Survey at the Ethnographic Collection of Philipps-Universität Marburg

The Philipps-Universität Marburg, in Germany, preserves a rich documentation associated to the ethnographic collection. Among the historical documents, the correspondence of German Anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924) is an important source of information for those interested in scientific relations between Germany and Brazil, and also for studying the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.

Koch-Grünberg made four trips to the Amazon (1898, with Hermann Meyer to the river Xingu; 1903-1905, to the river Negro; 1911-1913, to the rivers Branco and Orinoco; and 1924, to the same rivers, in which he died), one of them (river Negro) supported by the Goeldi Museum, in Belém.

On May 23 and 24, 2014, Koch-Grünberg's letters - well organized in 37 folders - were surveyed. We looked for documents related to Jacques Huber and his colleagues of the Goeldi Museum, like Emil Göldi (1859-1917) and Emilia Snethlage (1868-1929). There are some examples bellow.

To know more about the Fachgebiet Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie in Philipps-Universität Marburg, please click here. To know more about the ethnographic collection preserved in this Institute, please click here. Information on Koch-Grünberg's archive is here. A reference book on German Anthropologists who worked in the Amazonian region is "Bildungsbürger im Urwald. Die deutsche ethnologische Amazonienforschung (1884-1929)", by Dr. Michael Kraus (2004).

We thank to Dr. Ernst Halbmayer, Dr. Michael Kraus, Dr. Dagmar Schweitzer de Palacios, and Dr. Karin Naase, for their support and kindness.

The present site of Fachgebiet Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie of Philipps-Universität Marburg is a 1491 house, named Kugelhaus. Soon the Institute will move to another place.