Hans Nevermann (1902-1982)
Hans Nevermann (1902-1982)
By Philippe Bourgoin
Both a modest scholar and a prolific writer, Hans Nevermann authored three remarkable monographs devoted to the arts of the Admiralty, Saint Matthias, and Marshall Islands, which remain unique and invaluable reference works to this day.
Hans Nevermann at the exhibition Malereien aus Deutsch-Neuguinea (Paintings of German New Guinea), Berlin, 1937. Photo: 13,1 x 18,1 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Inv. ZA 2.14/09135.
Hans Paul Friedrich Wilhelm Nevermann was born on March 25, 1902 in Schwerin, Mecklenburg, to his Protestant parents Willy Nevermann (1870-1954), a postal worker, and Ella, née Kentzler (1872-1947). Due to his father’s frequent work-related moves, first to Oppeln (Upper Silesia), then to Chemnitz and finally to Hamburg, he had to change schools several times. This was a difficult period, especially as he left Chemnitz shortly before his final exams, which he took at the Wilhelm Gymnasium in Hamburg on February 4, 1920. With his father’s support, he began studying law in 1921, before turning to Oriental philology, ethnology, and ancient history, first in Hamburg, then in Heidelberg and Munich, then again in Heidelberg and Hamburg. He had a gift for languages, and after becoming proficient in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, French, and English, he studied Arabic, then Ottoman Turkish and Malay.
In the course of his university years, he deepened his knowledge by studying with eminent professors, including ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924) in Heidelberg, who made valuable contributions to research on the indigenous peoples of South America; physicist and anthropologist Georg Thilenius (1868-1937) in Hamburg, the director of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnography, and the coordinator of the Südsee-Expedition (1908-1910) to Micronesia and Melanesia; ethnologist Paul Hambruch (1882-1933); anthropologist Otto Carl Reche (1879-1966), who participated in the Südsee-Expedition, and linguist Carl Meinhof (1857-1944), who produced the first comparative grammar of African languages.
Beginning in November of 1922, he worked as a volunteer research assistant at the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology, on the Aboriginal art collection of Oskar Liebler (1884-1934), a missionary stationed from 1910 to 1914 in the Hermannsburg / Ntaria in the Alice Springs region of Australia. During this time, Nevermann was asked to illustrate Hambruch’s book on Oceanic bark cloth with twenty-four drawings (Oceanische Rindenstoffe, Gerhard Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg I.O., 1926). Thilenius then became his thesis supervisor. Working diligently, Nevermann completed his thesis on navigation in Oceania in December 1923. He defended his thesis successfully on February 16, 1924, and his certificate is dated March 31, 1924. He thus obtained his doctorate at only 22 years of age. On Thilenius’s initiative, Nevermann published a summary of his thesis in the journal Kanu-Sport (Die Schiffahrt der Eingeborenen in der Südsee, Munich, Hamburg, 1924). Reserved but self-confident, Nevermann had a clear view of the world he wanted to discover.
On April 26, 1924, he signed on as purser on a steamship, traveling in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and then in 1925 on a voyage to Finland. He was a prolific writer throughout his life, penning short essays on his early travels, as well as numerous articles on a wide variety of ethnographic and cultural topics (nearly thirty in 1924 and 1925 alone) that were published mainly in the daily newspaper Hamburger Fremdenblatt. He gave his first lecture, titled Primitive Man, on Hamburg radio on May 22, 1926. Following in his father's footsteps, Nevermann joined the Freemasons on February 10, 1927 at the Roland Lodge in Hamburg, and then in Berlin at the Johannis Pythagore de l'Étoile Flamboyante Lodge, Berlin-Orient.
On Thilenius’s recommendation, August Eichhorn (1865-1930), Director of the Oceania department at the Berlin Museum of Ethnology, hired Nevermann from December 1926 through March 1928. Nevermann then obtained a research grant from the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Association of German Sciences) to study Indonesian and Oceanic weaving. However, the monograph he wrote on the subject was not published until ten years later (Die indo-ozeanische Weberei, Mitteilungen Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg XX, Friederichsen, De Gruyter & Co., 1938). From October 1, 1928, to December 31, 1929, he was again enrolled as a volunteer research assistant at the Hamburg Ethnological Museum, where he organized and prepared the notes of dermatology professor Eduard Christian Arning (1855-1936) for publication. Arning was in Hawaii from 1883 to 1886 to study leprosy, while also making ethnological observations and collecting specimens (Ethnographische Notizen aus Hawaii 1883-86, Mitteilungen Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg [unter Mitarbeit von H. Nevermann], Friederichsen, De Gruyter & Co., 1931).
In 1929, Nevermann married Lieselott Miethe (1903–1993), with whom he had two children. From February 1, 1930, to June 30, 1931, he worked at the zoology and ethnology museums in Dresden. In July of1931, he returned to the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin as a research assistant before being appointed curator that same year, a position he remained in until 1957. As head of the Oceania department, Nevermann organized the first temporary exhibition (January 14 through February 28, 1933) devoted to South Sea art in the atrium of the former Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. It was accompanied by a booklet he wrote called Südseekunst (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Eden-Verlag, Berlin, 1933).
Review of the exhibition Südseekunst, Berlin, 1933, in the illustrated supplement Bilder-Courier in the Berliner Börse Courier, N° 4, 10, January 22, 1933. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum.
Nevermann described Melanesian art as peasant art, and Polynesian art as aristocratic art with noble forms. The painter Hans Purrmann (1880-1966) wrote an enthusiastic review in the periodical Kunst und Künstler (XXXII, 1933, p. 115), praising Nevermann’s visionary perspective: “A magnificent exhibition on the South Seas, beautifully presented in the atrium of the Museum of Decorative Arts. [...] The scientists who organized it, without the help of artists, have succeeded in making it a pure art exhibition, in which the ethnographic point of view has not been an obstacle. [...] Everything [...] is perceived as art by the sensitive visitor. He will have to forget the term ‘primitive’ and instead imagine these people as the product of thousands of years of evolution. [...] It undoubtedly takes a great deal of time for the human brain to conceive of objects such as those on display, for example, in the Neu-Mecklenburg [New Ireland] section. These are objects that can stand comparison with the works of art of the most developed European periods or even surpass them. [...] like the magnificent Hawaiian feather cloak that sings in this exhibition space in the same way that chasubles made their colors vibrate in medieval cathedrals.”
Hans Nevermann at the exhibition Südseekunst, Berlin, 1933. Photo: August Scherl. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum.
Nevermann then organized a major research trip on behalf of the museum to what is now the Indonesian part of New Guinea, New Caledonia, and the New Hebrides. This expedition was not only a great success for the museum, but also had a decisive impact on Nevermann’s future, as evidenced by the abundance of publications that resulted from it and the influence it had on the direction of many of his courses. Nevermann left Hamburg on May 20, 1933 aboard a steamship. From there, he traveled through Ceylon, Singapore, Java, Bali, Celebes, and the Moluccas before reaching his first research and collection area, Merauke, in August. He had hoped to stay for three months before traveling to Lake Sentani, but those three months turned into six. During his very first days there, he learned that Frederik-Hendrik Island (Yos Sudarso) was to be visited by the police and a missionary, and he arranged to accompany this patrol through the coastal villages of Marind-Anim, all the way to the last village of Wamal. The police officer and then the driver of the vehicle fell ill, so this first trip ended with a forced walk back along the coast.
This development allowed Nevermann to become familiar with the people and language of the region. After visiting almost all the villages and meeting representatives of numerous tribes, Nevermann, in possession of an abundance of Western goods (tobacco, glass beads, knives, etc.), had established a reputation for bartering with the indigenous people, which earned him constant visits from the Jenan, Marind-Anim, and Kanum-Irebe tribes. From this first foray and the two more that subsequently followed, Nevermann brought back a great deal of ethnographic material and a wealth of information.
Also interested in ornithology, he had received preliminary training in the art of taxidermy at the Zoological Museum in Berlin before embarking on this expedition. One day in October, the raft carrying him back from the upper reaches of the Maro River capsized above Merauke, and his rifle and dissection tools were lost in the water. Despite this setback, Nevermann continued to prepare his avian specimens using primitive tools. A few months later, 160 bird skins arrived at the Berlin Museum, accompanied not only by notes on their distribution, local names, and any available ethnographic references (for example, when it was a totem animal), but also, in many cases, by a watercolor painting of the animal.
Continuing his expedition, he left Menado, on the island of Sulawesi, and traveled to Sydney aboard a Japanese ship, with the aim of reaching and exploring New Caledonia and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Nevermann took advantage of his stay in Australia to give a lecture to the German Concordia Society on April 25, 1934, in the presence of the German Consul General, Dr. Rudolf Asmis (1879-1945). The first stop on his trip to Melanesia was Nouméa in New Caledonia, followed by La Foa, Bourail, Houaïlou, and Lifou Island in the Loyalty Islands.
Upon the integration of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv into the Berlin Ethnological Museum collections on April 1, 1934, phonographs were sent to various prominent researchers, including Nevermann, who was thus able to record 36 wax cylinders in August 1934 in Nouméa and the Loyalty Islands. Next, he set his sights on the New Hebrides and the island of Efate. From there, he undertook several visits, first to a few small islands in the region, and then headed south to the island of Tanna. From there, he went north via Epi and Ambrym to Santo, before returning to Efate, where he came down with a fever. He also explored the east coast of Mallicolo (Malekula) and Santo as far as Vanua Lava (Banks Islands Archipelago) and then, from there, proceeded to Aoba (Ambae).
After his departure from the New Hebrides, Nevermann traveled to parts of Polynesia in October 1934, namely the Society Islands (Tahiti and Raiatea) and the Marquesas Islands (Nukuhiva). Upon his return to Germany, he wrote about his experiences in a number of publications.
In the course of this journey, a total of 3,100 objects were collected for the Berlin Museum (2,520 in what was then Dutch New Guinea, around 500 in New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, and 80 in Polynesia), along with a wealth of linguistic documents, sound recordings made in New Caledonia, and photographs. A selection of these new acquisitions was displayed at the Berlin Ethnological Museum in an exhibition for which Nevermann wrote a handbook (Südneuguinea und Südmelanesien. Führer durch die Ausstellung im Staatlichen Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin vom 15 April bis 15 Juli 1935, Druck von Gebr. Hoffmann, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Schillerstrasse 44, 1935).
In 1936 (from August 1 to September 30), on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Berlin, Nevermann presented an exhibition dedicated to this event in the atrium of the Saarlandstrasse venue, the topic of which went beyond the usual boundaries of his department: Sport der außereuropäischen Völker (Sport among non-European peoples). Nevermann wrote a brochure for this show as well.
View of the temporary exhibition Malereien aus Deutsch-Neuguinea (Paintings of German New Guinea), Berlin, 1937. Photo: 13,1 x 18,1 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. ZA 2.14/09136.
The following year, Nevermann worked on the temporary exhibition Malerein aus Deutsch-Neuguinea (Paintings from German New Guinea), and then, accompanied by a colleague, he traveled to Rostock to assist the director of the local ethnographic museum there with a reorganization and presentation of its collections that would bring the institution up to modern ethnological and museum standards. Unfortunately, most of these collections were lost in 1942 as a result of wartime bombings.
In the years that followed, Nevermann expanded his department’s collections through new acquisitions and exchanges. In 1939, he secured what is probably the oldest piece in the Oceania department: a Tahitian mourning robe known as a heva tupapa'u, through an exchange with collector Arthur Max Heinrich Speyer (1894-1958). In the spring of 1939, Nevermann organized yet another exhibition, Die Entdeckung der Südsee (The Discovery of the South Seas). A pioneer, he gave his first television interview on April 4, at a time when this new medium was still relatively unknown.
With the outbreak of World War II, the activities of the ethnographic museum were reduced and the exhibition rooms were closed to the public. Nevermann made only one trip, from October 14 to November 20, 1942, to Galicia (Poland), where, together with Ukrainian ethnographer, historian, and folklorist Johann Ivan Senkiv (1913-1993), he collected 361 ethnographic objects from the Boyks, Podolians, Pokuts, and Hutsuls, as well as from Poles and Hungarians, for the museum’s European department. In December 1942, Nevermann was drafted, first sent to Russia, and then, thanks to his command of Austroasiatic languages, to the interpretation service of the Wehrmacht High Command in Berlin.
Haus und Hausrat exotischer Völker (Houses and household objects of exotic peoples) exhibition, Berlin, 1947. Objects from the "Native Peoples" section, particularly those of North America. Photo: 13 x 18 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Inv. 15966.
In the fall of 1945, Nevermann was able to resume work in his position as the head of the Oceania department and was also “assigned to the recovery and securing of museum property as ordered by the Cultural Office of the City of Berlin.” At that time, he was also temporarily responsible for the Southeast Asia and India departments (until 1953). Various attempts were made to use the remaining funds in Berlin to create small exhibitions on comparative ethnology topics. In 1947, Nevermann produced a show called Haus und Hausrat exotischer Völker (House and Household Goods of Exotic Peoples), for which he wrote a brochure guidebook. In 1949, he created Die Schiffahrt exotischer Völker (The Navigation of Exotic Peoples), for which he also wrote a booklet.
Schifffahrt exotischer Völker (The navigation of exotic peoples) exhibition, objects of the Department of Native American and East Asian Peoples, Berlin, 1949. Photo: 12 x 17 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum.
On April 1, 1951, Nevermann was appointed honorary professor of comparative ethnology at the Free University of Berlin. It was also during this period that he became actively involved in reviving the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory, of which he had been a member since 1927, as well as the famous ethnology journal Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, founded in 1869. He was also one of the founding members of the Urania E.V. Cultural Community of Berlin on November 19, 1953.
On account of problems with his health, he retired on January 31, 1957, after handing over the reins to his department to Gerd Koch (1922-2005). Nevermann then devoted himself to his teaching and his courses. Always interested in how indigenous peoples actually lived, he was not a man of theory but of practice, and his lectures reflected the subjects he had worked on throughout his career: the ethnology of the South Seas and Southeast Asia, Indonesian and Vietnamese languages (Annamite-Tonkinese) and, above all, general comparative ethnology, which he covered exhaustively.
Nevermann, Hans, pl. 23, Admiralitäts-Inseln, Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910, II A 3, Hamburg, Friederichsen, de Gruyter, XXII, 1934.
On October 1, 1957, he founded the Berlin Society for the Promotion of Ethnological Research, intended to raise funds to sponsor research expeditions. Starting in 1960, Nevermann traveled to Turkey, first for six months with Lothar Teil, an ethnology student, then with his wife, staying in small towns and rural villages off the beaten track and participating in community life under the name Yahya. Eventually, his interest in Turkey began to expand to include regions of Islamic influence, from Spain and Morocco to Uzbekistan. Nevermann thus revisited an area of interest that he had not previously had time to work on. Unfortunately, he published virtually nothing on his research in Turkey, reporting on it only at conferences and lectures.
Südguinea und Südmelanesien exhibition, Nevermann’s expedition 1933-1934, ceremonial Dema (supernatural beings) costumes, the first one is topped with a representation of a black-necked stork (Ephippiorhynchus Asiaticus), Marind-Anim, southern coast of Dutch New Guinea. Berlin, 1935. Photo: 19,8 x 15,2 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Inv. ZA 2.14/09120.
In the biography that Bernard Zepernick (1926-2019) devoted to his thesis supervisor and mentor Hans Nevermann (Abhandlungen und Vorträge Hans Nevermann, Leben und Werk, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 110, 1985, pp. 1-42), the author lists more than 300 of his publications that appeared between 1923 and 1986. Nevermann’s three main monographs are: Admiralitäts-Inseln (Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910, II A 3, Hamburg, Friederichsen, de Gruyter, XXII, 1934), St. Matthias-Gruppe (Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910, II A 2, Hamburg, Friederichsen, de Gruyter. XVI, 1933), and Ralik-Ratak (Marshall-Inseln) (co-author Augustin Krämer, Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910, II B 11, Hamburg, Friederichsen, de Gruyter, XV, 1938). He also introduced us to events and characters in his novels and ethnographic accounts, compiled glossaries of more than four hundred indigenous languages, and edited scientific films for which he often wrote accompanying brochures.
Südguinea und Südmelanesien exhibition, Nevermann’s expedition 1933-1934, house roof finials, Kanak, New Caledonia and widow costume, Dutch New Guinea. Berlin, 1935. Photo: 19,8 x 15,2 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Inv. ZA 2.14./09119.
Lastly, Nevermann also worked to guarantee the preservation of important documents produced by his colleagues, such as the notes of German ethnologist Edgar Walden (1876-1914), who had participated in the German naval expedition and conducted research in the Neu-Mecklenburg protectorate from 1907 to 1909, and had brought back important collections to Berlin. He published documents from the estate of another member of this expedition, Augustin Krämer (1865-1941), as well. He also worked to ensure that the collection of fairy tales by the German tropical medicine specialist Wolfgang Weck (1881-1947), a native of Bali, was published after his death.
Hans Nevermann died suddenly in Berlin on November 13, 1982, leaving behind an extraordinary legacy of publications and a life dedicated to understanding and preserving the rich tapestry of human culture across the globe.
Ceremonial drum used to accompany the action of the Dema actors, West-Neuguinea, Marind-Anim, Nakea area, Kumbe and Maro rivers. Nevermann’s expedition, 1933-1934. Wood. H.: 46,7 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Inv. VI 44227.
Shield. West-Neuguinea, Asmat, Insel area. Nevermann’s expedition, 1933-1934. Wood. H.: 169 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Inv. VI 44503.
Kanak ceremonial axe, New Caledonia, Nevermann’s expedition, 1933-1934. H.: 52 cm. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum. Photo Claudia Obrocki. Inv.: VI 43109.