Richard Neuhauss - A German Physician with a Passion for Anthropology By Sara Müller Richard NeuhaussA German Physician with a Passion for Anthropology By Sara Müller A Portrait of Richard Neuhauss from 1905. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnological Museum / Reproduction owned by the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, Signature: FS 06276 Richard Neuhauss (1855-1915) was a German physician, anthropologist, and photographer. He spent nineteen months in the colony “German New Guinea” from 1908 to 1910. During this time, he collected a considerable number of ethnographic objects from regions such as the Huon Golf, the Markham and the Sepik River. Neuhauss also took photographs for the purpose of somatological research. He was one of the first explorers to make films and record songs in the colony. Richard Neuhauss’ Career Richard Neuhauss studied medicine in Berlin and Heidelberg and received his doctorate in Leipzig in 1883. He practiced medicine until his death in 1915. In addition to his medical practice, Neuhauss was a photographer and a passionate anthropologist. He undertook two journeys to pursue these interests. In 1884, Neuhauss embarked on a trip around the world, visiting Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and North America. In 1908 he traveled to the colony “German New Guinea”. His journey was mainly self-funded, but he received some financial support from Felix von Luschan to collect objects for the Völkerkundemuseum in Berlin. He published his experiences, the results of his research and his interpretation of the objects in several books and articles in German newspapers and scientific journals. After the outbreak of World War One, Neuhaus requested to supervise the diphtheria barracks at Berlin Lichterfelde Military Hospital. During his first week on the job, he contracted diphtheria and died shortly after. . Neuhauss Expedition to German New Guinea and His Collections Richard and his wife Pauline spent nineteen months in “German New Guinea” between 1908 and 1910. The couple stayed primarily at missionary stations of the Neuendettelsau Protestant Missionary Society. These stations were used not only for the couple’s accommodation, but also as a base for Neuhauss’ research trips. According to Richard’s publications, Pauline mostly stayed at these stations while he undertook his trips to regions such as the Huon Gulf, Sissano and the Markham River. He was supported by missionaries like Christian Keyser who were as eager as Neuhauss to “discover” new regions of New Guinea and encounter villages and cultures that could be either researched or missionized. One of the objects Neuhauss acquired is the calabash, today part of the collection in Göttingen (Göttingen No. Oz 1826).© Ethnographic Collection, University of Göttingen During his various travels in the colony, Neuhauss amassed a collection of more than 2,500 objects. According to Neuhauss, he acquired many of the objects directly through exchanges with people in their villages. During these encounters, the Neuendettelsauer missionaries very often acted as intermediaries between Neuhauss and the local people in the immediate vicinity of the mission station, helping to make contacts and provide translations. During his travels on the Sepik, he also purchased objects from local traders. These traders traveled in their canoes up to the steamship Neuhauss was traveling on and, according to Neuhauss, traded ethnographic objects and fruit for objects offered by passengers on the ship. According to the information at the ethnological museum in Berlin, this bowl of stone (Berlin No. VI 31661) was acquired through Neuhauss’ missionary contacts. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnological Museum / Heinz-Günther Malenz. In addition to exchanging objects with local producers and villagers, Neuhauss also purchased objects from mission stations. The missionaries possessed objects from the surrounding villages and stored them in small storehouses at their stations. These objects were either given to the missionaries as gifts or taken by them as part of their goal to Christianize the local population. For Neuhauss and many others, these collections were a way to acquire objects that were otherwise more or less impossible to obtain. The physician states in his publication that he acquired several very valuable objects from the missionaries for the museum collection in Berlin. It appears that Richard Thurnwald (see Provenance Biography) also used the missionaries during his time in New Britain to acquire so-called "iniet-figures" for the museum in Berlin. Many pieces in his collection seem to have come from members of the Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. For the missionaries, selling these objects was a way to raise money to support their mission. Neuhauss donated his collection from the colony to the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin in 1910 and 1911. He was rewarded with the Order of Merit of the Red Eagle. Like many other artifacts once part of the Berlin collection, objects from Neuhauss were sold, donated, or exchanged with other institutions and private collectors. Today, Neuhauss objects are part of private collections and museum collections, such as those in Berlin and Göttingen. Rallying for the Sepik and Neuhauss Self-Image Among the objects Neuhauss brought back from the colony are some 156 objects from the Sepik River. The exploration of this region became a lifelong ambition - or obsession - for Neuhauss. In almost all his publications, he urged rapid action to collect objects for museums and criticized the lack of initiative of German institutions to preserve the river cultures and conduct scientific research in the Sepik region. His main concern was not only the - as he put it - theft of objects by American collectors.1 He also believed that the Sepik societies were on the verge of extinction because of European and American actors and their interest in trading and robbing objects. In order to preserve the material culture of the region, the objects of the Sepik needed to be rescued to German museums. A slit drum from the Sepik (Göttingen No. Oz 1771). © Ethnographic Collection, University of Göttingen Neuhaus's opinion was formed during his six-day voyage on the Sepik River in 1909. He was a passenger on the steamship Siar, captained by Carl Haug (see Provenance Biography), of the New Guinea Company. This ship was sent to the Sepik region to recruit local people to work on the company's plantations. At the end of the voyage, the ship's decks were filled more with objects from the Sepik than with people willing to work for the often brutal regime on the plantations. Not only Neuhauss, but also Captain Haug, the anthropologist Otto Schlaginhaufen (see Provenance Biography), the botanist Rudolf Schlechter, and members of the German colonial administration acquired objects on this voyage. Members of the Sepik journey aboard the Siar. Only the white men in this picture are recorded by name. Neuhauss is in the first row on the right.© Linden-Museum Stuttgart, Fotographic Archive, Signature: sch-21-s-33_001 The participation of other actors on this trip was never mentioned by Neuhauss in his three-volume publication. But that several other men took part in this recruiting trip can be seen, for example, in the picture from the Captain Haug collection (see above). This behavior of Neuhauss fits with the creation of a self-image that he liked to create for himself. In his publications, he portrayed himself as a heroic scientist who traveled alone in the colony, surviving shipwrecks on the Markham River and encounters with cannibals - as the people of New Guinea were often described in the publications of European and American travelers. Neuhauss not only created an image of himself as the sole expert on "German New Guinea," but also tried to claim his research as the only important one. He belittled and discredited the work of other scholars and travelers by referring to the way they acquired information and objects as "comedy". Neuhauss not only criticized fellow travelers in general, but he also attacked them by name. In the years following his trip to German New Guinea, he accused Otto Reche (see Provenance Biography) and Otto Schlaginhaufen of plagiarism and Max Moszkowski of falsifying photographs. Not only did he not put these attacks in writing, he even attacked Georg Friederici in front of an audience at a colonial congress. This self-importance didn't go down well with his colleagues and institutions that could have helped him with a career in anthropology. As a result, he was not considered for either the German-Dutch Border Expedition (1910-1911), led by Leonard Schultze-Jena, or the Kaiserin-Augusta-River-Expedition (1912-1913), led by Arthur Stollé with Adolf Roesicke (see Provenance Biography) and Richard Thurnwald as anthropologists. Hot Air Balloons, Photographs, Film- and Recording Material Neuhauss acquired a great deal of material during his nineteen months in German New Guinea. In addition to his extensive collection of objects, he shot between 40 and 50 film segments. He was one of the first explorers to capture dances and village life on film. Only the crew of the Hamburg South Sea Expedition (1908-1910) made films. Almost all of these short films seem to be lost today. One that still exists is a movie from 1909. This six-minute film was made near the Neuendettelsauer mission station at Sattelberg, in the region of the Huon Gulf, and shows people of the Society of the Kate. The film shows scenes of daily life, dances, and the use of objects such as masks and drums for dancing—see film here: https://av.tib.eu/media/10634. Similar objects can be found today in the collections of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.2 Wooden Drum from the Sepik (Berlin No. VI 30564). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnological Museum / Heinz-Günther Malenz Mask use for dancing from the Tami Islands (Berlin No. VI 31658 a <1>). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnological Museum / Anika Niemeck As it turned out, Neuhauss was not only a physician with an interest in anthropology, he also developed a reputation as a skilled photographer. During his time in the colony, Neuhauss took hundreds of photographs of buildings, scenes of everyday life, objects, diseases, and body parts of people that he found particularly interesting as a physician. The second of a three-volume series of books about his time in "German-New-Guinea" contains more than 760 images of New Guineans for the purpose of somatological research. In all, Neuhauss created a collection of more than 1100 images, all taken in the colony. Neuhauss not only photographed in the colony, but also in Germany, where he took pictures of the German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal during one of his flights in 1895. His interest in aeronautics may also have led him to support the idea of German military officer Paul Graetz. Graetz wanted to use a hot air balloon to map New Guinea. Since Neuhauss hadn't been considered for any other expedition to the German colony, as shown above, he might have seen this as an opportunity to strengthen his position as an expert once again. The balloon expedition ultimately failed due to lack of funds and support. Neuhauss' early death in 1915 also prevented him from returning to the colony. Further Readings: Neuhauss, Richard: Deutsch-Neu-Guinea, Vol. 1-3, Berlin 1911. Claas, Ulrike/Roscoe, Paul: Hot Air and the Colonialist “Other”: The “German-English-Dutch Airship Expedition” to New Guinea, in: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 15, No.1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 131-150. Footnotes 1Neuhauss held the view that US-American institutions had "stolen" objects from the German colony in the pacific. In 1905, the anthropologist George Amos Dorsey acquired over 13,000 objects from the art dealer Umlauff for the Chicago Field Museum. No German museum had been able to pay 65,000 marks for this collection. In 1908, Dorsey acquired an additional 2,000 objects from the German colony. Furthermore, Albert Buell Lewis, another agent of the Chicago museum collected about 14,000 objects in the South pacific (including the German colony) between 1909 and 1913. He was the leader of the Joseph N. Field South Pacific Expedition. But Neuhauss was not the only German actor to perceive a threat to German museum collections in the activities of American institutions. Members of the committee that organized the Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss-Expedition (Sepik-Expedition) even demanded the closure of regions like the Sepik river to non-German collectors in order to "save" objects for German museums. The perceived threat posed by the Americans was likely somewhat exaggerated. However, it was a compelling argument for acquiring funds for individual collection trips that would bring objects into German museums. 2Link to the Movie Segment: Neuhauss, Richard: Aus dem Leben der Kate auf Deutsch-Neuguinea. Aufnahmen aus dem Jahr 1909. Editor: Reichsanstalt für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (1939). https://doi.org/10.3203/IWF/B-511#t=03:12,06:32. To watch the movie, click here.
