Robert Visser

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Robert Visser (born December 2, 1860 in Düsseldorf ; † 1937 there ) was a German entrepreneur , farmer and collector of ethnographic objects.

Life

Robert Visser was the fifth of thirteen children in a family of merchants and seafarers. After graduating from school, he wanted to become a ship captain and got hired on a steam freight ship in Rotterdam . After the first trip to Russia , he gave up his career as a seaman and took part in a scientific expedition to Brazil .

In 1881 Visser went to Africa in the Congo Basin . He worked as plantations - Manager for the Dutch trading company Nieuwe Afrikaansche handelsvennootschap , until at least 1899 at the Loango Coast in French Congo . In 1901 he worked in the Belgian Congo and from 1902–1904 in the Portuguese Congo . According to his own statement, he was one of the first Europeans to plant coffee and cocoa plantations in the Congo Basin, and then there were rubber plantations.

In addition, Visser collected ethnographic objects, especially the fetishes Minkisi (plural, singular: nkisi, Minkischi / Nkischi) of the Bakongo , and he took many photos. Visser's objects are in the Ethnographic Museums in Berlin , Leipzig and Stuttgart as well as in the Art Institute of Chicago and the Detroit Institute of Arts . He also collected animals for the Düsseldorf Zoo .

In 1893 Visser had a Heinrich Heine column erected on the Loango coast after the city of Düsseldorf refused to erect it in Düsseldorf. The column bore the inscription: Here! Does the city council have no power | And since the world laughed enough | Whether this cannibalism, | Should Heine remain a monument here

In 1904 Visser returned to Düsseldorf with his son Anton (his deceased African wife) and married Selma Schobbenhaus in 1905, with whom he had a daughter, Sieglinde. He was initially director of the Düsseldorf Zoo. In 1908 he founded the Düsseldorfer Verkehrsverein, whose managing director he became.

Works

• About fetish service, superstition and related customs of the Congo Negroes . Natural Science Association of Krefeld, Krefeld 1906–1907.
• Sounds of home: poems. Dedicated to my friends of the Alde Düsseldorfer civil society . Fritz, Düsseldorf 1935.

literature

• Katrin Adler, Christine Stelzig: Robert Visser and His Photographs from the Loango Coast . African Arts, Vol. 35, No. 4 (2002).
• Christraud M. Geary: In and Out of Focus: Images from Central Africa, 1885-1960 . Philip Wilson, London 2003, ISBN 0-85667-551-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Lothar Pützstück: Africa and Düsseldorf in the German Empire (1871–1945) . In: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Reinhard Klein-Arendt (ed.): Africans in Germany and black Germans: past and present . LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-6824-9 , p. 61.
2. ↑ Grassi Leipzig Ethnography Museum: Plantation Manager and Collector - Robert Visser and his Minkisi Collection ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on March 14, 2016). 
3. ↑ Lothar Schröder: Düsseldorf helps Heine's return to the East . Rheinische Post March 8, 2016, p. C3.
4. ↑ ^{a b} düsseldorfer jonges: The splendor of the singer's songs . das tor, Volume 81, Issue 9 (2015), p. 8.
5. ↑ Ute Rasch: When the city of Africa was dreaming ( Memento of the original from March 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on March 14, 2016).