Beatrix Heintze

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Beatrix Heintze (born January 13, 1939 in Korneuburg , Austria ) is a German ethnologist with a research focus on the pre-colonial history of western Central Africa and especially Angola . She was editor at the Frobenius Institute and temporarily editor of the institute's publications. In addition, she published three books about the Leipzig entrepreneur and resistance fighter Walter Cramer .

life and work

Beatrix Heintze is on her mother's side a granddaughter of the textile entrepreneur and resistance fighter against National Socialism Walter Cramer (1886–1944), who lived in Leipzig , and on her father's side of the general director of the Döhrener wool laundry in Hanover, Hans Heintze. Her father Hans-Georg Heintze went to Korneuburg a few kilometers north of Vienna in 1938 to set up a subsidiary of “Döhrener Wolle”. Beatrix Heintze was born there in January 1939 as the youngest of two children. When the Second World War broke out , her father was drafted. He was one of the few survivors of the Battle of Stalingrad , was taken prisoner by the Soviets and did not return to his family until 1955.

The mother Leonore Heintze moved with her two children to their parents in Leipzig in 1944. Walter Cramer belonged to the Goerdeler-Kreis resistance group and was privy to the preparations for the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 . Two days after the assassination attempt, Cramer was arrested by the Gestapo and executed on November 14, 1944, on the day of the guilt trial. Leonore Heintze and her children spent the last months of the war and the time afterwards in Naumburg , Saxony-Anhalt. In 1949 they succeeded in relocating to Hanover from what was then the Soviet occupation zone . There Beatrix Heintze graduated from the Wilhelm Raabe School in 1959 .

In the winter semester of 1959/60, Beatrix Heintze began studying ethnology with Hermann Baumann, as well as Romance studies , modern history and later ancient history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ) and the rest of southern Africa soon became her main focus . In 1968 she was the first woman in Munich to do her PhD in anthropology with the work Obsession-Phenomene im Mittel Bantu-area , which was published in 1970.

For her dissertation based on literature studies, Heintze had consulted Portuguese sources in Lisbon, among others . After completing her studies, she received a four-month grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation in 1968/69 and then in 1969/70 a grant from the German Research Foundation for research on the subject of “royalty in Angola”. In May 1970 she started working at the Frobenius Institute at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, which was then headed by Eike Haberland . Haberland focused the research and collection area on Africa south of the Sahara . Until 2004, Beatrix Heintze worked at the Frobenius Institute, initially as editor and, after Haberland's death in 1992, as editor of the institute's two series of journals, Paideuma and Studien zur Kulturkunde . She published 26 volumes of the international journal Paideuma from 1971 to 1997. During this time, she was involved in the series Studien zur Kulturkunde on volumes 28 to 120 and 122, from 1992 as sole editor and from 1996 jointly with the director of the institute Karl-Heinz Kohl . In 1995 she founded the small series Afrika Archiv, which is reserved for source editions and in which, apart from three articles of her own, an external edition has so far been published. Heintze's research mainly on the history of Angola and western Central Africa as well as the history of research and science in Africa is based on source studies in German and Portuguese archives.

After 1992, full-time editorial work did not allow any longer stays abroad; Frankfurt remained connected to Heintze because she had received from Klaus E. Müller the Africa-related part of Hermann Baumann's academic legacy for analysis. This also included the records of the Africa explorer Alfred Schachtzabel (1887–1981) about his research trip to Angola 1913–14. In a source edition published in 1995, she brought together the unpublished and already published writings of Schachtzabel. Other editions of written sources on Angola include Max Buchner's Reise nach Zentralafrika 1878–1882 (published 1999) and Eduard Pechuel-Loesche , Diaries from the Loango Coast from 1875/76 (published 2011). Because of the civil war that began in Angola after independence in 1975 , Heintze was able to visit the focus country of her historical studies for the first time in 1997 at a conference in Luanda . With the end of the civil war in 2002, she published a catalog of the ethnographic collection deposited by Hermann Baumann in 1954 in Dundo (Northern Angola) ( Hermann Baumann: The Ethnographic Collection from Southwest Angola in the Museum of Dundo, Angola (1954) , 2002).

Together with the historian Achim von Oppen, Heinze organized an international symposium on the history of transport and communication connections in Angola ( Angola on the move: transport routes, communications, and history ) at the Leibniz Center for the Modern Orient in Berlin in September 2003 . In January 2004, Heintze retired. She continues her publishing activity.

With the same meticulous method that Heintze used when studying African sources, she dealt with the biography of her grandfather Walter Cramer, which appeared in 1993 under the title Walter Cramer - A Leipzig Entrepreneur in the Resistance to National Socialism . In addition to this, in 2013 Heintze published a volume with the letters and notes that were written in the weeks before his death and that were smuggled out of prison. In 2012, Heintze gave the original documents and notes from Cramer to the Leipzig City Archives . The publications on Cramer brought his involvement in the National Socialist resistance into the public consciousness and were the reason that in 1996 a monument in his honor was erected in the Johannapark in Leipzig.

Since 2008, Beatrix Heintze has been a corresponding member of the Portuguese Academy of Sciences in Lisbon ( Academia das Ciências de Lisboa ). She received this award for her scientific work on lusophonic Africa.

Source studies

Henrique Augusto Dias de Carvalho. Illustration in the Portuguese newspaper Occidente. Revista Illustrada de Portugal e do Extrangeiro of September 11, 1890

Beatrix Heintze did not undertake any field research in Africa because this - called an "expedition" during her student days - was not normally part of the course and also did not fit into the theoretical research approach of her teacher Baumann. Baumann was a supporter of the culture group theory, which is now considered outdated, and apart from his focus on Africa, he also dealt with all other continents. In order to follow Baumann's diffusionist theories, Heintze made a large-scale synopsis of the cults of possession among the Bantu in southern Africa in her dissertation , in which she evaluated over 2,700 references from research reports from the 18th century to the then current secondary literature. In this publication she expresses her discomfort a few times at the occasionally imprecise descriptions of the researchers with whom she should make extensive cultural comparisons. In addition to Baumann, the seminars of László Vajda , who read about ancient and medieval ethnography and ethnogenesis , formed a professional basis for Heintze.

In her independent research, Heintze pursued other objectives and strived for a "change of perspective", according to which she did not want to grasp African history from the usual European perspective and purely from European sources, but also wanted to look at African life stories of simple people and oral traditions. She described an example of this attitude in African Pioneers. Caravans in western Central Africa (2002) with the main source, the hitherto little-known Portuguese explorer Henrique Augusto Dias de Carvalho (1843–1909), the role that African porters and local chiefs had in the movement of goods and the development of the region. The sources in Portuguese archives from the 16th century onwards contain mainly administrative notes showing the extent of the slave trade from the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique to America; a historical fact that at the beginning of Heintze's research was still taboo during the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. This resulted in the obligation for Heintze to grasp African history from an ethnological perspective. She criticized the methods and preconceived attitudes of some researchers, following on from the cautious marginal notes in her dissertation, explicitly in German explorers in Angola. Ethnographic appropriations between slave trade, colonialism and science (1999, 2007).

Publications (selection)

Independent works

  • Obsession Phenomena in the Middle Bantu Area. ( Studies in cultural studies , Volume 25) Steiner, Wiesbaden 1970
  • Ethnographic drawings of the Lwimbi / Ngangela (Central Angola). (Special publications of the Frobenius Institute, Volume 5) Steiner, Stuttgart 1988
  • Walter Cramer - A Leipzig entrepreneur in the resistance. Deutscher Institutsverlag, Cologne 1993
  • Walter Cramer - A Leipzig entrepreneur in the resistance against National Socialism. Texts of the Leipzig History Association, issue 10, Leipzig 1994
  • Lwimbi, desenhos etnográficos dos Lwimbi / Ngangela do Centro de Angola. Do espólio de Hermann Baumann. Tradução de Lotte Pflüger, revisão científica de M [aria] da Conceição Neto, edição revista pela autora. Ler & Escrever, Luanda 1994
  • Asilo ameaçado: Oportunidades e consequênicas da fuga de escravos em Angola no século XVII. Volume 2, Cadernos do Museu da Escravatura, Luanda 1995
  • Alfred Schachtzabel's trip to Angola 1913–1914 and his collections for the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Reconstruction of an ethnographic source. (Africa Archive, Volume 1), Köppe, Cologne 1995
  • Ethnographic appropriations. German explorers in Angola. Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 1999
  • German explorers in Angola. Ethnographic appropriations between slave trade, colonialism and science. Lembeck, Frankfurt, 1999; second edited edition: Lembeck, Frankfurt 2007 ( online )
  • African pioneers: Caravans in western central Africa (approx. 1850–1890). Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 2002 ( online )
  • Walter Cramer, the worsted yarn spinning mill Stöhr & Co in Leipzig and the so-called “Jewish question”. Materials on walking the tightrope between help and surrender. Memories 3, Ed. Saxon Economic Archives. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2003
  • Pioneiros Africanos: Caravanas de carregadores na África Centro-Ocidental (entre 1850 e 1890). (Tradução de Marina Santos) Editorial Caminho, Lisbon; Nzila, Luanda 2004
  • German explorers in western Central Africa in the 19th century. (Working papers, No. 40) Institute for Ethnology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 2004
  • Angola nos séculos XVI e XVII. Estudos sobre fontes, métodos e história . Kilomelombe, Luanda 2007
  • A Africa centro-ocidental no século XIX (c. 1850–1890). Intercâmbio com o mundo exterior - Apropriação, exploração e documentação. (Tradução de Marina Santos. Colecção Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Série História de Angola no.11) Kilombelombe, Luanda 2013

As editor

  • Samuel Josia Ntara: The History of the Chewa. Translated into English by WS Kamphandira Jere, with comments by Harry W. Langworthy (Studies on Cultural Studies, Volume 31) Steiner, Wiesbaden 1973
  • Fontes para a história de Angola do seculo XVII. Volume 1. Memórias, relações e outros manuscritos da Colectânea Documental de Fernão de Sousa (1622–1635). (Studies on Cultural Studies, Volume 75) Steiner, Stuttgart 1985
  • With Adam Jones: European Sources for Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900: Use and Abuse. (Paideuma 33) Steiner, Stuttgart 1987
  • Fontes para a história de Angola do seculo XVII. Volume 2. Cartas e documentos oficiais da Colectânea Documental de Fernão de Sousa (1624–1635). (Studies on cultural studies, Volume 88) Steiner, Stuttgart 1988
  • Studies on the history of Angola in the 16th and 17th centuries. A reader. Köppe, Cologne 1996
  • Max Buchner's trip to Central Africa 1878–1882. Letters, reports, studies. (Africa Archive, Volume 2) Köppe, Cologne 1999
  • With Sylvia M. Schomburg-Scherff: The open borders of ethnology. Spotlights on a changing subject. Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 2000
  • Hermann Baumann: The ethnographic collection from Southwest Angola in the Museum of Dundo, Angola (1954). Catalog / A colecção etnográfica do Sudoeste de Angola no Museu do Dundo, Angola (1954). Catálogo. (Africa Archive, Volume 3) Köppe, Cologne 2002
  • With Achim von Oppen: Angola on the Move. Transport routes, communications, and history / Angola em Movimento. Vias de transporte, comunicação e história. Lembeck, Frankfurt am Main 2008 ( online )
  • Eduard Pechuel-Loesche: Diaries from the Loango Coast (Central Africa) (February 24, 1875 - May 5, 1876) as well as key words to the diary entries from July 10th. until August 19, 1874. With 31 watercolors by Eduard Pechuel-Loesche. Transcription Donata v. Lindeiner-Wildau ( online )
  • Walter Cramer - the last few weeks. Prison letters and notes to his family after July 20, 1944. Leipziger Institutsverlag, Leipzig 2013

literature

  • Beatrix Heintze: My long way to "Angola". In: Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde , Vol. 53, 2007, pp. 7–26

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Africa Archive. Frobenius Institute
  2. ^ Angola on the move: transport routes, communications, and history. , ZMO, 24.-26. September 2003
  3. ^ Sebastian Weitkamp: Fatal Accomplishment. faz.net, January 26, 2014
  4. ↑ Birgit Horn-Koldiz: "Before I part from this life ..." - documents on Walter Cramer in the Leipzig City Archives. In: Sächsisches Archivblatt, Heft 1, 2004, p. 17
  5. ↑ Leipzig City Archives, Chronicle 1996 ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 25 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.standortinitiative-wurzen.de
  6. ↑ Beatrix Heintze, 2007, p. 12f
  7. ↑ Beatrix Heintze: Foreword. In: African Pioneers. Caravans in western central Africa (approx. 1850–1890). Otto Lembeck, Frankfurt 2002, p. 9f
  8. ↑ Beatrix Heintze, 2007, p. 15
personal data
SURNAME Heintze, Beatrix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Korneuburg