The ethnographic frontier in German New Guinea (1870--1914)

The dissertation has a dual purpose. On a more immediate historical level the work focuses on the impact of the Pacific Islands on the formation of anthropological theory, and conversely, it focuses on the impact of anthropological theory on the Pacific Islands. More concretely, an investigation of German anthropology during the so-called museum age (1870--1919) in the colonial territory of German New Guinea---comprising the northeastern comer of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the northern Solomon Islands, and a large section of Micronesia---is central to the analysis performed here. This study will shed light on the relationship between anthropology and other European phenomena such as colonialism and commerce in the Pacific. Museums receive particular attention in this project, because, given the absence of established anthropology departments at German universities, it was in these institutions where theoretical insights were gained and adopted. From the four cornerstones of museum activity---collection, storage and preservation, study, and exhibit of objects---this dissertation selects the collection process as the crucial element linking German New Guinea with the rest of the German empire. In order to chart the influence of German anthropology on the Pacific and vice versa, the scope of analysis shifts between Europe and Oceania.;The second more abstract purpose of this study rests on an investigation of the collection and production of material culture in the West. Material culture is understood in a broad sense; that is while indigenous material cultural objects---the so-called ethnographica---remain central to the analysis, the term is stretched to include such material "objects" as museums, ethnographic monographs, fieldwork, and German orders all of which have an equally important bearing on German anthropology. Such abstraction allows for a comparative framework where the less explored German anthropological tradition is read against its widely researched Anglo-American counterpart.