A typed letter signed by Norman B. Tindale, Curator of Anthropology, South Australian Museum to T.G.H. Strehlow, forwarding a request for assistance from Dr Leonhard Adam
Four pages, quarto and foolscap; left-hand margins a little creased and chipped, with two holes punched in them for filing; in very good condition. Tindale's letter (one page quarto, 24 July 1958, on SAM letterhead) includes a transcription of one from Adam 'asking whether I could accompany one of his associates, Dr Micha, on a trip to North Australia.... I cannot help him'. Adam had asked for Strehlow to be contacted next; his retained duplicate reply (also a no) dated 4 August 1958 is present. The transcription of Adam's letter runs to about two pages quarto; it is dated 11 July 1958. He writes about two recent papers (sent separately), one on bark paintings of Milingimbi, the other 'on anthropomorphous designs on churingas ... It was only after the publication of the article [in German, in 'Anthropos'] that I was fortunate to obtain an old Aranda stone churinga decorated with the designs resembling the decorative elements - though not the human profiles - of the Sturt Creek specimen'. The bulk of the letter gives details of the proposed field work of his young German colleague, Dr Franz Josef Micha, whose doctoral thesis was on intertribal trade relations in Australia, based on the literature. 'Now he is anxious to do field work in Australia' on social anthropology, 'preferably dealing with cultural relations between regionally different tribal groups. I realize, of course that this will be extremely difficult at the present time when hardly any aborigines remain untouched by white "civilization"'. Leonhard Adam (1891-1960), anthropologist and lawyer, was born on 16 December 1891 in Berlin; he was appointed a district judge, and in '1931-33 he lectured in ethnological jurisprudence and primitive law at the Institute of Foreign Laws ... The Nazis' anti-Semitic laws stripped Adam of all official positions in 1933. Five years later he sought refuge in England where he taught at the University of London and published "Primitive Art" (1940). His academic haven was shattered when he was interned on 16 May 1940 as an "enemy alien" and dispatched to Australia. Among the most eminent of the gifted collectivity of scholars who arrived aboard the "Dunera" in September, he became pro-rector of "Collegium Taturense" in the internment camp at Tatura, Victoria, and gave lessons on primitive religion and ethnology. Letters from Bronislaw Malinowski alerted [local individuals] ... to Adam's fate. On 29 May 1942 he was released on parole to the National Museum of Victoria, given residence at Queen's College, University of Melbourne, and placed under the supervision of Professor Max Crawford to embark upon a research project on the Aborigines' use of stone.... As research scholar (1943-47), lecturer (1947-56) and part-time curator (1958-60) of the ethnological collection, Adam was always on the edge of the university's establishment. Mystified at the politics of an institution which had refused to introduce anthropology for sixty years, he poured out proposals which never came to pass. Then he made a fait accompli of an ethnological museum by exchange of artefacts on a picayune budget through an Australian and worldwide network. It was subsequently named the Leonhard Adam Ethnological Collection.... Adam's seminal work in primitive law and art had been completed before his coming to Australia.... Poor health, the trauma of imprisonment and the ambivalence of his status at the University of Melbourne distracted him from further research and from converting his studies of Aboriginal artefacts into a major work' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography'). These letters come from the residual archive of Theodor George Henry (Ted) Strehlow (1908-1978), the eminent Australian linguist, with a strong connection to the languages and people of Central Australia (he was born at Hermannsburg). We have the appropriate government approval to dispose of this material, but we have given up trying to place it, as a whole, in any Australian institution. The archive contains thousands of documents, especially in the fields of anthropology, linguistics, and music (with an emphasis on Indigenous Australia). Many of them are of strong intrinsic value on their own, but we believe the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that, ideally, the archive should remain intact. Enquiries from any interested parties as to how this may be achieved are most welcome.
Item #127937
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