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Hamburg Curator of Oceania Herbert Tischner

By Rainer Buschmann

Herbert Tischner (1906-1984) was a long-time curator of the Oceanic Division at the Hamburg Ethnographic Museum. He oversaw the division during the crucial years following the loss of valuable artifacts during World War II. Although Tischner never traveled to Oceania, he initiated essential collaborations with Lutheran missionaries operating in the highlands of New Guinea.

Herbert Tischner, courtesy Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) Herbert Tischner was born in Halberstadt in 1906. He graduated from high school in Goslar in 1927. In the following years, Tischner studied anthropology, archaeology, and geography in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg. In 1934, he completed his PhD thesis on house types in Oceania. He stated in his acknowledgements that Georg Thilenius, Paul Hambruch, and Otto Dempwolff were significant influences. These early anthropologists and linguists, who had visited the region during colonial times, would profoundly mold Tischner’s outlook on the fate of Pacific artifacts. Even before completing his dissertation, Tischner took an unpaid position at the Ethnographic Museum (Museum für Völkerkunde) in Hamburg in 1933. This pivotal year was marked by the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany and the passing of Paul Hambruch—participant in the Hamburg South Sea Expedition (1908-1910) and later curator of Oceania in Hamburg. This realignment enabled Tischner to secure an assistant position in the Department for Oceania at the museum in 1936. Museum director Georg Thilenius warned Tischner’s father that pursuing an ethnographic career would involve financial risks, but his son chose to continue studying the Pacific. After achieving some economic stability, Tischner married Gertrud Henze in 1937. These were difficult years for the young curator. Although he joined the Nazi Party in 1933, he did so only at his father’s urging. Even as a party member, later Hamburg director Franz Termer noted that Tischner consistently rejected Nazi ideology, refusing to display party emblems or perform the customary German greeting. In his dissertation, Tischner also avoided Nazi racial categorization. It is conceivable that this attitude contributed to social isolation and limited career advancement opportunities. After 1941, he was drafted into the German army and served for the duration of the war. Upon his return at the end of the conflict, the then museum director, Franz Termer, vindicated Tischner, allowing him to resume his position as assistant curator in Hamburg. The conditions encountered by Tischner were appalling. In an article for the Journal de la Société des Océanistes (1947), he wrote about the devastating impact of the Second World War on his division: “Of all the Oceania collections in Germany, it is undoubtedly the one in Hamburg that has suffered the most serious and irreparable loss… The entire Oceania collection in storage—that is, two-thirds of the Oceania department—burned, except for large objects such as spears, shields, and malangan sculptures from New Ireland, among others. The heaviest loss to be deplored here is that of the important Micronesian collection acquired in situ in 1910 under the best scientific conditions of the Hamburg South Sea Expedition. This collection has completely disappeared; it can never be replaced, and its loss is irreparable… [Fortunately], the original meeting house of the New Zealand Māori withstood all the ravages of the war in Hamburg.”

Herbert Tischner in front of the Maori Assembly House (Rauru) in Hamburg. Courtesy Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) Later biographers, especially Hans Fischer, criticized Tischner for holding outdated views on Pacific cultures and their material products. In his youth, the curator traveled widely across Europe and North Africa. Yet, despite his evident passion for Oceania, he never actually visited the region. While the rise of the Nazis and the outbreak of the subsequent war contributed to this, Tischner probably believed—shaped by his education from predecessors Georg Thilenius and Paul Hambruch—that the modern Pacific had experienced significant cultural decline since the early 20th century. He preferred to study materials collected during initial encounters and early colonial administration. As early as the 1930s, in his dissertation, he opposed conducting fieldwork, arguing that in-place research would come too late for many parts of Oceania. Throughout many of his works, Tischner focused on artifacts and written sources from early collectors. A prime example is an article written in 1950 for the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, where he referenced F. E. Hellwig's notes from the turn of the century to describe a chief's burial on Luf Island. His view of the fading Pacific Island cultures remained unchanged even shortly before he passed away. His last book, published in 1981 and dedicated to the ethnographic collections at the Natural History Museum in Nuremberg, called the artifacts “Documents of Vanished South Sea Cultures.” Despite his antiquarian outlook, it is noteworthy that Tischner is absent from the volumes of the Hamburg South Sea Expedition published shortly before World War II. Contrary to his evident expertise in Oceania, the editor’s choice fell to Anneliese Eilers, who had written a dissertation on the social relations of Bantu children in Africa. Nevertheless, before Tischner was drafted into World War II, he devoted himself to preserving the last surviving footage of the cinematographic material collected by the Hamburg South Sea Expedition. Carefully transferring the combustible nitrate film to a safer contemporary medium, the movie was later transferred to VHS, DVD, and is currently available on streaming platforms. Unfortunately, the advanced state of deterioration of the material only allowed for about 11 minutes to be preserved. Notwithstanding his inability to visit the Pacific and his limited view of contemporary Oceanic cultures, Tischer established a broad network of connections with national and international museums to expand existing Oceanic collections and address the gaps created by the Second World War. He also maintained a strong interest in new cultural areas during his tenure at the Hamburg Museum. In this effort, he formed an unlikely alliance with missionaries. Following gold prospectors who uncovered a significant population in the rugged interior of New Guinea, Lutheran missionaries began arriving in the region. In November of 1934, a group of missionaries led by Georg Vicedom established the Ogelbeng mission near Mt. Hagen. Two years later, one of his Lutheran colleagues, Hermann Strauss, gathered ethnographic information and artifacts. Tischer successfully obtained the collections for the Hamburg Museum and assisted in the publication of numerous monographs on the Milpa (Mbowamb) people, which are still regarded as significant ethnographic documents and were later translated by Andrew Strathern.

VI 54044, Breastplate, Chimbu Valley, New Guinea, photography Volker Linke, purchased before 1982 from Herbert Tischner. Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

VI 54311, Ceramic Flute, Enga, Chimbu Valley, New Guinea, photography by Peter Jakob, purchased from Gertrud Tischner, Herbert’s wife. Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. In his ethnographic descriptions, Tischer largely avoided excessive theorizing. In his dissertation on Oceanic house forms, he distanced himself from applying popular diffusionist concepts to his survey. Similarly, his only academic confrontation focused on Thor Heyerdahl’s now largely debunked theories about the settlement of the Pacific Islands. Choosing not to pursue theoretical innovations, Tischer instead concentrated on popularizing ethnographic research through displays and textbooks. In 1954, he published a guidebook to the Hamburg Oceanic collections titled “Oceanic Art,” which was considered important enough to be translated into English and French. In 1959, he released a popular introductory book on ethnology. Overseeing the reopening of the Oceanic collections after World War II, he followed the advice of local artists to improve the displays. Shortly before retiring, he arranged the presentation of Oceanic masks based on the layout of commercial showcases found in local department stores. It was only thirty-five years after he started working at the Hamburg Museum that he obtained the official curatorship of the Oceanic collections in Hamburg. The same year, 1968, he also became deputy director of the institution. He formally retired from his employment in 1971. In the following year, he was contacted by Gerd Koch, the Oceanic curator at the Berlin Museum, to participate in a large-scale expedition to West Papua. Probably due to his advanced age, Tischer declined this last opportunity to visit the Pacific. In 1984, he passed away in Hamburg. Further Reading:

Fischer, Hans. “Herbert Tischner,” Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg NF 14 (1984): 7-9

___________.Völkerkunde in Nationalsozialismus: Aspekte der Anpassung, Affinität und Behauptung einer wissenschaftlichen Disziplin. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1990.

Löffler, Petra. “Double Vision: Encountering Early Ethnographic Films in the Digital Archive,” Frames Cinema Journal 19 (2022): 277-291.

Schindlbeck, Markus, “Die Unvollendete—Die größte Expedition des Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin, unternommen nach West-Papua, Neuguinea,” Baessler Archiv 66 (2020): 7-36.

Strauss, Hermann and Herbert Tischner, Die Mi-Kultur der Hagenberg-Stämme in östlichen Zentral-Neuguninea. Hamburg, Cram: de Gruyter, 1962.

Tischner, Herbert “Les collections océaniennes d'ethnographie en Allemagne après la guerre” Journal de la Société des Océanistes 35 (1947): 35-41

_____________, “Eine Häuptlingsbestattung auf Luf (Nach Hinterlassenen Aufzeichnungen F.E. Hellwig’s” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 75 (1950): 52-59.

_____________, Kulturen der Südsee. Hamburg: E. Hauswedell, 1954

_____________, Dokumente verschollner Südsee Kulturen. Nuremberg: Naturhistorische Gesellschaft Nürnberg, 1981

Vicedom, Georg F. and Herbert Tischner. Die Mbowamb; die Kultur der Hagenberg-Stämme im östlichen Zentral-Neuguinea. 3 vols. Hamburg, Cram: de Gruyter, 1943.

Zwernemann und Clara Wilpert, “The Hamburgisches Museum für Völkerkunde and its Pacific Department: A Short History,” Pacific Arts 1/2 (1990): 90-92.