Hans Himmelträger

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This Baule mask, bought in 1933 by Hans Himmelträger in the Ivory Coast, is exhibited today in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam .

Hans Himmelträger (born May 31, 1908 in Karlsruhe , † November 27, 2003 in Heidelberg ) was a German ethnographer and ethnologist .

Life

Hans Himmelträger was the youngest child of Luitgard Himmelträger and Gustav Himmelträger. The father, together with his brother Carl, ran the furniture factory Gebrüder Himmelheber in Karlsruhe in the third generation. His mother was one of the first ten city councilors in Karlsruhe and was active in the women's movement, his father was a member of the Badischer Kunstverein . His maternal grandfather was the Baden Finance Minister Max Honsell .

In 1944 he married Ulrike Himmelheber . With her he had a daughter, Susanne Himmelträger , in 1946 , and a son, Martin Himmelträger, in 1953. His stepson from his wife's first marriage, Eberhard Fischer and his daughter Anjali Fischer also became ethnologists, as did Susanne Himmelheber's daughter Clara Mayer-Himmelträger .

job

After graduating from high school , he first completed a banking apprenticeship in Hamburg . From 1929 he traded in African and oceanic sculptures, with which he financed his studies in ethnology, geography and art history as well as his first research trip to Africa. Himmelheber studied in Berlin at Eckart von Sydow and the Africanists Dietrich Westerm , then in Munich and received his doctorate finally 1934 in Tübingen for Dr. phil in ethnology . Himmelhub went on research trips to the Ivory Coast (1933 and 1934/35), Alaska (1936/37), Ghana , the Belgian and French Congo and Cameroon (1937–1939). His ethnographic collection items include, for example, masks, baskets, pieces of jewelry, flint chips , bones, fabrics, sculptures, pots, hammers, axes and are among the best exhibits in the Africa collection of the Museum der Kulturen Basel . Presumably, Hans Himmelträger was the only freelance ethnologist in the world. He had not allowed himself to be drawn into the university or a museum. It was financed by trading in African cultural objects, which can be found in many anthropological collections around the world.

During the Second World War he served in the German Wehrmacht and in 1942 was posted to Freiburg to study medicine . With a dissertation on " Tattoo in Eskimo " ( Dermatology ), he received his doctorate in 1949 in Heidelberg for Doctor of Medicine .

With his wife Ulrike Himmelträger he formed an ethnological research team. They traveled together to Africa five times for field research, evaluated their field notes together, read each other's corrections of their scientific manuscripts and published together. The book Die Dan , a farming people in the West African jungle , which they published together in 1958, is considered a standard monograph .

Still unusual at the time, they used sound and film recordings as a means of research and documentation. Their informants named them and reflected on the interview situations and the ethnographic interaction.

More than 15,000 negatives, including the associated notes, are now in the photo archive as a photo bequest from Hans Himmelträger in the possession of the Rietberg Museum in Zurich .

From 1965 until his death in 2003, Hans Himmelträger was a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Publications (selection)

  • 1935: Negro artist. Ethnographic studies of the carver among the Atulu and Guro tribes in the interior of the Ivory Coast. (Dissertation)
  • 1938: Eskimo artist. Result of an ethnographic trip in Alaska.
  • 1951: The Frozen Path. Myths, fairy tales and legends of the Eskimo.
  • 1951: Auro Poku. Myths, animal stories and legends, proverbs, fables and riddles of the Baule, Ivory Coast.
  • 1957: The good tone among the negroes.
  • 1958 with Ulrike Himmelträger: The Dan, a farming people in the West African jungle.
  • 1960: Negro art and Negro artists.
  • 1960: African masks.
  • 1970 with Ulrike Himmelträger : Negro fates. Reports from the Dan in Liberia.
  • 1975 with Ulrike Himmelträger: casting of a metal mask for the Senufo, Ivory Coast. In: Treatises and reports of the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden.
  • 1976 with Eberhard Fischer: The arts of Dan. Museum Rietberg Zurich. (English edition The Arts of the Dan in West Africa , 1984.)
  • 1996: The culture of the Baule: Ivory Coast 1933 and 1934/35. Exhibition catalog. Edited by Eberhard Fischer and Clara Mayer-Himmelträger
  • 1993: Zaire 1938/39. Exhibition catalog. Edited by Eberhard Fischer and Clara Mayer-Himmelträger
  • 2000: Where the Echo began, and other oral traditions from Southwestern Alaska, recorded by Hans Himmelheber, edited by Ann Fienup-Riordan. University of Alaska Press

literature

  • Lorenz Homberger : In memoriam: Hans Himmelträger. In: African arts 37 (1), spring 2004, p. 10.
  • Ina Rösing : Obituaries: Hans Himmelträger . In: Yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for 2003 . 2004, pp. 180-183.

Web links

Commons : Hans Himmelträger  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara Guttmann: Between rubble and dreams - Karlsruhe women in politics and society in the post-war period. [Ed .: City of Karlsruhe]. - Karlsruhe: City of Karlsruhe, women's representative and city archive, 1997, ISBN 3-923344-39-2 , p. 61 ( PDF; 21.6 MB )
  2. ↑ a b c Hans and Ulrike Himmelheber, Stations of Life , May 31, 2008. In: Website About Africa & the rest of the world . Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b Himmelhub, Ulrike; born Romans . In: Bettina Beer : Women in German-speaking ethnology: a manual. Böhlau Verlag, 2007. ISBN 9783412112066 . Pages 90-94. ( Google Book )
  4. ↑ a b c d e Short Portrait: Hans and Ulrike Himmelbahnen . In: Interviews with German Anthropologists . Retrieved February 26, 2017.
  5. ↑ Himmelheber's collections in the Museum der Kulturen Basel , June 1, 2008. In: Website About Africa & the rest of the world . Retrieved February 26, 2017.
  6. ↑ Eberhard Fischer: On the death of the anthropologist Hans Himmelträger. The manufacturers of African art , December 9, 2003. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  7. ↑ Dieter Haller : The search for the foreign: History of ethnology in the Federal Republic 1945-1990 . Campus Verlag, 2012. ISBN 978-3-593396002 . P. 287.
  8. ↑ Photo estate of Hans Himmelträger in the photo archive of the Rietberg Museum, Zurich. Retrieved March 24, 2017 .
  9. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Hans Himmelheber. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed July 3, 2016 .
  10. ^ Bibliography on the About Africa & the rest of the world website . Retrieved February 26, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Sky lifter, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor, ethnologist, ethnographer, ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 2003
Place of death Heidelberg