Apes, Skulls and Drums: Using Images to Make Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Germany (2018)
Marissa Helene Petrou (Author)
British Journal for the History of Science
Volume: 51
Issue: 1
Pages: 69-98
In this paper, I discuss the development and use of images employed by the Dresden Royal Museum for Zoology, Anthropology and Ethnography to resolve debates about how to use visual representation as a means of making ethnographic knowledge. Through experimentation with techniques of visual representation, the founding director, A.B. Meyer (1840–1911), proposed a historical, non-essentialist approach to understanding racial and cultural difference. Director Meyer's approach was inspired by the new knowledge he had gained through field research in Asia-Pacific as well as new forms of imaging that made highly detailed representations of objects possible. Through a combination of various techniques, he developed new visual methods that emphasized intimate familiarity with variations within any one ethnic group, from skull shape to material ornamentation, as integral to the new disciplines of physical and cultural anthropology. It is well known that photographs were a favoured form of visual documentation among the anthropological and ethnographic sciences at the fin de siècle. However, in the scholarly journals of the Dresden museum, photographs, drawings, tables and etchings were frequently displayed alongside one another. Meyer sought to train the reader's eye through organized arrangements that represented objects from multiple angles and at various levels of magnification. Focusing on chimpanzees, skulls and kettledrums from Asia-Pacific, I track the development of new modes of making and reading images, from zoology and physical anthropology to ethnography, to demonstrate how the museum visually historicized humankind.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Thesis
Marissa Helene Petrou;
(2016)
Disciplines of Collection: Founding the Dresden Museum for Zoology, Anthropology and Ethnology in Imperial Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB165310451/)
Book
Blanchard, Pascal;
(2008)
Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires
(/isis/citation/CBB001033417/)
Article
Krivosheina, Galina;
(2014)
Long Way to the Anthropological Exhibition: The Institutionalization of Physical Anthropology in Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB001202377/)
Chapter
Mehos, Donna C.;
(2008)
Colonial Commerce and Anthropological Knowledge: Dutch Ethnographic Museums in the European Context
(/isis/citation/CBB000900009/)
Thesis
Couttenier, Maarten;
(2004)
Fysieke antropologie, koloniale etnografie en het museum van Tervuren. Eengeschiedenis van de Belgische antropologie (1882--1925)
(/isis/citation/CBB001562128/)
Book
María Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui;
Mungo Campbell;
Nathan Flis;
(2018)
William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB956650771/)
Article
Bradley, John;
Adgemis, Philip;
Haralampou, Luka;
(2014)
“Why Can't They Put Their Names?”: Colonial Photography, Repatriation and Social Memory
(/isis/citation/CBB001201577/)
Chapter
Imeri, Sabine;
(2010)
Zwischen Selbstverständnis und Legitimationsstrategie. Überlegungen zu Verwendungskonzepten volkskundlichen Wissens bis 1933
(/isis/citation/CBB001023282/)
Article
Kröner, Hans-Peter;
(1999)
Von der Vaterschaftsbestimmung zum Rassegutachten: Der erbbiologische Ahnlichkeitsvergleich als “österreichisch-deutsches Projekt” 1926-1945
(/isis/citation/CBB000111948/)
Thesis
Hansen, Jason;
(2010)
Where Lies Germany: Science and the Visualization of the German Nation, 1848--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001567223/)
Book
Penny, H. Glenn;
(2002)
Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB000301969/)
Article
Brogiato, Heinz Peter;
Fritscher, Bernhard;
Wardenga, Ute;
(2005)
Visualisierungen in der deutschen Geographie des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Beispiele Robert Schlagintweit und Hans Meyer
(/isis/citation/CBB000670821/)
Article
Evans, Andrew D.;
(2008)
Race Made Visible: The Transformation of Museum Exhibits in Early-Twentieth-Century German Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB001035136/)
Book
Hans-Jörg Wilke;
(2018)
Die Geschichte der Tierillustration in Deutschland 1850–1950
(/isis/citation/CBB437285752/)
Article
Rüdiger Schultka;
Luminita Göbbel;
Lennart Olsson;
(2007)
Collecting and Dissecting Nature: Meckel’s Zootomical Museum at the University of Halle, Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB156004989/)
Thesis
Duffy, Eve Marie;
(2002)
Representing Science and Technology: Politics and Display in the Deutsches Museum, 1903--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001562213/)
Article
Dupré, Sven;
Korey, Michael;
(2009)
Inside the Kunstkammer: The Circulation of Optical Knowledge and Instruments at the Dresden Court
(/isis/citation/CBB000932513/)
Chapter
Brons, Franziska;
(2015)
Observation Techniques. In the Eye of the Beholder: Emanuel Goldberg's Apparatuses at the International Photographic Exhibition, Dresden 1909
(/isis/citation/CBB001551690/)
Thesis
Adrian Young;
(2016)
Mutiny’s Bounty: Pitcairn Islanders and the Making of a Natural Laboratory on the Edge of Britain’s Pacific Empire
(/isis/citation/CBB894804780/)
Article
Stuurman, Siep;
(2008)
Herodotus and Sima Qian: History and the Anthropological Turn in Ancient Greece and Han China
(/isis/citation/CBB001030434/)
Be the first to comment!