Emil Stephan: Naval Surgeon, Innovative Ethnographer, and Collector of Artifacts in the Bismarck Archipelago Emil StephanNaval Surgeon, Innovative Ethnographer, and Collector of Artifacts in the Bismarck Archipelago By Rainer F. Buschmann Emil Stephan (1872-1908) was a naval surgeon who, while stationed on a German naval survey vessel, developed an interest in the ethnography of the Bismarck Archipelago. Collecting artifacts for the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, Stephan would ultimately lead the German Naval Expedition (1907-1909) to New Ireland. It is estimated that he acquired close to 1,000 artifacts, primarily for the Berlin institution. Emil Stephan, Die Grafschaft Glatz Emil Stephan was born in Glatz (today Klodzko, Poland) in the Prussian province of Silesia, where he would finish his schooling. In 1892, he performed his military service in the city of Kiel. Upon his return to civilian life, Stephan studied medicine at several universities. He would ultimately receive his doctorate from the University of Munich in 1896. Stephan briefly practiced medicine in Columbia and on several ships of the Hamburg-America Line. In 1898, he decided to join the German Navy and would, between 1900 and 1901, participate in the German East Asian Expeditionary Corps to quell the Boxer Uprising in China. In 1904, Stephan joined the German survey vessel SMS Möwe (Seagull), which operated in German New Guinea as a surgeon. The SMS Möwe from Stephan and Graebner, Neu-Mecklenburg, 1907 Naval surgeons had a long history of participating in Pacific exploration. Their primary duties were attending to crew illnesses or accidents, but they also served as naturalists or ethnographers in this novel part of the world. While most of the crew were tied into a rigid schedule, surgeons enjoyed leisure periods that the learned individuals filled with collecting, observations, and recording. Stephan was not the first German naval surgeon to discover ethnography, as Augustin Krämer (see Provenance Section) had developed his disciplinary passion over a decade earlier. When, by the mid-1890s, the Seagull was stationed in German New Guinea, Felix von Luschan, who curated Berlin’s African and Oceanic ethnographic collections, managed to convince his superiors to provide a yearly subsidy to assist the vessel’s crew in their bartering for artifacts. However, Luschan found that the ship’s officers were reluctant collectors, notwithstanding a few exceptions. He was thus pleased when young Stephan visited him in the museum before departing for the German colony. Luschan instructed him in the latest ethnographic and recording techniques and provided him with photographic material and a phonograph. While stationed on a warship with limited access to study Indigenous culture, Stephan nonetheless made ample use of the indentured laborers employed on the ship. He avoided what he would later consider the “camphor smell of dry museum science” and sought to investigate the psychology of the people he met. He believed an in-depth study of the Indigenous population provided insights different from those of colonial officials, missionaries, or traders. His suggestion to listen and triangulate Indigenous accounts differed radically from other collectors active in the German colony. To make his case, Stephan cited a particularly effective schooner captain (presumably Hermann Voogdt, see Provenance Section) who maintained: “I only ask the lads once, ‘cause when I ask ‘em twice, they always tell me something different.” Stephan’s “field” of the investigation was not a village but the repetitive schedule of a busy German warship, accentuated by the occasional punitive raids against an Indigenous population often perceived by the German administration as treacherous and recalcitrant. In a later recollection of his time in New Guinea, a German settler would later abrasively write that the Seagull was “a small survey ship cruising every twelve months through the South Sea labyrinth to remind thick-skulled cannibals of its presence and cannons.” Stephan did not share in this openly bigoted outlook. He developed a close rapport with several young men, who referred to themselves as Barriai from the far western region of New Britain. The Barriai served as deckhands but were often at odds with German sailors since they did not speak Pidgin English and had trouble comprehending commands. Stephan frequently intervened on their behalf when his fellow crew members threatened violence, a gesture well appreciated by the Barriai, who shared their culture and language with the naval surgeon. Two of these Barriai workers, Selin and Pore, became close confidants and informers who assisted Stephan with collecting artifacts and taught him to listen to what Indigenous experts had to say. Selin and Pore, from Stephan, Südseekunst, 1907. In a later work—Südseekunst, 1907, pp. 89-90—Stephan became explicit about the transformation he was experiencing while interacting with Selin and Pore: I surmised that one of the most rewarding, even if also one of the most taxing, tasks of ethnographic research is to delve into individual psychology. To be more precise, it is essential to penetrate individual heads of local significance. This endeavor is more hopeful than [some of my colleagues] may assume. Such insights, even in embryonic form, have already been revealed to me while studying the Barriai. By the end of 1904, Stephan returned to Germany with roughly 700 artifacts from his deployment, mostly hailing from the Bismarck Archipelago. His attempt to bring Selin and Pore with him failed when Luschan could not raise the money for their voyage to and stay in Germany. However, Stephan obtained the Order of the Red Eagle 4th class for his collecting efforts. Although Luschan jealously guarded any artifacts arriving in the Berlin Museum, Stephan convinced him to part with some artifacts now held by the Freiburg Museum (see image 6). He donated duplicates from his collection to the city in gratitude for Freiburg’s support while Stephan was a student there. Lor mask from New Britain collected by Stephan in 1904, VI 23795, Ethnologisches Museum, Photographer Peter Jacob, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Lor mask from New Britain collected by Stephan in 1904, VI 23797, Ethnologisches Museum, Photographer Martin Franken, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Slingshot hailing from Kait, New Ireland, in the Freiburg Ethnographic Museum, probably collected by Stephan in 1904, II/4694 While in Germany, Stephan remained far from idle but worked on two ethnographic books. The first was a more traditional ethnographic survey of the southeastern coast of New Ireland, which he co-authored with museum ethnographer Fritz Graebner (Neu-Mecklenburg). The second, Südseekunst, was a much more experimental single-authored monograph that propelled Stephan’s newly acquired observations into an early speculation on the nature of South Pacific Art. In this peculiar book, Stephan, through the intervention of Selin and Pore and against early twentieth-century ethnographic dogma, argued that Pacific Islanders displayed a similar aesthetic sense as Western artists. It should be emphasized, however, that Stephan, while arguing against ethnographic conventions, never challenged Germany’s colonial mission in the Pacific. Concluding his Südseekunst, Stephan elevated the prevalent salvage paradigm—the urgent mission to save as much cultural heritage as possible before its inevitable demise—to a national debt of honor (nationale Ehrenschuld). Germany acquired this obligation through colonial annexations in the area, and this nation had to fulfill its ethnographic pledge. Reviews in colonial newspapers fully welcomed the naval surgeon’s urging to follow in the footsteps of the American nation to preserve Native American heritage. While colonial enthusiasts embraced his reframing of the salvage agenda in nationalist terms, the German ethnographic community remained lukewarm about Stephan’s methodological suggestions. Fritz Graeber, for instance, felt that diffusionist concerns should trump aesthetic ones and tried to contain the musings of Stephan’s innovations. As co-author of Neu-Mecklenburg, Graeber hoped to create a typical museum monograph dedicated to identifying and cataloging material culture. The governor of New Guinea, Albert Hahl (see Provenance Section), was even blunter: “I had trouble keeping up with your booklet [on South Sea Art]. I refuse to entertain artistic theories.” Despite increasing voices directed against the ethnographic neophyte, Luschan defended his protégé. His interest was less in novel ethnographic concerns with Oceanic art and more in the naval surgeon’s connections to the mighty German Navy. By 1906, Luschan discovered that his competitor in Hamburg, Director Georg Thilenius, was organizing a costly venture to German New Guinea. Unable to derail what would become the Hamburg South Sea Expedition (1908-1910), Luschan appealed to his authorities in Berlin and reached out to the German Naval Office with their support. The result was the German Naval Expedition that sought to intensively survey a selected region rather than an extensive survey of the entire colony of German New Guinea as the Hamburg Venture attempted to do. Luschan decided to appoint Emil Stephan, who was supported by Edgar Walden, Otto Schlaginhaufen (see Provenance Section), and photographer Richard Schilling, as the expedition's leader. The German Navy provided the name—Deutsche Marine Expedition—and vowed to protect and support the expedition through its newest survey ship, the SMS Planet, replacing the aging Seagull. Naval Expedition members. Seated (from left to right) are Edgar Walden and official photographer Richard Schilling; behind them standing (again left-right) are Emil Stephan and Otto Schlaginhaufen, Deutsche Kolonialzeitung. Arriving in the archipelago, Stephan displayed his keen people skills and strove to regain the colonial residents’ fading support for the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. He held, for instance, lengthy conversations with Governor Hahl, Franz Boluminski (See Provenance Section), and Max Thiel (See Provenance Section) and ensured that the last two individuals obtained coveted Prussian decorations for their assistance. On the other hand, Hahl actively intervened in the Naval Expedition's planning stages. Designed initially to survey New Britain, the governor shifted the venture’s location to New Ireland, arguing that an ethnographic emphasis on local cultures—such as malagan and uli rituals—could be combined with a colonial interest in regional population decline and recording of local languages. Stephan divided the expedition into a northern—composed of Edgar Walden, who was already gaining a reputation for being difficult, in charge of observing malagan ceremonies—and a southern group—based in Muliama was to survey this part of the island. In Muliama, Stephan assumed the triple role of ethnographer, doctor, and colonial official, meeting with local dignitaries while supplying medical assistance and adjudicating potential conflict. Meanwhile, Otto Schlaginhaufen collected and cataloged artifacts and took anthropometric measurements while undertaking extensive journeys to islands north of New Ireland. Lastly, Richard Schilling struggled to keep up with photography in the tropical environment and overseeing Indigenous laborers and policemen. Stephan, Schauinsland, and Schilling in Southern New Ireland accompanied by Indigenous laborers. This rare photograph attests to how the Indigenous porters and soldiers did the expedition's heavy lifting. Copyright Carsten Brekenfeld—Please do not reproduce. A much more heroic depiction of the expedition: Emil Stephan (seated) provides medical assistance to an Indigenous resident near Muliama while Otto Schlaginhafen observes. Deutsche Kolonialzeitung. Mask from Muliama, collected by members of the German Naval Expedition, VI 33710-A, photographer Peter Jacob, Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Surviving records indicated that Stephan took his dual colonial and ethnographic tasks seriously. His preliminary report on population decline around Muliama, commissioned by Governor Hahl and his colonial government, displayed a negative and decisively imperial outlook. Stephan predicted that the area would be almost wholly depopulated within three generations. He located the culprit for this precipitous decline less in European impact—recruitment, introduction of alcohol, and venereal diseases—and more on what he regarded as Indigenous inbreeding. He advised the colonial administration to import populations from other parts of the Pacific colony or even as far as Africa. On the ethnographic front, Stephan stood in busy exchange with Luschan by letter. He envisioned his labor to result in a six-volume publication series emphasizing culture and language over collected artifacts and thus revealing a potentially radical break with German ethnographic traditions. Emil Stephan’s envisioned ethnographic marriage with colonial concerns came to a grinding halt when, in May of 1908, the naval surgeon fell gravely ill. Diagnosed with blackwater fever, a quinine-induced complication from malaria that can result in acute kidney failure, a delirious Stephan requested to be transported to the hospital in the then-colonial capital of Herbertshöhe. Schlaginhaufen complied and had Stephan’s feverish body carried by porters in a hammock to the colonial outpost of Namatanai. The local colonial officer there, Wilhelm Wostrack (see Provenance Section), administered rudimentary medical aid to the dying surgeon. While waiting for a steamer, Stephan increasingly lost consciousness and passed away on May 25th, 1908, and was interred near the station. Naval surgeon Augustin Krämer replaced Stephan to prevent the Naval Expedition from collapsing and returned the venture to a more conventional collection and classification journey. Thus refigured, he managed to bring the venture to a satisfactory close by returning nearly 2,500 artifacts to Berlin. The nature of the expedition became rushed, however, and its results remained, by and large, unpublished until today. The crew of SMS Planet attends a memorial service dedicated to Emil Stephan in Namatanai, ca. 1910. Die Grafschaft Glatz. Further Readings: Beaulieu, Jean-Philippe. Uli: Powerful Ancestors from the Pacific. Bornival, Bel.: Primedia, 2021, pp. 71-94. Buschmann, Rainer F. Anthropology’s Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870-1935. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2008, pp. 81-84, 108-117. Zimmerman, Andrew. “Selin, Pore, and Emil Stephan in the Bismarck Archipelago: A ‘Fresh and Joyful Tale’ of the Origins of Fieldwork,” in: Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association Vols 21 & 22 (2000), pp. 69-84.
