The Society of the Divine Word Missionaries and their Ethnographic Collection Activity along the Sepik River
The Society of the Divine Word Missionaries and their Ethnographic Collection Activity along the Sepik River
Rainer F. Buschmann
In the second half of the 1930s, Pater Georg Höltker paid a visit to his SVD counterpart Joseph Schmidt at the Murik mission station located on the mouth of the Sepik River. Based in Murik since the end of the German period of New Guinea, Schmidt had published some articles about Murik ethnography and linguistics in the SVD journal Anthropos (1923/24, 1926, 1933), defining the region as Nor-Papua. In light of SVD mission compromises, Schmidt did not outright dismiss earlier Murik religious beliefs but recorded them faithfully and even collected associated sacred carvings. This included the beron kandimboag (loincloth sacred figure) displayed in these pages. According to Schmidt, the figure was quite old and dated to the nineteenth century. Höltker would later add that the “very long appendix extending from the sternum” was atypical and highly unusual for the cultures of the Sepik’s delta (Rüegg 2015, 2018).
Beron Kandimboag collected by Joseph Schmidt before 1936
According to Schmidt’s ethnographic notes (1933: 676–678), the kandimboag were higher spirits who once lived up the Sepik River in the village of Boanang. Dispute among the spirits led to violence and diffusion and some of the kandimboag migrated to the Murik region, and especially the spirit Andena, who taught the Murik people the construction of sailing canoes. Carvings were dedicated to the spirits—Schmidt alternates their designation as idols or ancestor figures—and served several functions. Elsewhere, Schmidt (1926: 40) argued that while carvings represented the full body of a spirit, masks would represent only their faces. He further elaborated that while masks served discord and war, carvings were employed for more benign purposes such as the procuring of food. The carvings were also used in the training of hunting dogs, to protect young uninitiated boys, to bless new canoes with speed and endurance, and to assist young girls and women in getting men to fall in love with them (Schmidt 1933: 377–378).
Inside of the spirit house of Kanengara.
German renegade Catholic priests founded the Societas Verbi Divini (Society of the Divine Word, or SVD for short) in the late 19th century in the town of Steyl, a Dutch town at the border with Germany. Following unification in 1871, Otto von Bismarck enacted a number of laws that were geared to control Catholic influence in Germany. This process, also known as Kulturkampf (cultural struggle) led many Catholic priests to abandon their country of birth and the Steyler missionaries emerged as a result of this defiance. In the 1880s, as more compromising tones between the German government and the Holy See emerged, the SVD sought out new frontiers, which the society found in Germany’s colonial effort. Steyler missionaries started to venture out into China, Africa, and, following 1896, also in German New Guinea.
Arriving at Madang (then Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen), the Steyler missionaries faced great animosity from already-established societies. To avoid confrontation, Renaissance man Ludwig Kärnbach invited the first SVD missionaries to settle on the island of Tumleo, opposite Berlinhafen (near Aitape). From this station the SVD mission gradually expanded eastward along the coast until reaching the mouth of the Sepik River. In 1913, SVD station Marienberg was opened on the lower Sepik, where Father Franz Kirschbaum (1882–1939) became an avid collector of ethnographic objects. He was partially inspired by ethnographer Richard Thurnwald and would donate close to 1,000 artifacts to the Vatican museum. In 1913, an SVD station opened in Big Murik, with Joseph Schmidt as its main representative. (Wichmann 1912: 614, 651, Lutkehaus, 2007; Matbob, 2001, Piepke 2012).
Two hand drums (water drums), are pushed into the water and give sound like crocodile scream, used for initiation ceremonies of young men. Photo Karl Laumann 1948
All missionary societies collected ethnographic artifacts, some to keep trophies celebrating their conversion success, others as commodities to supplement the meager income of their respective mission stations. The SVD was different in this regard: “[SVD founder] Arnold Janssen’s missionaries introduced a somewhat revolutionary dimension into the meaning of mission—the scientific study of humankind as an integral part of the missionary task itself” (Anthropos Institute Director Louis Luzbetak cited in Loder-Neuhold, 2019, emphasis in the original). This emphasis on combining ethnography with mission efforts is associated with the name Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954). He joined the SVD in 1890, yet never went into the mission field. His vast correspondence with missionaries in Africa and New Guinea, however, alerted him to the wealth of linguistic and ethnographic data emanating from the mission outposts. The Austrian Schmidt was instrumental in creating the journal Anthropos (first issue in 1906) that would primarily focus on the publication of Catholic missionaries, who Schmidt felt were frequently excluded from the anthropological discourse. When the Vatican opened a museum in the 1920s dedicated to ethnographic objects returned to Rome by missionaries, Schmidt became its first director. His theoretical directions did not sustain the test of time. Schmidt developed a diffusionist outlook that is associated with the culture-circle idea and he is best known, and frequently attacked, for his belief in an Urmonotheismus (primitive monotheism) that stipulated that the study of indigenous people would reveal some of God’s original messages. His theories may have been misguided, but Wilhelm Schmidt provided a publication venue and a context within which to place the SVD ethnographic collection activity in New Guinea (Dietrich 1991; Loder-Neuhold 2019; Marchand 2003).
Large spirit figure named Tamasua. Photo Karl Laumann 1948
A very active ethnographic collector in New Guinea was Joseph Schmidt, who bore no direct relation to Wilhelm Schmidt other than the very common Germanic last name, was born in 1876 in Ulmecke near Meschede (Westfalia, Germany). He joined the SVD in 1901 and was ordained in 1912. A year later he arrived in German New Guinea to assume the SVD mission station at Big Murik, west of the Sepik River’s mouth. With the exception of a three-year stay at Wewak, Schmidt would remain at Murik station for most of his life. He would teach German to the inhabitants of Murik and learned their language in return. When Australia took over the administration of German New Guinea, many of the SVD missionaries were allowed to continue their work. Schmidt remained dedicated to Murik station until the Japanese invasion during the Second World War. Starting in 1943, he was interned, along with many other missionaries active in New Guinea, in several places including Hollandia (now Jayapura, Irian Jaya). Shortly before liberation, Schmidt passed away on 18 February 1945, one of the many missionary casualties of the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. Following the conflict, Schmidt’s former SVD mission at Murik was combined with the nearby lower Sepik station at Marienberg (Fuchs 1953: 275, note 7; Lipset 1997: 49).
Signaling drum with beater. The drum is named Singimagan. The ends were carved by Kopani who is still alive. Representation: Large head is the male Masalai Awiramalimbo, under his nose is a pig snout (one tooth broken), it is a watermasalai who breaks through the ditches. He lives in a hole, moves like a snake, like a leguan. People give him food, they adorn him. He makes the sun come out, the good times. When people play (pilai) near his home, then he hits them with a stick (brum) and from that they develop the skin disease ‘kaskas’ that makes the skin swell very much. When people give him food the swelling disappears. The other head on the opposite side of the drum: Head of the black cockatoo with head feathers and tail. The small head is the child of Awiramalimbo. The significance of the two carving on the drum body in not known. (Text by P. Laumann). Photo by Karl Laumann 1950. 280: The hunting and war god Vlissoa. Published in Anthropos 1952, paper by Laumann. Photo Karl Laumann.
SVD member Georg Höltker (1895–1976) visited Joseph Schmidt at the Murik station before the outbreak of the Second World War. Höltker had been a very active member of the Anthropos Institute (founded in 1931) in St. Gabriel in Austria and served on the editorial staff of the journal Anthropos (1932–35). Similar to Wilhelm Schmidt, Höltker was an Anthropos Pater, that is, he was more interested in scientific research than in conversion. While he never spent time missionizing among the people of New Guinea, Höltker nevertheless undertook an extensive research trip (1936–39) to the island. The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany led to the moving of the institute to Fribourg in Switzerland. In 1936, with expanding Nazi aggression in Europe, Höltker joined Cornelius Crane in an expedition to New Guinea sponsored by the Peabody Museum. The expedition originally planned to explore the newly encountered Highland cultures as well as the Sepik River, already visited by Crane between the years of 1928 and 1929. Obtaining permits for the many locations as well as participants, which alongside Höltker included the aforementioned SVD missionary Kirschbaum and famous anthropologist Douglas Oliver, led Crane to reshuffle the expedition’s locale. Many participants ultimately quit the venture (Niles 2012: 147–152). In another rendition of this failed expedition, Grauer (2018: 25–26) maintains that the colonial authorities refused to issue visas to researchers studying the Highlands of New Guinea to avoid disruptive first-contact scenarios.
Instead of returning to Europe, Höltker decided to shift his emphasis to the coastal region of formerly German New Guinea and employ the existing network of SVD stations to support his collecting activity. It was here where he revised his research agenda. Realizing that his SVD brethren had spent considerable time among the indigenous peoples, learning, as did Joseph Schmidt, the local language, Höltker sought to combine his observations with those of the local SVD missionaries. The missionaries in the field, he claimed, enthusiastically embraced his approach (Höltker 1937 a, b). Other SVD brethren proved less impressed and accusing Höltker of merely acquiring existing knowledge from resident missionaries (Grauer 2018: 17). Höltker’s experiment was nevertheless successful, as he returned to Switzerland in 1939 with not only the present beron kandimboag figure from Joseph Schmidt but a collection of close to 2,000 artifacts and 2,500 photographs (Hoffmann & Ruegg, 2016).
The hunting and war god Vlissoa. Published in Anthropos 1952, photo by Karl Laumann.
Höltker returned to a Europe on the brink of a war that would, only a little over two years later, spread to the SVD mission station in New Guinea. Many priests and sisters were interned by the invading Japanese troops; a fair number of the SVD missionaries, suspected of aiding the allied cause, were killed (Nolan, 2017). Among the casualties was, as already mentioned, Joseph Schmidt. Naturally, under these circumstances, ethnographic collecting came to a grinding halt. In 1943, a small group of SVD priests and sisters left the Japanese-controlled areas to reach allied lines following an arduous trek; among them was Pater Karl Laumann (Anonymous, 1944).
Tambaran Urungenam, friend of Vlissoa (see 280) from Antefugoa. Pater holding the spears of the tambaran. Photo by Karl Laumann 1951.
Returning to the Sepik region following the conflict, Laumann resumed the work performed by Höltker, Kirschbaum, and Schmidt. He resided in the mission station Kanduanum II, founded in 1947. From this mission outpost, Laumann would venture into, at the time of his writing, the less explored regions of the Sepik. His main emphasis was on the Yuat River, a tributary of the mighty Sepik. Here Laumann encountered a rich tradition of wood carving that was equal to that of the Sepik River, as the accompanying photographs attest (Laumann 1951, 1952, 1954).
Joseph Schmidt, Georg Höltker and Karl Laumann exemplify the very active, but frequently neglected, ethnographic collection activity of Catholic missionaries. The beron kandimboag featured in these pages stands for a very uncommon example of Sepik material culture. Moreover, it illustrates an SVD collection practice that was less a byproduct of indigenous conversion and more an attempt at combining Catholic ideology with careful ethnographic study.
Spirit family: Mündabala, war god; Pandi his wife and Andi his son. July 1952, photo Karl Laumann, see Anthropos 1954, paper by Laumann.
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