Elisabeth Tietmeyer

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Elisabeth Tietmeyer (2019)

Elisabeth Tietmeyer (* 1960 in Metelen ) is a German ethnologist and has been director of the Museum of European Cultures in Berlin , which is part of the State Museums in Berlin , since 2013 .

Life

Tietmeyer studied ethnology , sociology and European ethnology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster from 1979 to 1985 . In 1986 she published her master's thesis entitled Women Marry Women: A Comparative Study on Gynaegamy in Africa . In this work Tietmeyer dealt with the topic of gynaegamy (women's marriages ). They preferred this term in relation to the concept of woman-marriage and women's marriage , as women in any kind of marriage - except for marriages among men - play a role and the concept of Gynaegamie uniquely identifies that a woman marries one or more women. This institution examined them in a comparison of the five African ethnic groups Lovedu , Ibo , Nuer , Nandi and Gikuyu . According to Tietmeyer's definition, gynegamy is a marriage between an older woman who is no longer of childbearing potential and a younger woman who either already has children or who fathered children during the marriage who are then considered to be descendants of the older woman. The older woman has to pay a bride price for the younger one. Tietmeyer therefore classifies gynaegamy, which was rather devalued in older literature, under a more general understanding of marriage, which instead of its heterosexual character emphasizes the purpose of starting a family and continuing the line. The institution of gynecology therefore only exists in patrilineal societies in the absence of a son and, in addition to "ghost marriage" and adoption, is a possibility of obtaining a male heir to maintain the family line. In 1990 Tietmeyer received his doctorate from Rüdiger Schott with an in-depth study on gynecology in Kenya based on field research. The title of her dissertation was Gynaegamy im Wandel. The Agíkúyu between tradition and adaptation .

Tietmeyer completed a scientific traineeship at the Westphalian Museum Office of the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe Münster, before taking over the management of the European department of the then Museum of Ethnology in Berlin in 1993 . Her work there was already in the context of the intended merging of the European collection of the Völkerkundemuseum with the Museum für Volkskunde, which was limited in its focus to German everyday culture . In 1998 Tietmeyer was appointed head of the collections department and the specialist department for Europe at the Museum für Völkerkunde. In 1999 she moved to the Museum of European Cultures , which shortly before had emerged from the merger of the Museum of Ethnology with the European collection of the Museum of Ethnology. From 2000 to 2012 she was deputy director of the Museum of European Cultures, which was headed by Konrad Vanja . Among other things, she co-curated the museum's permanent exhibition entitled Cultural Contacts - Life in Europe , which has been on view since the end of 2011. In July 2012, Tietmeyer was appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation as Vanja's successor, who retired at the end of 2012. On January 1, 2013, she took up the post of director of the Museum of European Cultures. Since the Museum of European Cultures remained the only institution in the Dahlem museum complex after the Museum of Asian Art and the Ethnological Museum, both of which will move to the Humboldt Forum in the center of Berlin, were closed, Tietmeyer, as director, tried to reposition her house. A new corporate identity was created, which should attract more attention with the use of the color red and the acronym MEK . In addition, it promotes networking with other museums and exhibition houses in the Berlin district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf.

In addition to her work at the Museum of European Cultures, Tietmeyer is also active in various committees: For example, she is a member of the Expert Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage at the German Commission for UNESCO , which is responsible for the inclusion of proposals in the nationwide directory of intangible cultural heritage as well as proposals for the representative list of immaterial Cultural Heritage of Humanity , the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Urgent Conservation and the Register of Good Practices at UNESCO . She has also been a member of ICOM Germany since 1995, and has been a member of the board there since 2015. In 2010, Tietmeyer was a founding member of the ICOM COMCOL (International Committee for Collecting), of which she was deputy chairwoman until 2016.

Fonts (selection)

  • Women marry women: a comparative study on gynecology in Africa. Renner, Hohenschäftlarn 1985 (= cultural anthropological studies. Volume 11).
  • Gynaegamy in transition: the agíkúyú between tradition and adaptation. Lit, Münster, Hamburg 1991.
  • Kiesewetter's ethnographic travel pictures - the painter and ethnographer Wilhelm Kiesewetter (1811 - 1865) , publisher: Bormann-Museum Celle 2004, ISBN 3-925902-53-8 .
  • as Mithrsg .: The language of things: cultural-scientific perspectives on material culture. Waxmann 2010 ISBN 978-3830923336 .
  • as Mithrsg .: cultural contacts. Life in Europe. Leipzig 2011 ISBN 978-3733803827 .
  • Mithrsg .: Participative Strategies in Collecting the Present. Panama Verlag, Berlin 2013 ISBN 978-3-938714-28-7 .
  • as editor: Insights into fleeting lives. Heidelberg 2017 ISBN 978-3-946653-30-1 ( PDF ) / Glances into Fugitive Lives. Heidelberg 2017 ISBN 978-3-946653-32-5 ( PDF ).
  • as co-author: Museum Ethnology - An Introduction: Theories - Debates - Practices , Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2919, 1st edition, ISBN 978-3-496-01614-4 .

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Tietmeyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jorg Opher, Reviewed Work (s): Women Marry Women: A Comparative Study on Gynaegamy in Africa by Elisabeth Tietmeyer , in: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1986), pp. 596-598.
  2. ↑ a b Press release Elisabeth Tietmeyer becomes the new director of the Museum of European Cultures from July 3, 2012 on preussischer-kulturbesitz.de, accessed on October 28, 2017.
  3. ↑ Claudia Eichert-Schäfer, interview with the director of the Museum of European Cultures, Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tietmeyer , published on July 24, 2015 at textile-art-magazine.com, accessed on October 28, 2017.
  4. ↑ Nicola Kuhn, Museum of European Cultures Rote Liebe , published on January 28, 2017 at tagesspiegel.de, accessed on October 28, 2017.
  5. ↑ Presentation of the Expert Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage on unesco.de, accessed on October 28, 2017.
  6. ↑ Brief profile of Elisabeth Tietmeyer on the board of directors at icom-deutschland.de, accessed on October 28, 2017.


personal data
SURNAME Tietmeyer, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Titmajer, Ėlizabet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnologist, director of the Museum of European Cultures
DATE OF BIRTH 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Metelen