TIPICIDAD OBJETIVA

For a more thorough analysis, we must move beyond the image on the post- card. The postcard and the illustration with accompanying text only reveal information about the last stage of the practice of collecting. We know that soldiers packed skulls of Herero destined for Germany in wooden crates, ready for shipment. The image also suggests that these skulls were not sent as isolated specimens, but in batches. We cannot be sure how frequent this happened. On the one hand, the fact that a postcard was made indicates it was not considered abnormal. On the other hand, it could also have been a rare occasion that made for a ‘quaint’ image, interesting to send home.186 _The

fact that soldiers are looking on as the skulls are packed could suggest that this was something not seen every day. We also know, from the text below the illustration, that Herero women were made to remove the soft tissue from the skulls. So far, we know that soldiers and Herero women were involved in the process. But these were not the people involved in the selection of the skulls and in the on-site preparation and analysis of the human remains. It seems that the brains of the skulls depicted on the postcard were expertly re- moved. Here, we come to the role German scientists and military doctors in the camps played in the practice of collecting.

The collection of human remains for anthropological research was a world- wide phenomenon at the time. Scientific institutions, anthropologists, (mil- itary) doctors, traders, and amateur enthusiasts made up an international network of human remains collectors. Anthropologists wanted to collect as

184 Zimmerman, ‘Adventures in the skin trade’, 175.

185 Erichsen, “The angel of death has descended violently among them”, 143. 186 Ibid.

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many examples as possible in the belief that they could extract knowledge from the ‘objective’ study of these specimens.187 _{In practice, they had to take}

what they could get. Anthropological material such as skulls, bones, and pho- tographs were sent from the colonies by amateurs. As a result, anthropolog- ical collections developed in a haphazard way.188 _{Often, the material was of}

dubious origin. Historians Martin Legassick and Ciraj Rassool have written a chilling account of the practices of anthropological collectors operating in Southern Africa around 1900, adventurers and rogue traders who sent maca- bre packages to museums containing items such as ‘three Bushwoman heads, one tin reptiles, one tin insects.’ 189 _{At the time of the German-Herero war,}

between 1907–1909, anthropologist Rudolf Pöch had rogue collectors roam- ing Southern Africa, where they exhumed and preserved a recently buried Khoisan couple that would later be identified as Klaas and Trooi Pienaar. The couple was dug up from the grounds of the farm they had worked at despite protests from their erstwhile employer.190

The two main collectors of anthropological material in Berlin were Rudolf Virchow, founder of the Pathological Institute and of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte and Felix von Luschan, the curator of the African and Oceanic collections of the Museum für Völk- erkunde.191 _{Like so many anthropologists at the time, they aimed to acquire}

as many specimens as possible: Luschan wrote in 1907 that ‘you can hardly have enough ethnographical collections.’192 _{Correspondence of both scien-}

tists reveals their position in the international network. In his 1875 guide for amateur-enthusiasts, Virchow instructs how to send freshly severed heads to Berlin in zinc containers filled with alcohol.193 _{Aware of the problematic legal}

status of many objects acquired through this international trade network, Luschan began asking his contacts in the colonies for bodies and body parts obtained ‘in a loyal way’ and ‘without giving offence.’ In his view, blatant grave robbery should be avoided, but skulls from Chinese and Malaysian prisoners executed in Singapore and skulls taken from battles with German soldiers in the African colonies posed no problem. Luschan even corresponded with

187 Anja Laukötter, ‘Gefühle im Feld. Die “Sammelwut” der Anthropologen in Bezug auf Körperteile und das Konzept “Rasse” um die Jahrhundertwende’ in: Stoecker, Schnalke and Winkelmann (ed.), Sammeln, erforschen, zurückgeben?, 27.

188 Sysling, The archipelago of difference, 29.

189 Martin Legassick and Ciraj Rassool, Skeletons in the cupboard. South African museums and the trade in human remains 1907–1917 (Cape Town: South African Museum, 2000) 36. 190 Ibid., 22–23.

191 Zimmerman, ‘Adventures in the skin trade’, 167. 192 Laukötter, ‘Gefühle im Feld’, 28.

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the government of German East-Africa about the bodies of Africans slain during the Maji Maji uprising.194 _{Elsewhere the ‘theatre of war’ provided sim-}

ilar opportunities. In 1904, a doctor in the Dutch Indies wrote: ‘The rebellion here showed me the terrible effects of the new small-bore rifle: a horrible battlefield, but otherwise I made good use of it to add to my anthropological collection.’195

Luschan had no scruples about acquiring the very skull brought back from Germany by Lieutenant Zürn for the Museum für Völkerkunde. Luschan had contacted Zürn himself, and after persuading him to donate the skull, send him a further request: ‘The skull you gave us corresponds so little to the pic- ture of the Herero skull type that we have thus far been able to make from our insufficient and inferior material, that it would be desirable to secure as soon as possible a larger collection of Herero skulls for scientific investiga- tion.’ In order to make ‘objective’ measurements, Luschan felt that he needed a large collection of specimens, so the typical traits of the Herero could be uncovered. He asked Zürn if he knew of ‘any possible way’ the museum could acquire a larger number of Herero skulls (Zimmerman pointed out that Lus- chan added his customary ‘in a loyal way’ only in the final draft of the letter). Zürn did: through a contact stationed near Swakopmund. In the concentra- tion camps, skulls would be readily available and without the ‘danger of of- fending the ritual feelings of the natives’ Zürn had experienced first-hand.196

The request was supposedly passed on to military doctors in concentration camps, where they embarked on a more systematic collecting. Many such doctors were involved: Wilhelm Waldeyer and his students also studied body parts from concentration camps, provided by ‘military doctors Dansauer, Jungels, Mayer and Zöllner.’197 _{Military doctors had easy access to the bodies}

of Nama and Herero prisoners, as well as the knowledge necessary to pre- serve body parts and access to preservation fluids like formalin and alcohol. In the camp on Shark Island, the ‘Feldlazarett’ was feared by the prisoners, and for good reason, as missionaries noted that not a single person recov- ered there.198 _{The military doctor, Dr. Hugo Bofinger, examined the corpses}

of the Shark Island prisoners to determine the reason for the extremely high mortality rate in the camp. In a paper he published in 1910, he suggests that the death rate was caused by ‘a viral or bacterial’ spread of scurvy, ultimately

194 Ibid., 171.

195 Sysling, The archipelago of difference, 68–69. 196 Zimmerman, ‘Adventures in the skin trade’, 175. 197 Ibid., 175–176.

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caused by the ‘unhygienic nature’ of the prisoners.199 _{Dr. Bofinger was one}

of the military doctors responsible for collecting, preserving, and delivering preserved heads to Berlin, including some of the human remains that were repatriated in 2011.