Erhard Brandl

Erhard Joseph Brandl , (born December 23, 1923 in Lobs , Czechoslovakia , † October 1, 1974 in Perth , Australia ) was a prospector and researcher of Aboriginal culture .

Life

The grandson of the senior teacher Hermann Brandl graduated from the grammar school in Duppau . When the Second World War ended in May 1945, Erhard Brandl, seriously injured in the war, found his parents Anton Brandl and Anna Maria, née Brandl, expelled from their homes as Sudeten Germans due to the Beneš decrees , in Neuhaus an der Pegnitz in Middle Franconia.

In 1949 Brandl began studying geology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and continued it at the Free University of Berlin . In 1956 he accepted a job offer from the administration of a copper mine in Mount Isa in Australia as a prospector and worked for a mining company with success for years. He came into contact with the culture of the Aboriginal people, learned the Ngalgbon language, gained their trust and gave up his job as a prospector in Mount Isa.

A research contract from the Australian government made it possible for Erhard Brandl to tour the indigenous reserve in Arnhem Land as Senior Research Officer and inspect the places of worship and rock paintings of the Aborigines living there. In 1965 he reached the Deaf Adder region with his wife Maria. On the Upper Alligator River he researched the previously unknown, semi-plastic figures on cave walls made of rock-hard beeswax and other cave paintings and published in 1973 what was known as “the brandl book” after his death, the standard work on the early aboriginal culture. The abbreviation of his first name EJ also appears in Australian bibliographies as Erik (Eric) Josef Brandl. An extensive photo collection of the rock paintings of different tribes - compiled with the Australian anthropologist and photographer Charles P. Mountford (* 1890, + 1976) - was used scientifically and commercially. On October 1, 1974, Erhard Joseph Brandl was found dead with a wound on his head on the beach of the Pacific Ocean.

Brandl was married to the anthropologist Maria M. Brandl, assistant at the Department of Anthropology, University of Western Australia and a member of the Aboriginal Development Commission.

He is considered to be the first researcher in Australia who registered the Deaf Adder figures and described them competently. (Australia Registrars Committee Conference, Melbourne 2001)

Publications

• Charles P. Mountford, Eric Brandl: Aboriginal cave paintings, Mountain; Creek Waterhole St. Vidgeon, Northern Territory of Australia. In: Records of the South Australia Museum. vol. 15, no 3, 1967, pp. 371-382.

• Aboriginal rock designs in Beewax and description of cave paintings sites in Western Arnhem Land, Archeology and Physical Anthropology. University of Sydney , 1968.

• Charles P. Mountford, Erhard J. Brandl: Aborigines cave paintings and rock markings at Ingaladdi rock shelter Willeroo * Northern Territory of Australia. Government Printer, Adelaide 1968.

• Australia Aboriginal paintings in western central Arnhem Land. Australia Institute of Aboriginel Studies, Canberra 19 * 3.

• Australia Aboriginal paintings in western and central Arnhem Land, temporal sequences and elements of style in Cadell River a * d Deaf Adder Creek art. Canberra 1973. (A first reprint took place in 1982 ( ISBN 0-391-02611-9 ), eight years after the author's death, and a second reprint was published by the Aboriginal Studies Press in Canberra in 1988.)

Published from the estate

• EJ Brandl: Human stick figures in rock art; Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Canberra 1977.

literature

• Erhard Brandl. In: Josef Weinmann: Egerländer Biographical Lexicon with selected people from the former government district of Eger in Bohemia. Volume 1: (A - M). Weinmann, Männedorf / ZH 1985, ISBN 3-922808-12-3 , pp. 83-84.
• Hermann Brandl. In: Josef Weinmann: Egerländer Biographical Lexicon with selected people from the former government district of Eger in Bohemia. Volume 1: (A - M). Weinmann, Männedorf / ZH 1985, ISBN 3-922808-12-3 , p. 84, (with further references).