Brigitte Menzel

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Brigitte Menzel (born October 29, 1930 in Berlin ; † March 6, 1998 in Hanover ) was a German ethnologist . She was considered one of the few experts in the field of African textiles.

Life

Menzel graduated from high school in 1949 and then began an apprenticeship in agriculture. In 1950 she began studying ethnology at the Free University of Berlin. In 1951 she moved to Hamburg, where she majored in anthropology with minor subjects in German Folklore and Phonetics . She then received her doctorate with the dissertation “Deforming facial jewelry in indigenous peoples in South America” with Franz Termer . From 1957 she then worked as a scientific trainee at the State Museum for Ethnology (today the Ethnological Museum ) in Berlin and in 1959 became a research assistant in the Africa department. In the years that followed, she specialized in the documentation and publication of the museum's collection. She published three volumes on textiles from West Africa. In addition, she advocated a child-friendly museum education and also created an opportunity for blind visitors to participate. During this time, Menzel also worked as a lecturer at the Institute for Social and Cultural Ethnology at Freie Universität.

Menzel repeatedly traveled to Africa for research stays. In 1961/62 she was with the head of the Africa department Kurt Krieger in Northern Nigeria, from where the two brought numerous objects, photos and sound recordings. Menzel was in Ghana from 1972 to 1974. After her return in 1974 she became the director of the German Textile Museum in Krefeld , where she built up a collection of African textiles. She also taught at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. In 1979 Menzel went to Africa again, where she worked for aid projects in Mali in the following years .

Her scientific legacy is in the Reichsmuseum für Völkerkunde in Leiden.

Fonts

  • Textiles from West Africa . (3 volumes) Museum of Ethnology, Berlin
  • Deforming face jewelry among indigenous peoples in South America . Dissertation, Hamburg, 1955
  • Textile handicraft in Northern Nigeria . Museum of Ethnology, Berlin 1966
  • Greenstone and ivory . Museum of Ethnology, Berlin [around 1966]
  • Gold weights from Ghana . Museum of Ethnology, Berlin 1968

literature

  • Bettina Beer : Women in German-speaking Ethnology . Böhlau, Vienna 2007, pp. 146–149

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brief information in the collection of the Reichsmuseum für Völkerkunde , accessed on February 7, 2017
  2. ^ Black art - African textiles from our own collection , City of Krefeld,
personal data
SURNAME Menzel, Brigitte
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1998
Place of death Hanover