Ethnological Collection

The founder of the collection and the institute was Augustin Krämer (1865–1941). Much of the South Sea collections can be traced back to him and his wife Elisabeth Krämer-Bannow (1874–1945), who together undertook five extensive expeditions to the region. About 1,700 of the 4,000 objects in the collection come from the South Sea Islands. A very large collection on the culture of an native society living in the upper reaches of the Amazon was established in 1983 by two postgraduate students from the institute in Tübingen. Overall, however, the teaching collection contains artefacts of diverse origins. A first convolute of objects from Africa, America and Asia had already been collected by the Geographical Institute of the University at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the collection was not systematised until Augustin Krämer founded the Institute of Ethnology as a department of the Institute of Geography in 1919. His private collection of around 1,000 ethnographic objects from Oceania formed the basis of its collection. Krämer continued to expand the collection until his retirement in 1933. Dr Elisabeth Gerdts-Rupp (1888–1972) was in charge of the collection until the late 1950s; she ensured that ethnology continued to be taught in Tübingen in the post-war period, but was unable to prevent the collection from stagnating.

It was not until the early 1980s that the position of curator of the collection was created at the already independent institute. Dr Volker Harms took up the post. Under his curation, the collection's American focus has been expanded by some 500 objects, while some 250 objects from Oceania have been added, acquired and documented by members of the Institute during fieldwork. Building on the existing collection, Dr Harms established the permanent ethnological exhibition in 1998 as a department of the Museum of the University of Tübingen at Hohentübingen Castle.