Karin Hahn-Hissink

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Karin Hahn-Hissink (born November 4, 1907 in Berlin ; † May 23, 1981 in Kronberg im Taunus ) was a German ethnologist . During the Second World War she was temporarily deputy director of the Frobenius Institute . After the war she went on research trips to Bolivia and worked at the Museum of Ethnology in Frankfurt.

Life

Origin and youth

Karin Hissink was born on November 4, 1907 as the daughter of Jack and Hertha Hissink in Berlin. The father came from the Netherlands and worked at AEG in a management position, the mother came from a wealthy Charlottenburg family. The couple also ran a large farm in Gatow together . Hertha Hissink campaigned for equality between men and women and wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler with this concern around 1933 . Hissink had a brother named Jan. In her youth, she played sports that were reserved for the children of richer families: For example, she was a member of the Spandau women's group glider pilots and went on ski holidays with her brother . In addition, she also received a gender-specific upbringing and attended, for example, a course for infant, child and nursing care of the Lette Association . For the first five years of her schooldays, Hissink attended the private school Tanneck in Westend and switched to the Westend grammar school after it was closed. It was there that she passed her Abitur in 1928.

Training and entry into professional life

Between 1928 and 1933 Karin Hissink studied philosophy , archeology as well as prehistory and early history and ethnology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , the University of Lausanne and the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin. On the latter she received her doctorate in 1933 with the dissertation masks as facade decoration, examined on old buildings on the Yucatan peninsula . Then Hissink worked until 1934 as a volunteer at the Ethnological Research Institute affiliated with the Museum of Ethnology .

Work in Frankfurt: Frobenius Institute and Museum of Ethnology

In 1934 Hissink moved to Frankfurt am Main . There she became an assistant at the Frobenius Institute (then still: Institute for Cultural Morphology ), which was affiliated with the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , and at the Museum of Ethnology of the City of Frankfurt. In 1934 and 1935 Hissink took part in the twelfth German Inner-African Research Expedition, DIAFE, to Transjordan and Libya . There she was involved in the recording of rock paintings . In 1937 she met Albert Hahn , her future husband. After the death of Leo Frobenius on August 9, 1938, Alfred Schachtzabel and Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann were initially discussed as his successors. Neither of them received the position, which was instead temporarily headed by Hissink on his behalf. It was only after the war in 1945 that Adolf Ellegard Jensen was appointed to head the Frobenius Institute and the Museum of Ethnology.

After the beginning of the Second World War , the institute's employees were gradually called up for military service. During this time Karin Hissink was in charge of the institute and museum for the most part. Under her, above all the museum installation and order work were continued. From the end of 1940, some employees, including Jensen, were given leave of absence from military service to work on a handbook for applied ethnology. The actual director was therefore back at the institute until September 1943. Most of the institute's holdings were saved during the war, but the premises were destroyed in bomb attacks. From the end of 1944 the Frobenius Institute was housed in Karin Hissink's private apartment on Myliusstraße, where another room could be rented. Thus, despite major restrictions, the institute's work was maintained until the end of the war. Despite his absence due to the war, Jensen continued to exercise control over the institute's work and, for this purpose, exchanged letters with Hissink. After the end of the war he again took over the post of museum director and head of the institute. But the transition did not go smoothly. Hissink continued to hold a strong position, and there were personal complications from hoping for a private relationship with Jensen. Ultimately, Jensen married Elisabeth Pauli , a close work colleague and friend of Hissink. Hildegard Klein also contributed to clarifying the situation .

During the war, Hissink had lost all of her close relatives: her brother died as a lieutenant colonel in 1939, her father succumbed to a serious illness in 1940 and her mother died in a bomb attack on Berlin in 1944. In addition to her work in Frankfurt, she also took care of her parents' farm in Berlin.

Post-war and late years: research in Bolivia

From 1947 to 1972 Hissink worked as a curator at the Frankfurt Museum of Ethnology. In 1951 she went on a study trip to the United States. On this trip she collected ideas for the presentation in the museum and made contacts for the international scientific relations of the Frobenius Institute. Between April 29, 1952 and June 17, 1954, she and Albert Hahn did field research in Bolivia . She researched the Chama , Chimané and Tacana in the then little-explored eastern lowlands of Bolivia. The main focus was the recording of myths and stories of the Tacana, with which Hissink and Hahn spent 14 months. From 1961, Hissink published the results of her research in Bolivia. The research results of Hissink are considered to be an important contribution to ethnology . The collection of almost 400 myths is considered to be the largest for a single South American Indian tribe. The myths were not only recorded, but also examined for their motives in order to be able to compare them with other records. Hissink also looked into the question of whether the motifs had also found their way into material culture. Claude Lévi-Strauss , whom she met several times in Paris, was particularly interested in this aspect of her work . He pursued a similar concern by looking for motifs from myths in the fine arts - especially ornamentation - of the indigenous people. From her research trip to Bolivia, Hissink brought around 300 objects to Frankfurt that are still part of the collection of the Weltkulturen Museum.

In the years between 1962 and 1970 there were several collecting and study trips to South America. In 1966 she married Albert Hahn and took the double name Hahn-Hissink. In 1980 Hahn-Hissink went on a study trip to Canada and Alaska . She died on May 23, 1981 in Kronberg im Taunus . Hahn-Hissink's private and scientific estate is located in the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt am Main.

Publications (selection)

  • Karin Hissink, masks as facade decoration. Investigated on old buildings on the Yukatan peninsula , Heitz & Cie, Leipzig 1934.
  • Karin Hissink, The General America Department of the Völkermuseum , Frankfurt am Main 1939.
  • Karin Hissink, The Tacama. Storytelling. Results of the Frobenius expedition to Bolivia 1952-1954 (Volume 1) , Stuttgart 1961.
  • Karin Hahn-Hissink, Folk Art in Mexico , City Museum for Ethnology, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • Karin Hahn-Hissink, rock art Mexico. As historical, religious and art monuments , Reimer, Berlin 1969.
  • Karin Hahn-Hissink, Folk Art from Guatemala , Municipal Museum for Ethnology, Frankfurt am Main 1971.
  • Karin Hahn-Hissink and Albert Hahn, Die Tacana II: Daten zur Kulturgeschichte , Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1984.
  • Karin Hahn-Hissink and Albert Hahn, Chama-Indianer: Daten zur Kulturgeschichte , Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1988.
  • Karin Hahn-Hissink and Albert Hahn, Chimane: Notes and Drawings from Northeast Bolivia , Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden 1989.

literature

  • Bettina Beer , women in German-speaking ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-11206-6 .
  • O. Zerries, History of the Frobenius Institute 1898-1948 , in: Paideuma, Vol. 4 (1950), pp. 363-376.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bettina Beer, Women in German-speaking Ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, p. 74.
  2. ↑ a b c CV of Karin Hahn-Hissink on iai.spk-berlin.de, accessed on May 31, 2014.
  3. ^ O. Zerries, History of the Frobenius Institute 1898-1948 , in: Paideuma, Vol. 4 (1950), pp. 363-376, pp. 373f.
  4. ↑ Jörn Kobes & Jan-Otmar Hesse, Frankfurt scientists between 1933 and 1945, Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0258-7 , p. 105.
  5. ↑ a b Bettina Beer, Women in German-speaking Ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, p. 79.
  6. ↑ Bettina Beer, Women in German-speaking Ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, pp. 74 and 77.
  7. ↑ Bettina Beer, Women in German-speaking Ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, p. 80.
  8. ↑ a b Bettina Beer, Women in German-speaking Ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, p. 81.
  9. ↑ Article on Hahn-Hissink's research in Bolivia on miradas-alemanas.de, accessed on May 31, 2014.
  10. ↑ Bettina Beer, Women in German-speaking Ethnology. A manual , Böhlau, Cologne 2007, p. 73.
personal data
SURNAME Hahn-Hissink, Karin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hissink, Karin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1981
Place of death Kronberg im Taunus