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Missionaries and Their Ethnographic Instructions

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CSIRO Publishing The Royal Society of Victoria, 127, 73–82, 2015 www.publish.csiro.au/journals/rs 10.1071/RS15007 MISSIONARIES AND THEIR ETHNOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTIONS Walter F. Veit German Studies, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Monash University Victoria 3800 Correspondence: Walter Veit, [email protected] ABSTRACT: When in the 1880s and 1890s German Lutheran missionaries were sent to Australia from their colleges in Hermannsburg in Lower Saxony and Neuendettelsau in Bavaria to work among the Australian indigenous peoples of the Northern Territory, they had no ethnological education to speak of. This was particularly true for Carl Strehlow who, born in 1871 and educated from 1888 to 1891 at the Lutheran Missionary College in Neuendettelsau, arrived in Adelaide in 1892 and went straight to work with Pastor Reuther among the Diari in Killalpaninna, south of Lake Eyre. From there, in 1894, he was sent to Hermannsburg to resurrect the abandoned Lutheran Mission Station of the Finke River Mission, owned by the South Australian Immanuel Synod. The records of the curriculum in Neuendettelsau show no subjects teaching the theory and practice of ethnology. However, his ethnographic work among the local tribes of the Arrernte and Loritja is today still considered a classic in the field. As a contribution to the history of research methodology in the field of ethnology, I intend to give a brief outline of 1) the early development of scientific research instructions in general, and 2) as a special case, Carl Strehlow’s learning process in form of letters with questions and answers between himself in Hermannsburg and his editors in Frankfurt. Keywords: Research instructions, Australian Aboriginal anthropology, German missionary ethnography, Carl Strehlow For Silke and Hartmann Lehmann worthless imaginable. Almost everything is chaff, with hardly a grain of moral value here and there. Hat der Missionar das Charisma für In truth, it must have cost not a little self-denial wissenschaftliche Studien, z.B. geographische, on your part to write down these insipid legends ethnographische, comparative Sprachstudien which can be of interest only to an ethnographer. empfangen, so wird er dem heiligen Missionswerk I do not doubt the historical value of your wesentliche Dienste leisten, wenn er sich tief in collection as the sole monuments of a tribe which sie eintaucht und im Verhältniß zu den zum Theil will vanish from this earth. (Veit 2005: 38) recht oberflächlichen Tastungen der Reisenden While this response seems strange, even lamentable, in ihnen etwas Gründliches leistet. Durch solche coming from a theologian, it also indicates the general Arbeiten wächst das Ansehen der Heidenmission attitude to, and the destruction of, Aboriginal culture of the dem äußerlich gebildeten, aber innerlich age, although trenchant criticism was voiced by missionaries verarmten Culturmenschen des 19. Jahrhunderts and scientists early on. We only have to remember the gegenüber. assessment and critique of the situation in Australia by Theodor Waitz, a German armchair ethnologist, which he (F.W. Kölling-Pless, Motive, 45) laid squarely at the feet of the British colonial government. However, the response of the Australian anthropological When the first volume of Carl Strehlow’sDie Aranda- und fraternity to Strehlow’s work was an altogether different Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien was published by matter. the Städtische Völker-Museum in Frankfurt in 1907, its Apart from the suspicion that the book was the work of reception was rather mixed. In a letter thanking the author the editor, Walter Baldwin Spencer (Mulvaney & Calaby for a copy, Strehlow’s superior at the Finke River Mission 1985: 379, 392–393), at the time Professor of Biology at in Adelaide wrote: the University of Melbourne and celebrated author of a path-blazing volume on the anthropology of Aborigines in My heartfelt thanks for sending me your work Northern Australia, wrote in an inappropriate ad hominem on the Aranda. It is a wonderful document of way, in a letter to Sir James Frazer: ‘I don’t know what German diligence. However, the material which to do in regard to Strehlow. He is so uneducated that he you have put into written form is the most can’t write publishable German’ (Penniman 1932: 109). Published Open Access CC BY-NC-ND 74 W. VEIT In spite of this, he and his friend, collaborator and co- as preacher and missionary in July 1892, to serve the Diari author, Francis Gillen, knew how to obtain and use the tribe at the Bethesda/Killalpaninna Mission Station as expertise of the Lutheran pastor at Hermannsburg for their assistant to Pastor Johann Georg Reuther (1861–1914), own research, while never acknowledging it (Mulvaney et another Neuendettelsau graduate. Here his ministry began al. 1997: 118, 130; J. Strehlow 2011, 828 ff.). Although and also his ethnographic apprenticeship, learning the local Spencer did not bother to contact Strehlow in spite of language and translating the New Testament with Reuther. several visits to Hermannsburg on his research trips while In 1894, he accepted a posting to revive Hermannsburg, Strehlow was absent, he never forgave Strehlow for a a Lutheran mission station in Aranda territory, founded in footnote which seemed to call his knowledge of Aboriginal 1877 by the Lutheran Mission House in Hermannsburg, languages into question, when Strehlow pointed out that Lower Saxony, but abandoned in 1891 after a prolonged Spencer’s translation of the term altjira as dreaming was drought (Harms 2003: 145). For the next twenty-eight outright questionable. Unfortunately, Andrew Lang, the years, except for one year of sabbatical leave spent with doyen of mythology in England, had picked it up and his family in Germany, Carl Strehlow served his flock until informed the other great authority in anthropology, E.B. 20 October 1922, when he died at Horseshoe Bend on the Tylor, that ‘a German has just sent me a lot of recent (1901) Finke River, trying to get to Adelaide for medical treatment German missionary notes (MS) on Arunta religion. It does (T.G.H. Strehlow 1969: 1 ff.; Leske 1977: 33; Veit 1990: not suit Spencer and Gillen and puts a very different face 121–2). on matters …’ (Veit 1994: 90–91; J. Strehlow 2011, 835). We do now know much more directly about the John Strehlow describes brilliantly the ensuing commotion Neuendettelsau curriculum for the years 1888 to 1891 when which could have destroyed Spencer’s reputation as a Carl studied at the college. A model curriculum in the first researcher. However, Spencer and Gillen’s Dreamtime is edition of Gustav Warneck’s 1894 Evangelical Mission still current (Wolfe 1991). Theory prescribes only few subject outside of mission On the other hand, judging by the way the book was, theology for the six years of studies, namely ‘World History and still is, quoted by European cultural anthropologists and Geography’, without any content specifications, and sociologists, particularly Emil Durkheim, who quotes and a medical course (Warneck 1894, 2: 207). But, in from Strehlow’s works as frequently as from Spencer’s addition to archival material, Wilhelm Koller’s History (Durkheim 1912), but also James Frazer and others, the of Neuendettelsau, published in 1924, offers some details book was an instant success in Europe. Not so in the which allow us to broadly reconstruct a curriculum. In Antipodes, where the work and its author have been ignored addition to the foundation study of Lutheran theology and for nearly seventy years (Veit 1991). Only recently has church history, the study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew was Nicholas Peterson launched a rescue mission in the form mandatory. English was added with a view to ministries of a research project entitled ‘Rescuing Carl Strehlow’s in English-speaking countries, particularly North America Indigenous cultural heritage legacy: the neglected German and the British colonies. It is uncertain when exactly non- tradition of Arandic ethnography’ (Peterson 2013). theological subjects were introduced, but in 1889 ‘World Considering then that, between 1907 and 1920, Carl History’ was added, ‘Mission History’ for the first time in Strehlow produced one of the most important works on the 1893, and more specifically ‘The Mission in Japan’ and ethnology or cultural anthropology of Central Australian ‘Prehistory and History of the Oldest Peoples’ in 1909. It Aboriginal tribes in his charge at the Lutheran Mission is uncertain but possible that, through these subjects, basic Station at Hermannsburg, 120 kilometres south-west of aspects and knowledge of ethnology were absorbed. Alice Springs, it must come as a surprise that he had no However, we have to assume that a special category of formal, or even informal, training in ethnographic research. writings with titles such as Instructions …(Anweisungen Born on 23 December 1871 in Fredersdorf, a small …), which were published in other mission colleges, must village in the Uckermark/Brandenburg, he obtained his have been discussed in the context of the establishment early education at his father’s Free Lutheran School. of ‘Mission Studies’ (Missionswissenschaft). This was Against the latter’s wishes, he tried, but failed, to enter a new academic discipline, founded by Karl Graul in the Leipzig Missionary College, but in 1888 was accepted Erlangen (1864) and Gustav Warneck in Halle (1896). In into the Lutheran Missionary Seminary in Neuendettelsau 1874 the latter also founded the first and most influential (Bavaria),
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