Johannes Winkler (doctor)

Johannes Winkler (born March 20, 1874 in Mühlhausen ; † April 4, 1958 Tübingen ) worked as a German missionary doctor , tropical medicine and ethnologist in Indonesia . Winkler made friends with a Malay-Indonesian magician who had come to him as a patient, collected the artistically designed tablets of the Toba - Batak and learned their language.

Medical activity

Toba Batak village (1910/36)

Magic book of the Toba-Batak

Johannes Winkler was the son of a Protestant theologian who was friends with the missionary August Schreiber . He studied medicine in Halle, Marburg and Tübingen and became a member of the Hallenser , Marburg and Tübingen Wingolf . He had known some missionaries since his youth and, after completing his medical degree, applied to the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft as a missionary doctor . In London, Edinburgh and Amsterdam he completed additional training in tropical medicine and learned different languages ​​before he took up a position at the mission hospital in Pearadja on Sumatra in what is now Indonesia in 1901, where he succeeded Julius Schreiber, the son of August Schreiber. Winkler worked in Sumatra until 1921.

Winkler's mission hospital Pearadja was located in the tribal area of ​​the Batak on Lake Toba . He trained local volunteers as nurses and midwives for his mission station. He befriended a local medicine man, Ama Batuholing, who taught him how to treat diseases in an ethnically religious sense. This explained to Winkler the characters and paintings based on Sanskrit in the books of the magicians, who were also responsible for healing the local population.

Winkler lived in Tübingen from 1923 to 1932 and worked there at the German Institute for Medical Mission (Difäm) . His supervisor was Prof. Gottlieb Olpp , who had similar experiences as a missionary doctor in China. Winkler taught tropical medicine there, among other things, for missionaries who wanted to learn to sew up and bandage wounds and to provide obstetrics.

From 1933 to 1936 he returned to the Bataks in Sumatra to work with a European colleague at the newly built hospital in Balige . There he held courses and wrote textbooks in the national language and took care of the training of Batakian nurses and obstetricians.

The mission hospitals received financial support and free medication from the colonial government there. As a military doctor in Tarutung, Winkler supported the government's vaccination campaigns and disease control measures for four years. The number of patients and buildings in the mission hospitals in Pearadja, Tarutung and Balige and their branches grew steadily. In addition to the widespread malaria , there were also diseases that were also known in Europe. Diagnostics and therapy in the mission hospitals were of a high standard, comparable to that in Europe.

Ethnological activity

Parallel to his work as a doctor, Winkler undertook ethnological , linguistic and religious studies studies. Winkler published a book about the culture of the Toba- Batak and described their personal hygiene, food, agriculture, handicrafts and their board games. The local government commissioned him twice to travel to the island of Enggano to investigate the population decline there.

Among other things, Winkler received body jewelry, magic books and clothing from the Batak (see Ulos ) and collected around 1,300 objects that he bequeathed to the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology .

The physician and ethnologist spent his old age in Tübingen, where he died on Good Friday, April 4, 1958, and was buried in the mountain cemetery there.

Appreciation

According to Susanne Rodemeier, Winkler's writings are a scientific rarity. Just the fact that he wrote about the Toba Batak is something special from today's perspective, because he was in Sumatra at a time when the local ethnic groups were exposed to strong pressure to change. Contact with European missionaries forced them to undergo cultural change, the characteristics of which can be observed today. That is why Winkler's data collection offers unique material for comparative studies. Winkler's approach is still rare among medical professionals and was not widespread even among ethnologists at the time.

Even if today, according to Peter van Eeuwijk, a critical examination and reflection of the Protestant medical mission in the colony of the Dutch East Indies is absolutely appropriate and necessary, the great cultural and historical merit of Winkler's publications must be clearly reflected in the regional and local colonial-political and mission-ideological background Conditions can be understood in the first half of the 20th century. The fact that the Toba Batak scholars consulted Johannes Winkler's book as one of the most important reference works of their culture shows that his book is nonetheless up-to-date.

Today's scholars like Petra Krömer believe that Winkler's attitude towards the Batak culture was shaped by Eurocentrism , evolutionism and Darwinism . In his investigations into the hygiene of the Batak, for example, Winkler constantly complained about their uncleanliness and generally emphasized the moral inferiority of the people. His description of the activities of the "priest doctors" known as Datu , however, is still considered to be a standard ethnological work. Winkler understood the medical mission as a testimony to God's love with the aim of expanding the kingdom of God. The missionary doctor should use scientific medicine, but differ from the ordinary doctor in his Christian missionary charisma. In weighing up the destructive and emancipatory parts of Winkler's medical mission and the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft, Petra Krömer comes to the conclusion that “the Batak people were able, in the long term, primarily through the development of the medical education system, to positively affect the onslaught of European culture cope with and regain independence after the Second World War. The old Datu science has outlasted all attempts at extermination by the missionaries to the present day. "

Works

• Johannes Winkler: The Toba-Batak on Sumatra in healthy and sick days - A contribution to the knowledge of the animistic paganism. Belser-Verlag, Stuttgart 1925.

Web links

• Dorothee Hermann: Medicine and magic spells In: Schwäbisches Tagblatt. September 5, 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jan S. Aritonang: Mission schools in Batakland (Indonesia), 1861-1940. Brill Verlag, Leiden 1994.
2. ↑ Johannes Winkler: Religion and healing art of the Toba-Batak on Sumatra , Rüdiger Köppe 2006, ISBN 3896454455
3. ↑ Oceania Collection: Indonesia. ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Museum of Ethnology Hamburg 
4. ↑ Susanne Rodemeier: Review to: Helga Petersen, Alexander Krikellis (ed.): Religion and healing art of the Toba-Batak on Sumatra - handed down by Johannes Winkler (1874-1958). In: Curare . 31/2 + 3, 2008, pp. 248-250.
5. ↑ Peter van Eeuwijk: Review to: Helga Petersen, Alexander Krikellis (ed.): Religion and healing art of the Toba-Batak on Sumatra - handed down by Johannes Winkler (1874-1958). In: Anthropos. 103, 2/2008, pp. 616-617.
6. ↑ Dr. med. Petra Krömer: Healing for the Kingdom of God - Johannes Winkler (1874–1958) and the Medical Mission of the Rhenish Mission Society under the Batak on Sumatra.