetzten Mauer versehen, damit den etwaigen Aufgang bei demselben unmöglich zu machen. Weiter nach unten finden sich viele viereckige, von niedrigen Steinmauern eingefasste Räume, vielleicht als Wohnungen dienend. Die Schutzmauern haben jedenfalls schmale Eingänge gehabt, da aber teilweise umgestürzt, so nicht zu erkennen. Diese Eingänge verteidigt war das Hinaufkommen unmöglich. Die Mauern sind ein wenig nach Innen geneigt, und 4 – 5 Meter hoch. Da der Aufstieg von der N und W Seite der leichteste ist, so sind diese auch viel besser armirt, als die anderen beiden Seiten.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 12, 20 – 22.

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29 30

31 32

http://huacaventarron.comyr.com/ Cf. Narváez and Delgado 2011. For 16 of these photographs information on the date when they were created is missing. EMB, VIII E 5640 (Col. 2, 486) und VIII E 5641 (Col. 2, 487); VIII E 5689 (Col. 2, 535) und VIII E Nls 415 (Col. 2, 536); VIII E Nls 410 (Col. 2, 537) und VIII E 5688 (Col. 2, 538). My thanks go to Markus Reindel for informing me of the existence of the photograph in the archive of the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (Foto No. 581 on the list of photo­ graphs by Max Uhle). “Nord von Lambayeque, Hauptstadt der gleichnamigen peru[anischen] Provinz, und ungefähr 1600 m von ihr entfernt befinden sich einige, ziemlich gut erhaltene Reste von Bauwerken vorspanischer Zeit; dieselben sind unter dem Namen: Huacas de Mocce bekannt. Es sind hauptsächlich fünf huacas, welche in die Augen fallen, und welche speziell unter diesem Namen bekannt sind. Obwohl Zeit und Menschenhand sie ziemlich verunstaltet haben, so sind dieselben doch so weit gut erhalten, um die ursprüngliche Form mit ziemlicher Deutlichkeit erkennen zu können.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 1899, 7. “Die Mauern sind aus Adobes, ohne regelrechten Verband aufgeführt. Jede Lage etwas zurücktretend (an Westseite bei [B] deutlich zu erkennen), so dass die Mauern nach Innen geneigt. Man erkennt hauptsächlich zwei Formen von Adobes; einen prismen­ förmig. Einige mehr geneigt als andere. (C) scheint Festung. Umfassungsmauer von Adobes innen mit loser Erde aufgefüllt.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 1899, 7. “Umfassungsmauer von (C) sehr gut erhalten 200[cm] hoch über innere Erdauffüllung. Die Neigung der Mauer nach Innen ungefähr 20º von der Senkrechten.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 1899, 3. “Ist wahrscheinlich, dass die Umfassungsmauer der Basis der Huaca (D) zu Adobes für moderne Bauten verwendet ist, wie es jetzt mit derjenigen von (C) geschieht.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 1899, 17. “Foto Nr. 1” = VIII E 5589 (Schaedel 1988: Col. 1, Nr. 231); “Foto Nr. 2” = VIII E 5605 (Schaedel 1988: Col. 1, Nr. 229); “Foto Nr. 3” = VIII E 5604 (Schaedel 1988: Col. 1, Nr. 228); “Foto Nr. 4” = VIII E 5606 (Schaedel 1988: Col. 1, Nr. 230). “Die Futtermauer, welche die untere Basis eingeschlossen hat, und von welcher nur noch die SW-Ecke existiert, ist wahrscheinlich zu Adobes für moderne Bauten verarbeitet worden. Die Auffüllung dieser Basis, aus loser Erde bestehend, ist teilweise durch die, freilich selten vorkommenden, Regen auseinandergeschwemmt; diese Erde ist alle stark salpeterhaltig. In der Umgegend dieser 5 grösseren Huacas, giebt es noch eine grössere Anzahl niedriger von keiner bestimmten Form, mehrstens niedrige Erdhügel, einige haben dagegen Anzeichen von Adobemauern, aber so zerstört, dass kein Plan mehr davon zu machen ist.” Note by the hand of Brüning on the print EMB, VIII E 5703. Brüning’s “Huaca A” is “Mocce 1” in Reindel 1993, 280 – 281. Kroeber 1930, 93. Kroeber also letters the buildings. His buildings A und D agree with Brüning’s buildings of the same letter. Kroebers building B is Brüning’s huaca C and his building C is Brüning’s huaca B. Bennett 1939, 112. “Grupo de 3 pirámides, principalmente de adobes. Muy destruidas.” Horkheimer 1965, 10.

408 409 33 34 35 36 37

38

Reindel 1993, 280 – 285. “el templo mejor conservado que he encontrado en el Perú”, Middendorf 1973 [1894] II, 296. Reindel 1993, 220. “apodo de un sambo que vive ahí”, MfVHH / NB-Brü 8, 73. The two lost photographs were taken on 28 September 1906 (“Huaca del Taco. Ostansicht von ungefähr 130 – 140 Meter Entfernung bis an den Fuss der Huaca”); MfVHH / NB-Brü 9, 7 and on 10 October 1908 “13 x 18. Huaca del Taco von NW”, MfVHH / NB-Brü 11, 50. “Der Lehm zu den adobes, verschieden von dem zum Mörtel verwandten, ist mit Sand vermengt.” MfVHH / NB-Brü 9, 7.

410 411

Index of Peoples A

G

Aché  44, 328, 330 Ahuishiri 199 “Amaua” (Umaua, Karijona)  179, 181, 184 – 185, 187, 190, 192 “Araukaner” (Mapuche)   44, 140, 144, 159, 173 Arhuaco 26 Arawak  284 – 287, 302 Arecuna 306 Asháninka  159, 197 – 198 Aweti (“Auetö”)  217, 223 – 224, 240, 283, 284 Aymara  157, 159 Aztec 369

Guajajara  245 – 246, 248, 254, 273, 275 Guaraní  28, 46, 159 Guató  28, 46, 284 – 286, 292 – 293, 416 “Guayaki” (see Aché) 

B

Kabishi (Paresí)  287 – 288, 309 – 310 Kadiwéu 28 Kágaba  26, 46, 313 Kaiabi  288 – 289 Kainguá 44 Kaixana  179, 185 Kamaiurá  217, 221 – 222, 224 – 226, 228, 282 – 283 Karajá (Caraja, Karaja)  239, 245, 249 – 250, 254 – 256, 258, 261, 264, 273, 274 – 277, 279, 413, 415, 417 Karijona  179, 181, 184 – 185, 194 Kayapó (Cayapōs, Cayapó, Cayapo)  245, 248 – 249, 251, 253 – 255, 258 – 261, 263 – 267, 272, 275 – 279, 309 – 310, 413 – 416 Kozarini 284 Krén  28, 30, 209

Baticola (Mbyá)  15, 44 Bakairí  28 – 29, 47, 209, 211, 216 – 222, 225, 228 – 229, 237, 239 – 240, 242, 280, 283 – 284, 288, 293 – 294, 413 – 417 Bedaween 174 “Bindiapá” 204 Bororo  46, 159, 162, 214 – 215, 230 – 233, 239, 412, 416 “Botokuden” (Botocudos”, Krén)  28, 30, 44, 47, 157, 173, 209 C

I

Inca  91, 126, 155, 160, 391 Iranche 289 J

Javaé   250 K

“Campa” (see Asháninka) Canela (Ramko’kamekra)  245, 248, 255, 264, 273, 275, 279 Canoeiro 275 Cashibo 197 Chamacoco  28, 159 L Chinipis 159 Lacandon 380 “Coroados” (Bororo)  159 Lengua 159 Conibo  197, 200

Index of Peoples

M

S

Makuxi  29, 47, 306 Maionixa 197 Mapuche  140 – 141, 144, 159 Mataco  213, 306 Maya  367, 371, 376, 379, 382 – 383, 385 Mebêngôkre (Kayapó)  310 Mehinakú  217, 227 – 228, 240 Mekubenokré (Kayapó)  276 Miranha  179, 185 – 187 Mixtec 371 Moxos  187, 192 Mura  185, 187 Nahua 368 Nahukuá  217, 219 – 221, 240, 283

Selk’nam 159 Shipibo  197, 207 Suyá (Kĩsêdjê)  222, 241

O

Ojibwe 199 Ona (see Selk’nam)  “Orejón” 201 P

Paresí  28, 284 – 285, 287 – 289, 293, 309 – 310 “Patagonier” (“Patagonians”)  157, 159, 173 Patamona 306 Pauxiana  202 – 203 Payaguá 337 Pilagá 159 Piro  197 – 199 Q

Quechua  98, 140, 159 R

Rarámuri  31, 33 – 34, 339 – 360

T

Tapirapé  245, 250, 252, 256, 275, 277 Tarahumara (see Rarámuri)  Taurepang (Taulipang, Taulipáng)  29, 47 Tehey 44 Tehuana  371 – 373 Tehuelche 159 Ticuna (Tecuna)  179, 185 – 187, 192 Toba  159, 213 Trumaí  217, 223 “Tschiripá” 44 Tupí  46, 190, 288 Tupi-Guaraní 46 U

Umaua (Karijona)  179, 181, 184 – 185, 194 Umotina  289 – 290, 294 W

Warrau 306 X

Xambioá (Karajá)  339 Xerente  245, 248, 275, 414 Xikrin (Kayapó)  261, 277 Y

Yaghan (Yaganas)  159 Yawalapiti 217 Z

Zapotec  372 – 373

412 413

Index of Persons A

Agassiz, Louis  178, 194 Alarcon (Mr)  91 Alberdi, Juan Bautista  336 Alfredo (Karajá)  258 Alva Meneses, Ignacio  391 Alvarez, Jorge López  172 Alviña, Luis   115, 120 Amman, Jost  143 André (companion of Max Schmidt)  283 – 284, 297 Andree, Richard  56, 207, 233, 243, 379 – 381, 386 Angivilliers, Comte d’  89, 105 Antonio (Bakairí)  28, 47, 211, 216 – 217, 239 Antonio (Dominican)  249 Arago, François  370 Aramöke (Bakairí)  219, 222, 240 Archer, Frederick Scott  77 Astete, Velasco  155 Atahualpa (Bororo)  214, 216, 239 Auguste, Friederike  176 Ayres, Joaquim  28 Azara, Felix de  284 B

Baessler, Arthur  21, 27, 35, 133, 233, 364 – 365 Bahamonde, Francisco   96 Baldamus, Eduard  334 Bandelier, Adolphe  406 Bartels, Maximilian  18, 54 – 56 Bartelt, Albert  324 – 325, 336 Barthes, Roland  168 Basauri, Carlos  345, 347, 359 Basauri, Manuel  345 Bastian, Adolf   9, 13, 50 – 52, 101, 126 – 128, 158, 188, 210, 223 – 224, 281, 292 Batres, Leopoldo  26 Bauer, Wilhelm  17, 45

Belle (Rarámuri)  358 Bennett, Wendell C.  401 Ber, Théodore   99, 107 – 108, 425 Berio (Kayapó)  265, 278 Bezzenberger, Adalbert  56 Biel, Gustav  133 Birnbaum, Herman (see Poirier)  Bismarck, Otto von  321 Bleichröder, Georg von  51 Boas, Franz  50 Boban, Eugène   99, 107 Böckel, Otto  321 Boggiani, Guido  28, 47, 154, 165, 167, 174, 337 Bohnstedt, Max  158 Bowditch, Charles P.  380 – 381, 386 Brandt, Carlos  155 Briquet, Alfred Saint Ange (Abel)  26, 34, 361 – 365, 371, 425 Brongniart, Alexandre Beyrich Ernst  90 Brückner, August  28 Brüning, Hans Heinrich  15, 18, 26, 31, 34, 44, 69 – 87, 386 – 408, 419 Bry, de (workshop)  154 Bryce, James  174 Butler, Judith  308 C

Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Núñez  284 Canaval, Enrique  92, 105 Caparó Muñiz, José Lucas   101 Carbillet, Felix   127 Carleton, George   93, 106 Carolina (Kayapó)  261, 277 Caroline, Kaiserliche Hoheit Prinzessin 182 Casanova, Rosa  361 Castelnau, Francis de  90 – 91 Castilla, Ramón  90 – 91, 105

Index of Persons

Castillo, Rafael   117 – 119, 121, 125 – 126 Catherwood, Frederick  376 Centeno, María Ana   91, 100 – 101, 104, 107 Chambi, Martín   155, 163 – 164, 172 Charencey, Comte de (Charles-FélixHyacinthe Gouhier)   385 Charnay, Désiré  26, 117, 370, 376, 385 Chiquirinha, Donna  253, 274 Christiano Jr.  207 Colville, William   97, 100 Condemarín, José Dávila   94, 96 – 97, 104, 106 – 107 Corona Berkin, Sarah  342 Coudreau, Marie Octavie  208 Courret, Eugène  58, 134, 139 Creel, Enrique  339 – 340, 344, 349, 352 – 353 Cruz, Roberto   160 D

Daguerre, Louis  370 Dalevuelta, Jacobo  346 Dammann, Carl Victor  18, 141, 149, 184 – 185, 187 – 188, 192 Darwin, Charles  50, 179 Debroise, Oliver  361, 363, 366, 383, 385 Demachy, Robert  208 Dennech 337 Dhein, Carlos  216, 239 Dhein, Peter  216, 239 Díaz, Porfirio  345, 363, 370 Dietze, Albert Richard  28 Disdéri, Adolphe-Eugène  131 Dombey, Joseph  89, 106 Domingo (Dominican)  250 – 251, 273 Domingo, José (Bororo)  214, 216, 239 Doyūn (Kayapó)  259 – 260, 277 – 278 Dr. Atl (Murillo, Gerardo)  345 „Droschkenkutscher“ (nickname of a Bakairí)  229, 242 Drouillon, Abel   92, 99

Du Bois-Reymond, Emil Heinrich  50, 238 Du Bois-Reymond, René  133 Duarte, Antonio José  215, 230, 239 Džipu (Kayapó)  261, 264, 309 E

Eastman, George  77 Edwards, Elizabeth  11, 125, 303, 308, 317 Ehrenreich, Paul  17 – 18, 27 – 31, 45 – 47, 56 – 57, 187, 190, 209 – 235, 237 – 243, 247, 258, 273, 276 – 277, 279, 282, 318 Eloteiro (Xerente)  248 Erfurth, Hugo  208 Eugene, Frank  208 F

Fabian, Johannes  308 Falk, Paul Ludwig Adalbert  52, 67 Feller, Adolf  157 – 158 Ferreyros, Manuel   91, 106 Ferrez, Gilberto  177 Ferrez, Marc  25, 28 Ferris (Mr.)  99 Ferstel, Heinrich von   367, 384 Fischer, Manuela  46, 272, 406 Folsom, George   99 Förster, Bernhard  321 – 326, 329, 335 – 336 Förster, Paul  321 Fortaleza (person from Conceição)  250, 273 Foucault, Michel  308 Francisco (Dominican)  249 Francisco, Aurelio  341, 354 Franke, Carl  51 Franz Joseph (Austrian Emperor)  368 – 369 Franzen, Guillermo (Wilhelm)  206 Friedel, E.  28 Frisch, Albert Christoph  22, 29, 32, 174, 176 – 189, 191 – 192, 194 Frisch, Johann Joseph Nepomuk  176

414 415

Index of Persons

Fritsch, Gustav  14, 44, 49 – 50, 55 – 56, 66, 188, 213 Fritsch, Theodor  321 Frühwirt, André  273 G

Gadea, Tomás   97, 107 Galicia Chimalpopoca, Faustino  369 Garbe, Walter  28, 47 Gehrts, Johannes  231 Gerstmann, Robert  24, 28 Glagau, Otto  320 – 321, 334 – 335 Gloeden, Wilhelm von  174 Göhring, Hermann   108 Goldberger, L. Max  51 Görms, (Mrs)  157, 171, 173 Götting, Carlos  182, 192 Goupil, Adolphe  176 Graebner, Fritz  280 Green, David  301, 308 Gretzer, Wilhelm   108, 128 Grix, Arthur E.   339, 360 Grüter, Guillermo   153, 155, 166, 337 Guedes, Joaquim  274 Gypen, Friedrich  176 H

Haas, Richard  35, 237 Haberland, Wolfgang  387, 406 Hamilton, Antoine d’  246 Hamy, Ernest Théodore   101, 105, 107 – 108 Hänsel, Bernhard  63 Hartmann, Günter  261, 272, 276 – 278 Hartmann, Robert  50 Hauser, Otto  56 Hecker, Emil  51 Heffer Bissett, Odber  155 Heger, Franz  386 Heiler, Franz  28 Heller, Cornelia  157, 173 Hempel, Paul  255, 279 Henschel, Alberto  133, 136, 140 – 142

Heredia, Guillermo de  17, 45 Hermannstädter, Anita  268 Hettner, Alfred  51 Hime, Humphrey L.  199 Hintze, Arthur  55 Hirsch, August  50 Holz, Carl (Carlos)  17, 35 Homer 292 Hopp, Werner  11 – 12, 158 Hübner, Georg (Huebner, George)  28, 32, 46, 192 – 208 Humboldt, Alexander von  210 – 211, 238, 287 Hurter, Gottfried  155, 172 Hutchinson, Thomas   127 Huxley, Thomas Henry  49, 213 J

Jagor, Fedor  48, 50, 55 – 56, 67 Jantč, Jessica  84, 87 Januario (officer)  211, 216, 239 Jaris, José  348 João Pedro (companion of Paul Ehrenreich) 239 Joest, Wilhelm  28, 35, 58 – 59, 133 Juárez, Benito  368 – 370 Jungfer, Carl  335 Junkelmann, Erich  158 K

Kaimanepa (Umotina)  290 Kakōrō (Kayapó)  267 Keller-Leuzinger, Franz  177 – 179 Kiepert, Heinrich  50 Kissenberth, Doris  268 Kissenberth, Wilhelm  16, 28, 33, 45, 245 – 279, 305, 309 – 310, 312, 317 – 318 Klingbeil, Julius  28, 33, 319 – 338 Koch-Grünberg, Theodor  17, 29, 47, 173, 203 – 205, 208, 226, 230, 242, 245, 247, 253 – 254, 267 – 269, 272 – 275, 278 – 279, 282, 302 – 304, 306 – 307, 317, 337

Index of Persons

Koch, Robert  164 Kohn, Albin   126, 128 Koner, Wilhelm  50 König, Adolf  321 König, Eva  207, 406 Kraus, Daniela  325, 335 Kraus, Michael  46, 214, 237, 241 – 242, 302 Krause, Fritz  246, 266, 269, 274 – 276 Krickeberg, Walter  151, 157, 171, 253, 274, 279 Kroeber, Alfred Louis  400 – 401, 408 Kroehle, Charles  28, 32, 192 – 208 Kroehle, Marie  193, 206 Krone, Hermann  194, 202 Krone, Richard  28 Kümmel, Otto  157 Kummels, Ingrid  46 Kummler, Hermann  182 Künike, Hugo  317 Künne, Carl (Karl)  133, 337 Kürbitz & Schubert (Bank in Chemnitz) 325 Kurumaré (Karajá)  250, 257 Kutoĩbá (Kayapó)  260 – 262, 264, 277 L

La Rosa (colonel)  91, 96, 99 Lalvani, Suren  308 Lamprey, Jones H.  57, 213 Landazuri (merchant)  126 Langerhans, Wilhelm  55 – 56 Laso, José Domingo (Fototipía)   160, 172 Le Coq, Albert von  51 Le Plongeon, Alice  26 Le Plongeon, Augustus  26, 376 Leblanc, Félix  155 Leda, Leão  250 Ledebur, Leopold von  50 Lehmann-Nitsche, Robert  47, 154, 156, 160, 337 Lehmann, Walter  187 Leisegang (company)  11 – 12

Lemoyne, Auguste   91 Leuzinger, Georg  175, 177 – 187, 192 Lewerentz, Annette  44, 63 Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Max  321 Liljewalch, Olof  305 – 308 Linné, Carl von  299 Linné, Sigvald  311 Lissauer, Abraham  56 López, Solano   176 Lorgnet (Commander of Port-auPrince)  136 – 137 Lucciani, Arturo  202 Luchu (Bakairí)  28 – 29, 225 Ludowieg, Julio   109, 121 – 122, 128 Ludwig August von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha 182 Lührsen, Johannes  95, 106 Lumholtz, Carl  339, 342 – 345, 347, 358 Luschan, Felix von  55 – 56, 304, 317 M

Macedo, José Mariano   26, 31, 92 – 93, 95 – 96, 100 – 101, 106 – 128 Maddox, Richard Leach  77 Mahr, Gustav  44, 61, 63 Maler, Teobert  22, 26, 34, 133, 367 – 386 Malinowski, Bronislaw  266, 294 Mancilla, M.   163, 172 Manoel (companion of the Xingu expedition)  216, 239 Maria (Guató)  295, 298 Mariquinha (Kayapó)  261, 276 Martius, Carl Friedrich Philipp von  187, 192 Masotta, Carlos  164, 171 – 172 Masseira, Juan  353 Mativorena (merchant)  126 Maximilian von Habsburg  368 Maxwell, Anne  308, 314, 317 – 318 May, Karl  150 McElroy, Keith   117, 125 – 127 Merkwitz, Carl  337

416 417

Index of Persons

Meyer-Cohn, Alexander  52 Meyer, Herrmann  222, 272, 282 Middendorf, E.W.  401 – 404, 409 Moguyokuri (Bororo)   231 Montelius, Oscar  50 Montes, Emilio   26, 97 – 98, 100 – 102, 107 – 108, 118 Montezuma (Bororo)  216, 239 Monti, Pedro  250, 273 Morão, Diogo  273 Móte kre (Kayapó)  263 Mraz, John  342, 358 Mulach, Roberto  155 Müller, Gustav  193 Muñiz, Manuel A.   100 – 101, 107 Münzner, Lena  82 – 83, 87

P

Pacheco Zagarra  108 Pardo, Manuel   96 Pasta (merchant)  126 Paul, Gerhard  172 Pedro II, Dom   182 Perrot, Luis  211, 216, 219, 239 Petermann, August  50 Petrie, Flinders   128 Philipp, Königliche Hoheit Prinz  182 Piérola, Nicolás de   93, 172 Poirier, Henry (see Birnbaum)  155, 156, 172 Poole, Deborah  342, 358, 385 Preuss, Konrad Theodor  17, 254, 274, 276, 279, 302, 305, 313 – 314, 339, 355, 357 Pringsheim, Nathanael  50

N

Q

Napoleon III.  368 – 369 Neuhauss, Richard  10 – 11, 18 – 21, 44 – 46, 50, 54, 56, 228, 237, 242, 334 Neumayer, Georg   37, 50 Niépce de St. Victor, Abel   87 Nietzsche, Elisabeth (Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche)  325, 335 Nietzsche, Friedrich  325, 335 Niklasson, Nils  304 Nimuendajú, Curt Unckel  28 Nöhring, Johannes Heinrich Franz  183 Nordenskiöld, Erland  28, 33, 299, 301 – 308, 310 – 311, 313, 317 Nurmi, Paavo  346, 359

Quesada, Arosemena  98 Quesnel, Frédéric   92 Quijote, Don  278

O

Oneto brothers  401 Orbegoso, Luis José de   93 Orbigny, Alcide d’  90 Orléans, Marie Clémentine Léopoldine Caroline Clotilde of  182 Ortega (collector)  108

R

Raddatz, Corinna  406 Raimondi, Antonio   92, 106 Reimer, Dietrich  158 Reimer, Karl-Friedrich  337 Reindel, Markus  398, 400 – 402, 408 Reiss, Carl  51 Reiss, Wilhelm  182, 194, 231, 242 Reyneya (merchant)  126 Richardson, Villroy L.   57 Richter, Isidor  51 Risar (merchant)  126 Rivero, Mariano Eduardo de  93 Rivet, Paul  302 Rocha, Annibal  172 Rohde, Richard  51 Romainville Centeno, Adolfo  101 Romainville, Pedro de  91 Rondon, Cândido Mariano da Silva  288 Rosa Toro, Agustín de la  96

Index of Persons

Rosauer, Robert  154 – 155, 172 Rosenkranz, Otto  379 – 380, 386 Rösner, Max   155, 162 Rosty, Pál  361 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques  292 Rydén, Stig  310 S

Sá Rego, Stella de   361, 363, 366 Saenz, Nicolás  26, 98, 100 – 101, 107 – 108 Said, Edward  164 Salas Garcia, José Antonio  406 San Miguel, Leoncio  346 – 347 Sapper, Carl  384, 386 Sarasin, Carl Friedrich  187 Sarasin, Paul Benedict  181, 185, 187 Satyro (soldier)  239 Schaedel, Richard  387, 391, 394, 406, 408 Scharf, Otto  208 Schecker, Friede  26, 28, 47 Schindlbeck, Markus  46 Schmidt, Max  17, 28 – 29, 33, 45, 47, 157, 222, 241, 281 – 298, 302, 304 – 305, 309 – 310, 317 – 318, 337 Schmidt, Pater Wilhelm  280 Schneider, Oscar  194, 202, 207 – 208 Schoepf, Daniel  206 Schreiber, Jessica  85, 87 Schultze, C. F. E   336 Schwartz, Wilhelm  52 Seler, Eduard  45, 237, 246 – 247, 252 – 254, 272 – 274, 278 – 279, 304, 317, 381, 386 Senna, Ernesto  181 – 182, 192 Serrano, Francisco R.  348 Siebold, Harriet  158 Sieke, Ernst  233, 243 Sievers, Wilhelm  242 Silversides, Brock V.  199, 207 Silvestri, Graciela  157, 172 Snethlage, Emil Heinrich  11 – 12, 26, 28, 44, 47 Sökeland, Hermann  52

Sologuren, Dr.  45 Squier, Ephraim George   91, 99, 105, 107, 117 Staden, Hans  154 Stegemann (store in Berlin)  273 Stegmann, Adolfo  155 Steichen, Edward  208 Steinen, Karl von den  32, 51, 209 – 212, 214 – 218, 221 – 224, 226, 228 – 233, 237 – 243, 247, 272 – 273, 281 – 283, 291 – 292, 302, 304 – 305, 317 – 318 Steinen, Wilhelm von den  209, 211 – 212, 215, 218, 225, 237, 239 Stephens, John Lloyd  376 Stieglitz, Alfred  208 Stübel, Alphons  182, 194 Sweet, Henry N.  26 T

Talbot, Wilhelm Henry Fox  77 Tamanako (Karajá)  256, 275 Tásiga (Chamacoco)  174 Tello, Julio César  107, 121, 129 Teresa Maria Cristina (di Borbone)   182 Terry, Arthur  176 Thompson, Edward  378 Thulin, Otto  29, 305 – 308 Thurn, Everard im   142 Thurnwald, Richard  137 Töppen, Hugo  332, 337 – 338 Tozzer, Alfred M.  378, 386 Traeger, Paul   14, 157, 173, 330, 337 Treitschke, Heinrich von  335 Tristan, Pio   106 Tumayaua (Bakairí)  216 – 217, 221, 229 U

Uhle, Max  126, 173, 397, 408 Umlauft, Friedrich  207 Underwood & Underwood  26, 28 Unverzagt, Wilhelm  61

418 419

Index of Persons

V

W

Valladar (Karajá)  275 Vargas, Max T.   155 Vasconcelos, José  345 Verswijver, Gustaaf   261, 277 – 278 Villa, Pancho  344 Villaalba, Ricardo  135, 140 Villacorta Ostalaza, Luis Felipe  106, 172 Virchow, Hans  237 Virchow, Rudolf  13, 50 – 52, 55, 57 – 58, 67, 133, 136, 157, 173, 210 – 211, 213, 221, 238 Vogel, Peter  211 – 212, 214 – 216, 219, 233, 239 Vollmar, Alberto  158 Voß, Albert  52

Waite, Charles B.  28, 57, 59, 361, 371 Walatá (Karajá) (see Valladar)  Wassén, Henry  308, 310, 317 Weigel, Christoph  143 Weisbach, Valentin  51 Weule, Karl  173, 348 Wiener, Charles  91 – 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 105 – 107, 126 William, Thomas  47 Wolff, Gregor  237 Z

Zabala, Juan Carlos  354 Zabel, Rudolf   339 Zafiro, Tomás  340, 346 – 347, 354

420 421

About the authors

Kerstin Bartels is an independent photo conservator and photographer living close to Berlin. She studied conservation of paintings in Florence, and the conservation of photography and film in Berlin at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (HTW). From 2006 to 2013 she taught the conservation of audio-visual and photographic heritage at HTW. ­Together with her students, she carried out several research and conservation projects for museums and archives. Focusing on the conservation of historical glass negatives, as shown in this publication, she worked on the collection by Hans Heinrich Brüning for the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. Similar projects include: the conservation of glass negatives produced by Louis and Georg Koch for the Fockemuseum in Bremen, Die Glasnegativsammlung der Bremer Fotografen Louis und Georg Ludwig Koch im Bremer Fockemuseum (Hannover 2012, co-authored with Härtel, Sternebeck and Walter); the conservation of the Ludwig Borchardt glass negatives for the Schweizerisches Institut für ägyptische Bauforschung und Altertumskunde Kairo and the preservation of glass negatives for the Department of Archaeology in Colombo, Sri Lanka. In addition to her conservation work, since 2013, she has offered an inhouse workshop program for photo collections belonging to museums, archives and galleries. www.fotografien-erhalten.de Federico Bossert is a scientific researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) in Argentina. He gained his PhD in anthropology and has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among the Chané (Argentinean Chaco) and several other groups living in Gran Chaco (Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina). He is currently interested in the ethnology and ethnohistory of the Chaco region, with a particular focus on religion, ethnic identity, social organisation and interethnic relations. He has published several books and articles on these subjects. Recent publications include: Hijos de la selva. La fotografía etnográfica de Max Schmidt, co-authored with Diego Villar. Santa Monica: Perceval Press (2013); El parentesco. Textos fundamentales, co-authored with Pablo F. ­Sendón and Diego Villar. Buenos Aires: Biblos (2012); “La etnología chiriguano de Alfred Métraux”, co-authored with Diego Villar, Journal de la Société des Américanistes XCIII (2006).

About the authors

Manuela Fischer is the curator of South American archaeology at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. She studied art history and American archaeology and anthropology in Montpellier and Berlin. She conducted research in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. Her research interests include the history of collections and the biography of objects. Together with Peter Bolz and Susan Kamel, she co-edited Adolf Bastian and his Universal Archive of Humanity. The Origins of German Anthropology, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag (2007). Recent publications include: “Von ‘Herren­ menschen’ und ‘Waldmenschen’. Die ‘Deutsche Amazonas-Jary-Expedition’ von 1935 bis 1937 nach Brasilien”, co-authored with Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo and Renzo Duin. In Vom Amazonas an die Ostfront. Stationen einer Selbstinszenierung im Leben des Auslandsforschers, Wehrmachtsgeographen und Kulturfilmers Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel 1910 – 1989, edited by Sören Flachowsky and Holger Stoecker, Köln: Böhlau (2011); “Der zeitlose Rahmen: Visuelle Dokumente der Kogi/Kágaba (Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia)”, co-authored with Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo. In Visuelle Medien und Forschung. Über den wissenschaftlichen methodischen Umgang mit Fotografie und Film. Visuelle Kultur. Studien und Materialien, edited by Irene Ziehe and Ulrich Hägele. Münster: Waxmann (2011). Stefanie Gänger is assistant professor at the Historisches Institut – Iberische und Lateinamerikanische Abteilung at the Universität zu Köln. She studied European and Latin American history at the universities of Augsburg, Seville and Cambridge and received her PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2011. During her PhD, she was a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at the University of Pennsylvania. Before moving to Cologne, she held post-doctoral fellowships at the Lateinamerika-Institut at the Freie Universität in Berlin and at the Universität Konstanz. She has worked on the history of antiquities collecting in the late-colonial and early-Republican Andes and is the author of Relics of the Past. The Collecting and Study of Pre-Columbian Antiquities in Peru and Chile, 1837 – 1911. Oxford: University Press (2014). Paul Hempel is a PhD candidate and academic coordinator at the Institut für Ethnologie at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He has worked on the history, epistemology and practice of photography and other visual media, in particular in the context of German ethnographic expeditions to the Amazon region between 1884 and 1914. Together with Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer, Bettina Dietz and Frank Heidemann he co-edited Bilder des Fremden. Mediale Inszenierungen von Alterität im 19. Jahrhundert. Münster: LIT (2007). Further publications include: “Theodor Koch-Grünberg

About the authors

and Visual Anthropology in Early Twentieth-Century German Anthropology”. In Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame, edited by Christopher Morton and Elizabeth Edwards, 193 – 219. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate (2009); “Anthropologisch-Ethnologische Fotografien aus dem Nachlass Paul Ehrenreich”. In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera. Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolff, 66 – 75. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (2014). Horst Junker is a museologist and archivist at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin. Between 1988 and 1992, he studied museum’s studies at the Institut für Museologie at the Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur in Leipzig. His research interests include the history of archaeological museums and collections. At Berlin’s Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, he reconstructed the pre-historical collection that had belonged to Heinrich Menu von Minutoli and the archive of the former Prussia-Museum in Königsberg. Between 2001 und 2012, he worked as an archivist at the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (BGAEU). In 2004, he began indexing and digitalising the institution’s photographic collection. This led him to deal with the history and methodology of scientific photography. He has published articles about the history of research and the people associated with this historical collection in Archäologisches Nachrichtenblatt and Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica. Frank Stephan Kohl is an independent photo historian. He studied European ethno­ lo­g y and cultural studies and history at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg and the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin with a focus on visual anthropology and the history of photography. He has participated in various projects associated with cataloguing and digitalising photographic archives in Germany and Brazil. His research interests include the history of photography in Imperial Brazil, the global circulation of ima­ ges and the transfer of ideas and knowledge. Recent publications include: “Albert Frisch und die ersten global zirkulierenden Amazonasfotografien”. In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera – Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolff, 26 – 35. Berlin: Ibero-Amerika­ nisches Institut (2014); “Georg Leuzinger (1813 – 1892), ein Schweizer Kunsthändler in Rio de Janeiro. Bilderhandel und Wissensaustausch zwischen Europa und Brasilien im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Trade and circulation of popular prints, Publication of the 7th congress of the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore SIEF, 299 – 317. Trento (2006).

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About the authors

Michael Kraus is Akademischer Rat at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. He studied ethnology, comparative religious studies and sociology at the universities of Tübingen, Guadalajara and Marburg. In 2004, he gained his PhD in ethnology for his work Bildungsbürger im Urwald. Die deutsche ethnologische Amazo­ nienforschung (1884 – 1929). As a research assistant, he worked at Philipps-Universität in Marburg and the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. He has also curated exhibitions for various museums. Recent publications include: “Von Pflanzen und Menschen. Ein Botaniker dokumentiert das Amazonasgebiet.” In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera. Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerika­ nischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolff, 106 – 115. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (2014); “Perspectivas múltiples. El intercambio de objetos entre etnólogos e indígenas en las tierras bajas de América del Sur.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos [online], débats, published online on 20 September 2014. URL: http://nuevomundo. revues.org/67209; DOI: 10.4000/nuevomundo.67209. “Ambivalenzen der Bildpro­ duktion – Historische Porträt- und Typenfotografien aus dem südamerikanischen Tiefland”. Rundbrief Fotografie 20(2): 10 – 16 (2013). Ingrid Kummels is professor of cultural and social anthropology at the Lateiname­ rika-Institut at the Freie Universität Berlin. She studied ethnology at the Ludwig-­ Maximilians-Universität München. For her PhD, she undertook research into the bilingual-bicultural education program of the Mexican government and its appropria­ tion by the Rarámuri (Tarahumara). During her habilitation, she continued research on the Rarámuri with regard to northern Mexican constructions of regional identity, which are different from those of the dominant mestizo version of the Mexican nation-state. Focusing on the geographical regions of Mexico, the US-Mexican borderlands and the transnational space between Cuba and the United States, her current research interests include migration, transnationalism, identity politics and visual anthropology. Relevant publications include work on the visual representation of the Rarámuri in Mexican indigenismo: “Indigenismos populares y transnacionales en torno a los tarahumaras de principios del siglo XX: la concepción de la modernidad a partir del deporte, de la fotografía y del cine”. Historia Mexicana LXII(4): 1549 – 1605 (2013). Other recent publications include: “Cine Indígena: Video, Migration and the Dynamics of Belonging between Mexico and the USA”. In Espacios mediáticos: cultura y representación en México, edited by Ingrid Kummels, 201 – 223. Berlin: Tranvía (2012).

About the authors

Claudine Leysinger has been deputy director of the Schweizerische Studienstiftung since 2008. This non-profit organisation aims to encourage extraordinary students and connect them across Switzerland so that they will be able to make a bigger contribu­ tion to society. She is in charge of selecting and mentoring students, participates in the organisation of events, acts as liaison for numerous volunteers and is the project manager of a fellowship program. She obtained her master’s degree and PhD in Latin American history at Columbia University. Her dissertation dealt with Teobert Maler, a German expeditionary photographer to nineteenth-century Mexico. She has conducted research on the history of photography, archaeology, anthropology and travel literature, as well as on the exchange between German, US and Mexican scientific communities during the nineteenth century. She recently published the article “Teobert Maler: Der empathische Blick auf Mexiko”. In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera. Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolf, 36 – 45. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (2014). Adriana Muñoz is the curator of the collections at the Världskulturmuseerna (Gothen­ burg) since 2004. She studied history and archaeology in Argentina and Gothenburg and received her PhD in archaeology from the Göteborgs Universitet. She has worked in collections management in Sweden and Argentina and is interested in systems of classification and how they reproduce ideology. She has worked with ICOM on the illicit traffic of cultural heritage, and over the last few years has participated in the critical heritage program at the Göteborgs Universitet. She has published on the formation of museum collections. “La creación del Museo de la Cultura del Mundo, Gotemburgo (Suecia): tentativas de cambio de paradigma y prácticas museales.” Baukara: Bitácoras de antropología e historia de la antropología en América Latin, 4: 68 – 84(2013); From Curiosa to World Culture: A history of the Latin American Collections at the Museum of World Culture, Sweden. (PhD dissertation). Etnologiska Studier No. 47 and GOTARC Series B No 58. 2013. Recent publications include: “Escaleras de Servicio”. In Fetish Modernity, edited by Anne Marie Bouttiaux and Anna Seiderer. RIME exhibition catalogue, 225 – 229. Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervueren (2011); “Bolivians in Gothenburg: The Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections at the Museum of World Culture”. In The Past Ahead. Language, Culture and Identity in the Neotropics, edited by Christian Isendahl, 93 – 110. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studies in Global Archaeology 18 (2012); “Vanished People; identities in a limbo. The relationship between Archaeology and Human Rights”. Presented at the Underground Project, MUSEION, Göteborgs Universitet (2009).

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About the authors

Hinnerk Onken has been working as part of a project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft since 2012: “Ambivalent Images: Photographs and Postcards from South America in Germany, c. 1880 – 1930”, at IHILA on the Universität zu Köln. He is cur­ rently carrying out research on the history of photography, the visual (re-)presentation of Latin America, the history of knowledge and science and cultural transfer. Recent publications include “Ambivalente Bilder: Fotos und Bildpostkarten aus Südamer­ ika im Deutschen Reich, ca. 1880 – 1930.” Rundbrief Fotografie 21(81/82): 8 – 16 (2014); “‘Südamerika: Ein Zukunftsland der Menschheit.’ Colonial Imagination and Photo­ graphs from South America in Weimar Germany.” In Weimar Colonialism: Discourses and Legacies of Post-Imperialism in Germany after 1918, edited by Florian Krobb and Elaine Martin, 145 – 166. Bielefeld: Aisthesis (2014); Visiones y visualizaciones: La nación en tarjetas postales sudamericanas a fines del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX. ­Madrid: Iberoamericana [forthcoming]. Heiko Prümers, archaeologist, is a researcher at the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. He has conducted fieldwork in Peru, Ecuador, Mexico and Bolivia. He familiarised himself with Brüning’s work when his wife, the anthropologist Eva König, was heading a project on early photographs funded by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius at the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg. Recent publications include “¿‘Charlatanocracia’ en Moxos?” In Procesos y expresiones de poder, identidad y orden tempranos en Sudamérica. Segunda parte, edited by Peter Kaulicke and Tom D. ­Dillehay, Boletín de Arqueología PUCP 11 (2007), 103 – 116, Lima (2009); “Pre-Columbian human occupation patterns in the eastern plains of the Llanos de Moxos, Bolivian Amazonia”, co-authored with Umberto Lombardo. Journal of Archaeological Science 37 (8): 1875 – 1885 (2010); “El Proyecto Lomas de Casarabe: Investigaciones arqueológicas en los Llanos de Moxos, Bolivia.” In The Past Ahead. Language, Culture, and Identity in the Neotropics, edited by Christian Isendahl, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studies in Global Archaeology 18. Uppsala (2012); “Volver a los sitios – el Proyecto Boliviano-Alemán en Mojos”. In “Para quê serve o conhecimento se eu não posso dividi-lo?” “Was nützt alles wissen, wenn man es nicht teilen kann?” – Gedenkschrift für Erwin Heinrich Frank, edited by Birgit Krekeler et al. (= Estudios Indiana 5), 375 – 396. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (2012). Margrit Prussat is director of the university archives of Otto-Friedrich-Universität in Bamberg. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology at the Ludwig-­MaximiliansUniversität and her master’s degree in archival studies at the Fachhochschule Potsdam. She has worked at the archives of the Deutsches Museum, Munich, where she was mainly concerned with the photographic archive and the collection holding personal

About the authors

papers. From 2008 to 2012, she was involved with the establishment of the DEVA digital archive at the Institut für Afrikastudien at the Universität Bayreuth. Her doctoral thesis focused on the history of photography in Brazil and got the research award by the Archiv- und Museumsstiftung Wuppertal in 2006. She published Bilder der Sklaverei. Fotografien der afrikanischen Diaspora in Brasilien, 1860 – 1920. Berlin: Reimer (2008); “Icons of Slavery: Black Brazil in Nineteenth Century Photography and Image Art”. In Living History. Encountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery, edited by Ana Lucia Araujo, 203 – 230. Newcastle u. T.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2009); “Marc Ferrez (1843 – 1923). Fotograf, Künstler und Unternehmer im Brasilien des 19. Jahrhunderts”. In Forscher und Unternehmer mit Kamera: Geschichten von Bildern und Fotografen aus der Fotothek des Ibero-Amerikanischen Instituts, edited by Gregor Wolff, 16 – 24. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut (2014). Pascal Riviale is an archivist at the French Archives nationales, where he is in charge of the archives of national museums and public architecture. He received a PhD in history from the Université Denis-Diderot, Paris. He is dedicated to the history of explorations and of South American collections in French museums. He is an associated researcher at the Centre EREA, in the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique-Université Paris-Ouest-Nanterre. He has published: Un siècle d’archéologie française au Pérou (1821 – 1914). Paris: L’Harmattan (1996); Los Viajeros franceses en busca del Perú prehispánico (1821 – 1914). Lima: Fondo Editorial PUCP (2000); Entre textos e imágenes. La representación antropológica del indio americano, co-edited with Fermin del Pino-Díaz and Juan José Villarías Robles. Madrid: CSIC (2009); Charles Wiener. Voyage au Pérou et en Bolivie (1875 – 1877), introduction and notes by Pascal Riviale. Paris: Gingko Editeurs (2010); Une vie dans les Andes. Le journal de Théodore Ber, published with Christophe Galinon. Paris: Gingko Editeurs (2014). Franz Thiel currently works as a communication designer at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in Geneva, Switzerland. He studied cultural anthropology, sociology and Spanish in Leipzig and Granada. In his master’s thesis, he focused on the history of photography in Mexico and the photographs of the Frenchman Abel Briquet in the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin.

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About the authors

Andreas Valentin, is professor of photography and arts at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Cândido Mendes. He is currently conducting post-doctoral research at the Freie Universität Berlin. He earned his PhD in social history from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro with a thesis on the German photographer Georg Hübner’s early twentieth century photography in the Amazon. He has a master’s degree from the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro; and a bachelor’s degree in art history and cinema from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. Since 2005, he has been a member of the Brazilian Anthropological Association, which awarded him its Pierre Verger Photography Prize in 2004. He has photographed, produced documentaries and conducted research on the Amazon. He also worked as a production and direction assistant in Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo, and studied and collaborated with Brazilian avant-garde artist Hélio Oiticica (1937 – 1980). In 2014, he produced Call me Helium in Rio de Janeiro, a collaborative work undertaken with the artist in 1974. He has held various photography exhibitions throughout Brazil, and has participated in group exhibitions and works as curator and producer at photography venues. Recent publications include several books about the Parintins Boi-bumbá Festival and the book A fotografia amazônica de George Huebner. Rio de Janeiro: Nau Editora (2012). Diego Villar is a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina with a PhD in anthropology. He has conducted ethno­ graphic fieldwork among the Chané (Argentinean Chaco) and the Chacobo (Boliv­ ian Amazon) and is currently interested in the comparative ethnology of the South American lowlands, especially regarding issues such as kinship, social organi­sation, ethnohistory, cosmology, symbolism and ethnic identity. He has published several books and articles on these themes. Recent publications include: Hijos de la selva. La fotografía etnográfica de Max Schmidt, co-authored with Federico Bossert. Santa Monica: Perceval Press (2013); Huni kuin hiwepaunibuki. A história dos C ­ axinauás por eles mesmos, co-authored with Eliane Camargo. São Paulo: SESC (2013); Al pie de los Andes. Estudios de etnología, arqueología e historia, co-authored with Pablo F. ­Sendón. Cochabamba: Itinerarios/ILAMIS (2013); Las tierras bajas de Bolivia: miradas históricas y antropológicas, co-­edited with Isabelle Combès. Santa Cruz de la Sierra: El País/ Universidad Autónoma Gabriel René Moreno (2012).

SCHRIF TEN ZUR GESCHICHTE DER BERLINER MUSEEN HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM ZENTRALARCHIV DER STA ATLICHEN MUSEEN ZU BERLIN

BD.1 | BERNHARD MAAZ (HG.)

BD. 3 | JÖRN GRABOWSKI,

KUNST-, WELT- UND

PETRA WINTER (HG.)

WERKGESCHICHTEN

ZUM KRIEGSDIENST EINBERUFEN

DIE KORRESPONDENZ ZWISCHEN

DIE KÖNIGLICHEN MUSEEN ZU BERLIN

HANS POSSE UND WILHELM VON BODE

UND DER ERSTE WELTKRIEG

VON 1904 BIS 1928

2014. 229 S. 42 S/W-ABB. GB.

2012. 254 S. 12 S/W-ABB. GB.

ISBN 978-3-412-22361-8

ISBN 978-3-412-20904-9 BD. 4 | JÖRN GRABOWSKI LEITBILDER EINER NATION ZUR GESCHICHTE DER BERLINER NATIONALGALERIE FÜR DAS ZENTRALARCHIV – STAATLICHE MUSEEN ZU BERLIN HERAUSGEGEBEN VON PETRA WINTER 2014. 311 S. 60 S/W-ABB. GB. ISBN 978-3-412-22443-1 BD. 2 | JÖRN GRABOWSKI, PETRA WINTER (HG.) ZWISCHEN POLITIK UND KUNST DIE STAATLICHEN MUSEEN ZU BERLIN IN DER ZEIT DES NATIONALSOZIALISMUS 2013. 494 S. 94 S/W-ABB. GB.

RT025

ISBN 978-3-412-21047-2

böhlau verlag, ursulaplatz 1, d-50668 köln, t: + 49 221 913 90-0 [email protected], www.boehlau-verlag.com | wien köln weimar

Ulrich von den Steinen

expeditionSreiSen am amazonaS der ethnologe K arl von den Steinen (1855–1929)

Der Arzt Karl von den Steinen (1855–1929) war einer der bekanntesten Forschungsreisenden seiner Zeit. In den Jahren 1884 und 1887 brach er zu den letzten weißen Flecken auf der Landkarte Südamerikas auf: Das unbekannte Quellengebiet des Xingu, eines südlichen Zuflusses des Amazonas, sollte erforscht werden. Er traf dort auf Indianerstämme, die nie zuvor weiße Menschen gesehen hatten. Die vorliegende Biographie, die neben den Expeditionsreisen das gesamte Leben des Forschers portraitiert, zeigt von den Steinen als entschiedenen Gegner von Rassismus und politischen Okkupationsgelüsten. Er sollte einer der ersten sein, der von seinen Expeditionen nicht nur Exponate und Tagebücher mitbrachte, sondern auch ein neues Bild vom Menschen: seinen Wurzeln und seiner Entwicklung aus urzeitlicher Kultur. Mit eineM Geleitwort von Mark Münzel 2010. X Xii, 166 S. 22 S/w-abb. Gb. 135 X 210 MM. iSbn 978-3-412-20618-5

böhlau verlag, ursulaplatz 1, 50668 köln. t : + 49(0)221 913 90-0 [email protected], www.boehlau.de | köln weimar wien