Paper short abstract:

The appointment of Walter Hävernick, former scientific student of Otto Lauffer, as director of the Hamburg institute in 1946 seemed to indicate continuity. The lecture will show how Hävernick broke new ground in his self-image as a European ethnographer and in his research on urban anthropology .

Paper long abstract:

The new beginning after 1945 and the reorientation of the discipline, as well as the positioning of the representatives at the German-speaking folklore institutes, was not as uniform as it has been perceived so far. Hence, the lecture will focus on the work at the Hamburg Institut für Deutsche Altertums- und Volkskunde, where the Lauffer student Walter Hävernick succeeded him as professor at the university and as director of the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte. What initially looked like a simple continuity of themes and a very traditional, specific understanding of the subject, which was shaped by the museum's work and strongly oriented towards material culture, becomes much more differentiated when one takes a closer look at both the archival sources and the contemporary publications of the protagonists. Hävernick, however, broke new ground, and the lecture will work out what the innovations in the field of urban ethnography, in the connection between historical and ethnographic research, sociology-oriented methods and the use of technology looked like. But the lecture will also show how Hävernick arrived at conservative results with innovative methods.