New Compatriots
Samoans on Display in Wilhelminian Germany
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9074332 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christopher Balme (0000-0002-8901-8818, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 331-344 |
| Publication date | 2007-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Pacific History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3344 • E-ISSN: 1469-9605 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00223340701692031 |
| OpenAlex | W2322222614 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
In the 1950s, Theodor W. Adorno recalled how the sound of a kettledrum invariably produced associations with the Samoan troupes he had seen as a child in the Frankfurt zoo during the first decade of the 20th century. From 1895 to the outbreak of war in 1914, Germany received regular visits by Samoan performance troupes imported and organised by the impresarios Carl and Felix Marquardt. While Germans were well accustomed to the spectacles of exotic performances thanks to the famous ethnographic shows promoted by the Hamburg impresario Carl Hagenbeck, the Samoan troupes were framed in a different discursive context. The Marquardts positioned the Samoan performers in an unusual balancing act between alterity and familiarity, savagery and aesthetics. Their marketing of Samoan performance was closely keyed into the prevailing colonial discourse that attempted to sell Samoa and Samoans as kindred spirits of the Germans. On the basis of archival material, an assessment of colonial publications and photographic material, this paper examines the Samoan troupes in the context of aestheticisation and asks how spectators positioned themselves vis-à-vis these performances
Archaeology · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Ethnography · Linguistics · Samoan · Sociology · Anthropology · History · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2008 - 2024 (17) |
| Highly cited | No |