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Learn More About Berthold Laufer (Pdf) FIELDIANA Anthropology NEW SERIES, NO. 36 Curators, Collections, and Contexts: Anthropology at the Field Museum, 1893-2002 Stephen E. Nash and Gary M. Feinman, Editors September 30, 2003 Piihlication 1525 PUBLISHED BY FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Berthold Laufer Bennet Branson letters with personal information in them, these disappeared at the time of his death, along with any diaries or field notes that may have existed. Hence, we know very little about him personally. He is the most enigmatic of the major figures in the history of Field Museum anthropology.' He started early. Born in 1874 in Cologne, Ger- many, to a middle-class Jewish family,- he proved to be a precocious, brilliant student. He entered the University of Berlin in 1893 and received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1897. He concentrated on Asian languages, studying Se- mitic, Persian, Sanskrit, Malay, Chinese. Japa- nese, Manchu, Mongolian, Dravidian. and Tibet- an. It may be that his necessarily brief studies gave him only moderate familiarity with many of these, but by 1897 he had acquired a fluent read- ing knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, Mongolian, and Tibetan as well as most European languages, including Russian. He could speak many of these, too, and could write well in French and English as well as German. He was 23 years old when he finished at Leipzig. In view of his youth, it might not have been easy to find a job that made use of his spectacular but specialized skills. to the Fig. 9. 1 . Berthold Laufer. Fortunately, he had already come atten- tion of the anthropologist Franz Boas, a fellow German t)f Jewish ancestry who had immigrated Laufer (Fig. 9.1) took his own life in to the United Stales a decade previously. Laufer Berthold1934, leaping from an eighth-flcxu fire es- wrote Boas in April 1896 at the suggestion of his cape of the Chicago Beach Hotel in Hyde Park, professor, Wilhelm Grube, to inquire about the five miles south of the Field Mu.seum. He left be- possibility of joining the project that was to be- hind more than 450 publications, a superb private come the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of the library, filing cabinets full of letters, many boxes American Museum of Natural History in New of notes on works in progress, major collections York. Boas responded favorably and, after ex- of artifacts at two museums, and almost nothing changing another letter or two, signed Laufer up about himself. If he was in the habit of writing to be one of eight independent researchers work- Berthold Laufer 1 1 7 ing under Boas's overall direction in a massive attempt to clarify the nature of early contacts be- tween Asia and North America. Laufer's assign- ment was to be the southwestern end of the North Pacific arc—Sakhalin Island and the area around the mouth of the Amur River in Siberia. As Sa- khalin was part of Russia but closely connected with Japan, Laufer's command of both languages would clearly have been an asset. Whether Laufer actually visited New York at this point is not clear, but by April 1898 he was in British Columbia waiting for a ship to Yoko- hama. By early June he was in Japan, buying and shipping an ethnographic collection back to New York, and before the end of the same month he was on Sakhalin. More than a year of strenuous fieldwork on Sakhalin and on the lower Amur en- sued, during which he made significant ethno- graphic collections and gathered much cultural, linguistic, and even physical anthropological data. At that time, the local tribal peoples (Ainu, Nanoi, Nivkhi. and Evenk) had not yet been much af- fected by Russian culture; few of them spoke Rus- sian or any other European language. The winter climate was harsh, living arrangements were very basic, and travel was limited to horse- open boat, FiG. 9.2. Berthold Laufer (right) in Hankow, ca. 1904. back, and reindeer and dogsled. Yet Laufer, never a robust man, seems to have survived these ex- ceptionally rough field conditions. He finished loads of ancient pottery and bronze (Fig. 9.2). work in Siberia in October 1899, stayed in Japan This time he stayed in the Tianjin-Beijing area for through January 1900 and was in New York by only two months, after which he traveled in Shan- February or March, apparently in good health. dong province for six weeks en route to Shanghai, His Jesup Expedition salary may have ceased which he reached on February 8, 1904. He left at that point. At any rate, there seems to have been Shanghai in early April, spent the spring and sum- little to hold him in the United States. He returned mer in Cologne, and reached New York in the fall. to Cologne, presumably to his family home, in He had again shown his toughness in coping late May 1900 and was still there in April 1901. with difficult field conditions. He seems to have He may not have returned to New York before traveled alone, living in a Chinese rather than ex- being hired once again by the American Museum patriate world. In a letter written in 1903, he told of Natural History, this time as leader of (and sole Boas, "I have come to love the land and people participant in) the Jacob H. Schiff Expedition to and have become so sinicized ("chinisiert") that China (Walravens 1979:144-149). ... I feel myself to be better and healthier as a Arriving in Shanghai in August 1901, he stayed Chinese than as a European." However, as was in that city for six weeks and then toured through also to be true of his trip to China in 1908-1910, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces before proceeding his letters and field summaries from this period to Beijing, which he reached in December. He include very few names of either Western or Chi- stayed in Beijing continuously for almost a year, nese individuals whom he met in the field; he ev- except for a three-week side trip to Chengde (Je- idently was not a social man. He did only limited hol) in northern Hebei province. In late November ethnographic work while in China, mostly fo- 1902, he began a much longer journey, going first cused on drama, music, temple rituals, and pop- to Shanghai, then by boat up the Yangtze to Nan- ular amusements; otherwise, he spent his time jing and Wuhan, and then by mule cart to Xian traveling and buying artifacts. By the time he fin- and finally back to Tianjin and Beijing. He arrived ished, he had acquired a major collection of ar- in Tianjin in late October 1903 with seven cart- chaeological and ethnographic material—about 1 1 8 Chapter Nine Fig. 9.3. Objects collected by Berthold Uufer in China. 1908-1910. 10,000 objects, plu.s books, rubbings, photographs Museum of Natural History led Laufer to consider and cylinder recordings (Fig. 9.3). a change of employment. Shortly after his return from China in 1904, he His chance came in 1907. In June of that year, was put on the American Museum of Natural His- he met George Dorsey in New York and suggest- tory's regular payroll for the first time, receiving ed assembling a Tibetan collection for the Field the title "Assistant in Ethnology." In 1905-1907 Museum. In November 1907, he accepted Dor- he was also a lecturer in anthropology and (from sey 's offer of the position of assistant curator of 1906) in Ea.stem Asiatic languages at Columbia asiatic Ethnology. His new employers promptly University. Under the guidance of Boas, the mu- endorsed Laufer's Tibetan suggestion and asked seum and university had both become leaders in him to carry out a three-year expedition to be the developing field of academic anthropology. funded, to the tune of $40,000, by Mrs. Timothy However, neither had a strong interest in Laufer's B. Blackstone, the wife of a Chicago railway brand of historical, artifact- and text- focused re- magnate. Tibet was to be the chief objective of search. A lack of intellectual support and decreas- the Black.stone Expedition. While Laufer would ing interest in Asia on the part of the American be buying Chinese and Tibetan books for the Berthold Laufer 119 Fig. 9.5. Teapot of tin-lined, partially gilt copper collected in Darjeeling India, 1980-1910. Chinese work, Fig. 9.4. Tibetan temple brass lamp. Tibetan, of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The relief picture in the medallion represents the Ra sien. Newberry Library and the Crerar Library (now at the University of Chicago), the rest of his budget and time were to be spent on acquiring Tibetan ancient bronzes, 89 ancient bronze mirrors, 89 and "Lamaist" materials for the Field Museum "nonreligious" paintings, and 112 other objects (Fig. 9.4). He was to be leader and only member (including three stone rubbings). He finally left of the expedition. for Tibet on January 28, 1909. He reached Tai- Laufer's first attempt to enter Tibet was from yuan in Shanxi province on January 30, Xian in the south and was unsuccessful. Although he Shaanxi province on February 20, and Chengdu waited at Darjeeling for more than two months, in Sichuan province on April 12. He acquired a he could not get the British colonial government's good many more Chinese objects during his three- permission to proceed to Lhasa. He did manage week stays in Xian and Chengdu: 1,759 pieces to buy 634 Tibetan objects from traders in Dar- from the former and seven cases of specimens jeeling and Sikkim, which he shipped back to the from the latter.
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