GERMAN ETHNOGRAPHY IN AUSTRALIA GERMAN ETHNOGRAPHY IN AUSTRALIA EDITED BY NICOLAS PETERSON AND ANNA KENNY MONOGRAPHS IN ANTHROPOLOGY SERIES Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: German ethnography in Australia / editors: Nicolas Peterson, Anna Kenny. ISBN: 9781760461317 (paperback) 9781760461324 (ebook) Series: Monographs in Anthropology. Subjects: Ethnology--Australia. Germans--Australia--History. Ethnology--Germany. Australia--Ethnic relations. Other Creators/Contributors: Peterson, Nicolas, 1941- editor. Kenny, Anna, editor. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover image: Aranda Lutherans and a group of visiting Luritja people at Hermannsburg Mission, 1910s. Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs, SRC 06192. This edition © 2017 ANU Press Contents Abbreviations . vii Figures and tables . ix Maps . xi Plates . xiii Preface and acknowledgements . xvii Orthography . xix Contributors . xxi Introduction 1 . The German-language tradition of ethnography in Australia . 3 Nicolas Peterson and Anna Kenny 2 . German-language anthropology traditions around 1900: Their methodological relevance for ethnographers in Australia and beyond . 29 André Gingrich Part I: First encounters 3 . Clamor Schürmann’s contribution to the ethnographic record for Eyre Peninsula, South Australia . 57 Kim McCaul 4 . Pulcaracuranie: Losing and finding a cosmic centre with the help of J . G . Reuther and others . 79 Rod Lucas and Deane Fergie 5 . Looking at some details of Reuther’s work . 115 Luise Hercus 6 . German Moravian missionaries on western Cape York Peninsula and their perception of the local Aboriginal people and languages . 137 Corinna Erckenbrecht Part II: Impact of the Aranda 7 . Early ethnographic work at the Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia, 1877–1910 . 169 Anna Kenny 8 . Sigmund Freud, Géza Róheim and the Strehlows: Oedipal tales from Central Australian anthropology . 195 John Morton 9 . Of kinships and other things: T . G . H . Strehlow in Central Australia . 223 Diane Austin-Broos 10 . ‘Only the best is good enough for eternity’: Revisiting the ethnography of T . G . H . Strehlow . 243 Jason Gibson Part III: Widening the interest 11 . The Australianist work of Erhard Eylmann in comparative perspective . 275 Francesca Merlan 12 . Herbert Basedow (1881–1933): Surgeon, geologist, naturalist and anthropologist . 301 David Kaus 13 . Father Worms’s contribution to Australian Aboriginal anthropology . 329 William B . McGregor 14 . Historicising culture: Father Ernst Worms and the German anthropological traditions . 357 Regina Ganter Part IV: Academic anthropology 15 . Doing research in the Kimberley and carrying ideological baggage: A personal journey . 383 Erich Kolig 16 . Tracks and shadows: Some social effects of the 1938 Frobenius Expedition to the north-west Kimberley . 413 Anthony Redmond 17 . Carl Georg von Brandenstein’s legacy: The past in the present . 435 Nick Thieberger 18 . The end of an era: Ronald Berndt and the German ethnographic tradition . 453 Nicolas Peterson Index . 479 Abbreviations AADFAS Association of Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies AAPA Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority AIAS Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies AIATSIS Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies AILC Australian Indigenous Languages Collection ARC Australian Research Council AVC active verbal concept CHB Catherine Berndt DFG German Research Foundation LSE London School of Economics MP Member of Parliament PVC passive verbal concept RMB Ronald Berndt SAC Society of the Catholic Apostolate SWR Südwestrundfunk WAC Work Area Clearance vii Figures and tables Figure 2.1 Key influences in late Enlightenment and early Romantic movement thought ..........................32 Figure 2.2 The conceptual framework that had emerged by the 1860s .......................................38 Figure 2.3 The principal schools of thought around 1900 ..........43 Figure 2.4 The three main schools post-1918 ...................48 Table 13.1 Published and unpublished works by Fathers Hermann Nekes and Ernest Worms .....................336 ix Maps Map 3.1 Barngarla native title claim area ......................58 Map 3.2 Berndt’s map showing the expansion and contraction of Aboriginal groups on Eyre Peninsula at the time of early European settlement .................................71 Map 4.1 The location of Lutheran missions in the vicinity of Cooper Creek, northern South Australia ................89 Map 6.1 Location of Mapoon Mission on Cape York Peninsula, 1892 ....................................138 Map 7.1 Aranda names with their European equivalents for the area west of Alice Springs .......................170 Map 10.1 The area north of Alice Springs where Strehlow worked ...252 Map 11.1 Places visited by Eylmann on his travels ..............280 Map 12.1 Locations mentioned in the text ....................304 Map 13.1 Map showing the location of Worms’s fieldwork languages and cultures ...............................333 Map 14.1 Locations mentioned in the text ....................360 Map 15.1 Kimberley locations mentioned in the text ............389 Map 16.1 The movement of the song cycle across the Kimberley ...414 Map 18.1 Locations mentioned in the text ....................456 xi Plates Plate 1.1 A Dieri family at a camp just outside of Killalpaninna Mission ...............................9 Plate 1.2 Kempe’s Aranda to German wordlist with English translation by T. G. H. Strehlow, 1877–91 ................13 Plate 1.3 Pages of Reuther’s manuscript of volume 5 containing data about eight languages of the Lake Eyre Basin, date range 1891–1904. .14 Plate 2.1 Oskar Liebler of Hermannsburg Mission and his ‘Findbuch’ ...................................40 Plate 4.1 Reuther’s graduation portrait ........................85 Plate 4.2 Reverend J. G. Reuther and the widow Pauline Stolz around the time of their engagement, 1888 ................86 Plate 4.3 Pauline and J. G. Reuther in the missionary’s study, Killalpaninna. 87 Plate 4.4 The central corridor of Reuther’s Killalpaninna house .....90 Plate 4.5 Reuther’s artefact collection, including toas, in his Killalpaninna house. .90 Plate 4.6 J. G. and Pauline Reuther with two Stolz sons, five Reuther sons and only daughter, Alma. Laura Reuther is sitting in the foreground .............................96 Plate 4.7 Reuther family album from Gumvale, in the possession of Alma’s only daughter, Helen Gordon ...................96 Plate 4.8 Page 265 of Reuther’s manuscript of volume 7 titled ‘Ortsnamen der Eingeborenen Australiens’ (‘Placenames of Aboriginal Australians’), 1905. It contains 2,468 placenames ...98 xiii GERMAN ETHNOGRAPHY IN AUSTRALIA Plate 4.9 A portion of Goyder’s Official Atlas of South Australia … Sheet 5 (1885) overlaid with a portion of Hillier’s map (c. 1904) of Reuther placenames (in red) showing a ‘native well’ at the northern end of Pulcaracuranie Flat .....................100 Plate 4.10 Pulcaracuranie, view north-west. The yellow sand dune at back left is likely the one climbed by the explorer John McKinlay in 1861 during his search for Burke and Wills .....101 Plates 4.11a–c Artefacts at the Pulcaracuranie campsite, including grinding stones and worked glass ...............102 Plate 4.12 Pulcaracuranie (Palkarakarani) toa ..................106 Plate 4.13 Dieri women Melanie Warren and her daughter Jaima Warren viewing toas in the South Australian Museum .......109 Plate 4.14 Carl Strehlow’s farewell from Killalpaninna ...........109 Plate 6.1 Missionaries and their helpers at the landing place on their first day at the Archer River in August 1904 ........140 Plate 6.2 An example of a historical photograph in the Moravian Church Archives with an unclear motive .................143 Plate 6.3 The two missionary couples at Mapoon. ..............149 Plate 6.4 One of the very first photographs taken at Mapoon, showing an Aboriginal camp at the seashore. It was taken by a visiting boat captain, Mr Smith, in the second half of May 1892 ......................................151 Plate 6.5 A photo often used in Moravian journals with the intention of showing European readers how Aboriginal people looked before contact with the missionaries .........157 Plate 6.6 One of the first photos taken at Mapoon with a whole group of Aborigines and the missionaries standing among or in front of them ..................................158 Plate 6.7 Dancers and their masks for the crocodile dance ........159 Plate 6.8 A head ornament made of cassowary feathers, from Mapoon. 160 Plate 6.9 A message stick from Aurukun, probably used as a calendar to indicate the days until Christmas in 1911 .......161 Plate 7.1 Hermannsburg, 1895 ............................170 xiv Plates Plate 7.2 Carl Strehlow in his garden, 1901 ...................172 Plate 7.3 Aranda Lutheran people and a group of visiting Luritja people at the Hermannsburg Mission, 1910s ..............177 Plate 7.4 Schulze’s version of the eight-class or subsection system ...179 Plate 7.5 Pages 826–7 of Carl Strehlow’s manuscript Leben. On page 826, centre, he illustrates how the subsection