Paper short abstract:

This paper looks into the life and ethnographic work of Leonore Kosswig, who lived in Turkey as a German exile (1937-1973). Relying on her publications and ego-documents, we situate her work within history of ethnography and focus on gendered knowledge production during displacement and emplacement.

Paper long abstract:

Leonore Kosswig (1904-1973) studied biology in Münster, where she met her future husband, Curt Kosswig, at the “Zoologische Institut”. Working together on genetics, they were pioneers of their field in Germany, until their exile to Istanbul in 1937. While Curt became a prominent scientist in Istanbul University, Leonore had no institutional affiliation. However, she traveled with her husband around rural Anatolia and joined his fieldwork, during which she developed an interest in local customs and the daily life of villagers and nomadic tribes. Leonore decided to stay in Turkey after Curt’s return to Germany in 1955. Her excellent command of Turkish and experience in traveling around Anatolia allowed her to engage with fieldwork and to become one of the first women to conduct ethnographic research. Until her death, she pursued several pioneering researches on wedding customs, boardweaving, nomadic life, and “ownership signs.”

For Leonore Kosswig, exile turned out to be a new beginning, leading to her transformation from a trained biologist to an ethnologist. Engaging critically with Kosswig’s research publications, we aim to situate her scholarship within the history of ethnography in the 1960s and 70s in Turkey. Furthermore, relying on ego-documents, such as letters and travelogues, we employ a biographical approach to search for repeated encounters of “foreignness” and “localness” in Kosswig’s life trajectory. This approach also allows particular emphasis on the more “mundane” forms of gendered knowledge production during displacement and emplacement, which are not accessible via the iconic figure of “exile” as the male displaced intellectual.

Paper short abstract:

Wolfram Eberhard (1909-1989) and his wife Alide (1911-1994) were decent scholars of sinology. Both studied at Berlin University and were opponents of the Nazi regime. They left Germany in 1937, went to Turkey and in 1948 to the USA, where Eberhard joined the Deapartment of Sociology at Berkeley.

Paper long abstract:

Wolfram Eberhard (1909-1989) and his wife Alide (1911-1994) were decent scholars of sinology. Both studied at Berlin University and married in 1934. Both were virulently anti-nazi and after a short whistle stop in Leipzig, where Wolfram Eberhard was responsible of the east asian collection of the museum of ethnology, the couple went into exile to Turkey. Wolfram Eberhard was appointed as Professor of sinology in Ankara and stayded in Turkey until 1948. After the war the Eberhards decided to go to Berkeley/USA, where Wolfram Eberhard was appointed to a professorship in sociology. The Eberhards stayed in the USA and never resettled in Germany.

This lecture will stress two aspects of Eberhards (intellectual) life: the friendship of Wolfram Eberhard and Adam von Trott zu Solz, one of the members of the anti-nazi resistant movement. And on the other hand Wolfram Eberhards interest in sociological problems. Wolfram Eberhard was not only a sinologist but was also a well-known social anthropologist. 

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on ethnologists from Austria and Germany who fled the Nazi regime. It asks how networks enabled (forced) emigration, facilitated scholarly work in exile and shaped long-term scholarly trajectories and the discipline in general after the end of the Nazi era.

Paper long abstract:

Numerous ethnologists tried to escape the Nazi regime in the 1930s/40s by fleeing to another country. Based on archival research and interviews, this paper will follow the cases of Paul Leser (1899-1984), Otto Maenchen-Helfen (1894-1969) and Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1877-1935) to scrutinize how professional and personal networks facilitated emigration and refuge and enabled scholarly work in exile.

I will, first, address the role of aid committees that supported scholars who were forced to flee Germany and Austria and the different circumstances under which academics applied to these committees for support. Secondly, I ask how flight, exile and emigration changed these scholars’ professional (and personal) networks. The three mentioned case studies suggest that, whereas in Germany and Austria, scholars of a similar academic “school” or a shared regional focus were in closer contact, in exile the respective academic orientation lost importance and gave way to very personal sensitivities and sympathies. Shared rejection of the Nazi regime, the common fate and mutual help and advocacy became much more important than scholarly orientation.

Finally, I consider the personal and professional situation of ethnologists after the end of the Nazi era. What prospects were there for a “return” to one’s home country or for staying abroad, and what role did professional and personal networks, both pre- and post-emigration, play in this? (How) did the scholars’ forced emigration impact the development of ethnology in post-war Austria and Germany?

Paper short abstract:

Academic mobility and long-term antrhopological fieldwork can be seen as a form of hidded exile with all or most of the same prolems. I explore data from interviews paying attention to human life of academics who need to live with periodic exiles due to neoliberal policies or academic tradition

Paper long abstract:

All exiles start short: they are supposed to last only while the war/unrest/political problems would end and then the refugee would certainly rejoin the original country. That is what differs exile from emigration. Exile grows into emigration when the refugees relocate their networks and roots more permanently to the new locality. In this presentation I explore situations where one needs to "start anew" again and again simply due to "normal" expectations of policy or academic tradition - an exile that is not seen as exile. Regular micro-to-medium-length mobilities that researchers in general are subject to due to neoliberal approaches to academia, are part of this kind of hidden exile. I am interested in the problems that arise not from the short business trips of a week or so, but what happens when one engages in academic mobility for half a year or longer? In contrast to other fields, academics often are supposed to relocate alone, universities and grants rarely care for families of the researchers as a serious aspect of human life. This tends to invoke very existential decisions about one's personal life. The medium-term mobility also means that one is unable to create a meaningful human network locally. Anthropological career where the "long-term fieldwork" is still often treated as an ideal rite of passage or even regular engagement, often render the personal life of a researcher disembedded and broken. This is a work-in-progess report on results from ongoing interviews with academics (including anthropologists).