Erika Karasek

Erika Karasek (* 1934 ) is a German ethnologist . From 1980 she was director of the Museum für Volkskunde in East Berlin and after reunification she was director of the merged State Museum für Volkskunde from 1994 to 1999. In this position she played a key role in the conception of the Museum of European Cultures .

Life

View from the exhibition Großstadtproletariat. On the way of life of a class that was shown by the Museum of Folklore from 1980 in the Pergamon Museum.

Erika Karasek followed Helene Ebner von Eschenbach on October 1, 1962 as a research assistant at the Museum of Folklore in East Berlin . In 1967 she was involved in setting up the study collection of agricultural implements in Wandlitz . In 1973, to complete her doctoral thesis, she was delegated to the ethnography department, history section of the Humboldt University in Berlin . Karasek received his doctorate in 1978 with the dissertation The folklore-cultural-historical museums in Germany from the end of the period of developed capitalism to 1945. A study of the history of science on the role of folklore in bourgeois-imperialist society . In 1980 she succeeded Wolfgang Jacobeit as director of the Folklore Museum of the National Museums in East. In this function, she was instrumental in the implementation of the exhibition Großstadtproletariat. Involved in the way of life of a class that was presented from the fall of 1980 and recorded over a million visitors.

After the reunification and the amalgamation of the State Museum of Folklore in 1992, she was director of the museum under Museum Director Theodor Kohlmann , who had held this position since 1974 and had set up the museum in the storage building of the Secret State Archives . Since the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin had to cut posts, the post of director could not be advertised when Kohlmann retired in 1994. Karasek succeeded him as long-time director of the Folklore Museum on Museum Island and his deputy. In this position she supervised the consolidation of the holdings of the collections from East and West Berlin as well as the development towards the planned Museum of European Cultures . Their stamping by the folklore of the GDR, which was characterized by a special proximity to ethnology, was identified as a positive factor for their work. In 1992, at a conference in Stuttgart, Karasek raised the question of whether museums for European ethnology would be a model for the future and presented the first conceptual considerations for such a museum. This met with some controversial reactions from colleagues. The 11th meeting of the working group on cultural history museums in the German Society for Folklore in Berlin on the topic of Paths to Europe was also a reaction to this response . Approaches and problem areas take place in the museums . At this point in time, it had already been decided to merge the Museum of Folklore with the Europe Department of the Völkerkundemuseum as part of the restructuring of the State Museums in Berlin, and the waterworks at Müggelsee in Berlin-Friedrichshagen , which had housed the Museum of the History of Water Management, was considered possible Location discussed. Although this conference also met with criticism within German folklore, Karasek regarded the sometimes controversial exchange as an important component in the development of the future museum. When the Museum of European Cultures was founded in 1999 and with the exhibition Fascination Image. Cultural contacts in Europe first appeared in public, it was positively received as a new type of cultural history museum with a European orientation.

In addition to preparing the establishment of the new museum, Karasek worked on the museum's loss catalog. Karasek retired on October 31, 1999. Her successor was Konrad Vanja .

Publications

• Gingerbread - masks - pyramids. Christmas folk art , Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Volkskunde 1969.
• Background on the origin and mode of operation of folklore and local history museums around 1900 , in: Research and Reports, Volume 20/21 (1980), pp. 593-599.
• Proverbs on home textiles. Shown on materials from the Museum für Volkskunde Berlin (GDR) , in: Culture and Lifestyle. Working material of the Central Expert Committee on Cultural History and Folklore in the Society for Local History in the Kulturbund der DDR, Berlin 1980, pp. 47–54.
• Big city proletariat. On the way of life of a class , Berlin: Museum für Volkskunde 1983.
• The folklore and cultural history museums in Germany. On the role of folklore in bourgeois-imperialist society , Berlin: Institut für Museumwesen 1984.
• Signs, pictures, sales. Special exhibition of the Museum of Folklore in the Pergamon Museum, September 25 , 1987 - January 3 , 2008 , Berlin: Staatliche Museen 1987.
• Sensations, sensations, memorable things from the museum and the Panoptikum. Special exhibition Museum für Volkskunde, Staatliches Museum zu Berlin from June 8 to September 15, 1991 in the Berlin Panoptikum in the Ku-Damm-Eck , Berlin: Panoptikum 1991.
• A matter of taste. Cookbooks from the Museum für Volkskunde (= National Museums in Berlin, Museum für Volkskunde, November 12, 1995 - April 14, 1996) , Sabine Verk and Erika Karasek, Berlin: SMPK 1995, ISBN 3-88609-382-4 .
• Fascination with the picture. Culture contacts Europe. Exhibition catalog for the pilot project , Erika Karasek and Konrad Vanja , Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz 1999, ISBN 3-9806239-2-0 .
  • The Museum of European Cultures. Origin - Reality - Future , Erika Karasek and Elisabeth Tietmeyer , in: Faszination Bild. Culture contacts Europe. Exhibition catalog for the pilot project, pp. 13–26.
  • Fleckelteppiche - cloth pictures , in: Fascination Image. Culture contacts Europe. Exhibition catalog for the pilot project, pp. 45–62.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ulrich Steinmann , Museum für Volkskunde , in: Research and Reports, Volume 7 (1965), pp. 135-137, 137.
2. ^ Ulrich Steinmann, Museum für Volkskunde , in: Research and Reports, Volume 11 (1968), pp. 170–173, 171.
3. ^ Wolfgang Jacobeit, Museum für Volkskunde , in: Research and Reports, Volume 17 (1976), pp. 276–277, 277; Wolfgang Jacobeit, Museum für Volkskunde , in: Research and Reports, Volume 20 (1980), pp. 665-666, 666.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Jacobeit , Thoughts on the History of Science for a "Museum of European Cultures" , in: Dagmar Neuland-Kitzerow (Ed.), Objects in Context. Museum history (s) - research history (s) (= Berliner Blätter. Ethnographic and ethnological contributions), LIT, Münster 2001, pp. 14–17, here: p. 17.
5. ↑ Review , in: Yearbook of the Berlin Museums, Volume 37 (1995), pp. 187-259, 187.
6. ^ Gitta Böth, Contact Exchange between East and West. Encounters in the Museum of Folklore , in: Dagmar Neuland-Kitzerow (Ed.), Objects in Context. Museum history (s) - research history (s) (= Berliner Blätter. Ethnographic and ethnological contributions), LIT, Münster 2001, pp. 26–30, here: pp. 28f.
7. ^ Gitta Böth, Contact Exchange between East and West. Encounters in the Museum of Folklore , in: Dagmar Neuland-Kitzerow (Ed.), Objects in Context. Museum history (s) - research history (s) (= Berliner Blätter. Ethnographic and ethnological contributions), LIT, Münster 2001, pp. 26–30, here: p. 29.
8. ^ Annual report 1996 , in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Volume 39 (1997), pp. 209–298, 258.
9. ↑ Annual report 1999 , in: Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Volume 42 (2000), pp. 1–88, 38.