Ethnography on the road: The expedition of the Duke of Mecklenburg

Some Balera women with their children Germans met on their way through Africa

The expedition of Adolf Friedrich Herzog of Mecklenburg was one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of Germans during their colonial rule. Between 1907 and 1908, the expedition went through most of interlacustrine Africa. Some dozen Germans from various disciplines – geography, botany, zoologyy, ethnography, there was even a photographer on board – took part in the expedition. The results of the expedition were published in several marvelous volumes with hundreds of illustrations, maps and photographs. 5000 photographs alone were made in the eleven months the expedition was roaming through Africa, some hundred were published and begun their way through different publications by the members of the expedition. Many were taken by Max Weiß, who was the photographer of the expedition.

A group of Balera men

Parsing through the pictures of the volume on the ethnography, I was always struck with one particular feature. Many pictures were seemingly taken along the road while the expedition was traveling. So I imagine that when local people saw or heart rumors of the expedition, and because of curiosity, they went to the road to meet these funny Germans with their instruments and thousands of porters. Germans, with their own desire for curiosity, were interested in documenting these accidental meetings.

Performing at the road

A group of Balera musicians (Rwanda)  performing at the road for the expedition

Balera dancers

This situation produced what I call ethnography on the road, when rather by chance than by a scheme, Europeans got their knowledge about Africans and their societies. In these encounters, Germans obviously asked some people to perform dances and asked for artifacts. In the short moment in which both sides were engaged, Germans were eager to find out the typical, or the most obvious. They hoped it to find it in visual markers like coiffures, clothes and shields.

"Weapons of Balera"

The obvious was the surface. The remarkable thing about all this is that, after returning home, the members of the expedition took these surfaces presented to them by Africans in the short moment of an encounter at the road and frozen in photographs as a basis for far-raging theories of all sorts. About historical origins of the people they met, about the political structures, and so on.