Curt Unckel Nimuendajú (born Curt Unckel; 18 April 1883 – 10 December 1945) was a German-
Brazilian ethnologist
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
,
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and v ...
, and writer. His works are fundamental for the understanding of the religion and
cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...
of some native Brazilian Indians, especially the
Guaraní people. He received the
surname
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name, ...
"Nimuendajú" from the
Apapocuva subgroup of the Guaraní people, meaning "the one who made himself a home", one year after living among them. Upon taking Brazilian citizenship in 1922, he officially added the Nimuendajú as one of his surnames. On his obituary, his Brazilian-German colleague called him "perhaps the greatest ''Indianista'' of all time".
Life and work
Nimuendajú was born in Wagnergasse 31,
Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...
, Germany in 1883 and he lost either one of or both his parents in his childhood. From an early age, he dreamed of living among a 'primitive people'. Still in school, together with other students they organized an 'Indian gang' to go hunting in the woods outside the city. Lacking the financial means to attend a university, he worked in a camera factory run by
Carl Zeiss
Carl Zeiss (; 11 September 1816 – 3 December 1888) was a German scientific instrument maker, optician and businessman. In 1846 he founded his workshop, which is still in business as Carl Zeiss AG. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted practica ...
. Meanwhile, he studied maps and the ethnographic studies of the Indian populations of North and South America in his free time. At the age of 20, he emigrated to Brazil in 1903. His half-sister, who was a school teacher, paid for the travel expenses to South America.
Two years after his arrival in Brazil, he contacted some Guaraní people in the
State of São Paulo
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* '' Our ...
. Although there were many publications on the Guaraní since the 17th century, their religious behavior such as rituals was poorly described. Nimuendajú familiarized himself thoroughly with the existing literature. He published "Nimongarai" (1910) in the German São Paulo newspaper "Deutsche Zeitung". In 1913, he moved to Belém. In 1914, his groundbreaking publication on the
mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrati ...
and religion of the Guaraní
Apapokúva was accepted by the ''Zeitschrift für Ethnologie''. He became a specialist on various Indigenous peoples, particularly on the
Gê, as well as
Apapocuva-Guaraní,
Tukúna,
Kaingang
The Kaingang (also spelled ''caingangue'' in Portuguese or ''kanhgág'' in the Kaingang language) people are an Indigenous Brazilian ethnic group spread out over the three southern Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande ...
,
Apinaye,
Xerente,
Wanano and
Canela
Canela may refer to: Places
* Canela, Rio Grande do Sul, a town in Brazil
* Canela, Chile, a commune in Chile
* La Canela, a legendary location in South America
* Isla Canela, an island in Andalusia, Spain
Other uses
* Canela (surname), i ...
. His publications laid, in the words of one recent writer:
'the indispensable groundwork from which dozens of doctoral dissertations and books have been elaborated by Brazilian and American anthropologists.'
One of the effects of his work was to shift interest from the tribes living along the coast or in large towns, to the tribes hidden in the interior, and to arouse the interests of anthropologists like the young
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss (, ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anth ...
, in communities that, though living in poverty, had managed to develop societies of considerable complexity, and religious cosmologies of great complexity.
Over the span of 40 years of fieldwork, much of it self-financed, he published about 60 articles, monographs, and vocabulary lists of indigenous languages.
Between 1929 and 1936 he spent 14 months with the Canela Indians, a
Gê-speaking people on the northeastern edge of the
central plateau of Brazil, and his monograph on them, translated and annotated by
Robert Lowie
Robert Harry Lowie (born '; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described a ...
, was published posthumously in 1946. His work on the Apinaye drew attention because it had many features that made it anomalous to the genre structure of the Gê societies to which it belonged in classification. This ''Apinaye anomaly'' was one that, while sharing the marked dualism of other related tribal societies, maintained a prescriptive marriage system, with sons incorporated into their father's group and daughters into their mothers' group, that did not fit the Crow-Omaha pattern that he, and Lowie had observed in the Gê tribal system generally.
Despite failing health and warnings from his doctors, he set forth on what was to prove to be his last ethnographic survey in 1945 and was killed on 10 December, among the Tukúna people, by the
Solimões river
Solimões () is the name often given to upper stretches of the Amazon River in Brazil from its confluence with the Rio Negro upstream to the border of Peru.
Geography
The Amazon / Solimões river just above the confluence of the Solimões and ...
, near
São Paulo de Olivença
São Paulo de Olivença is a community and a municipality near the western edge of the state of Amazonas near the tri-country border area in Brazil. The population is 40,073 (2020 est.) in an area of 19,746 km². The city is served by Senadora ...
,
Amazonas state. According to the German anthropologist
Otto Zerries, he was slain because he had sex with a non-initiated girl. His ashes are kept in the
São Paulo Museum of Art
The São Paulo Museum of Art ( pt, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, or ') is an art museum located on Paulista Avenue in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. It is well known for its headquarters, a 1968 concrete and glass structure designed by Lina Bo B ...
.
The Curt Nimuendajú archives were housed at the
National Museum of Brazil
The National Museum of Brazil ( pt, Museu Nacional) is the oldest scientific institution of Brazil. It is located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where it is installed in the Paço de São Cristóvão (Saint Christopher's Palace), which is in ...
. They were completely destroyed in the
fire that engulfed the museum in September 2018.
[Gretchen McCulloch]
"Folks, there’s nothing left…"
''All Things Linguistic'', September 2018.
Works
*''The Šerente,'' (ed. Robert H. Lowie), The Southwest Museum, 1942
*''The Eastern Timbira,'' (ed. Robert H. Lowie), University of California Press, 1946
*''The Tukuna,'' (ed. Robert H. Lowie) University of California Press, 1952
*''The Apinayé,'' (tr. and ed. Robert H. Lowie, John M. Cooper), Catholic University of America Press, 1939
;Lexicons
*Nimuendajú, K. (1925). As Tribus do Alto Madeira. ''Journal de la Société des Américanistes'', 17:137-172.
*Nimuendajú, K. (1932a). Idiomas Indígenas del Brasil. ''Revista del Instituto de etnología de la Universidad nacional de Tucumán'', 2:543-618.
*Nimuendajú, K. (1932b). Wortlisten aus Amazonien. ''Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris'', 24:93-119.
*Nimuendajú, K.; Do Valle Bentes, E. H. (1923). Documents sur quelques langues peu connues de l'Amazone. ''Journal de la Société des Américanistes'', 15:215-222.
References
Bibliography
* Herbert Baldus, 'Curt Nimuendaju, 1883-1945'. American Anthropologist, 1946, Vol. 48, pp. 238–243.
* Herbert Baldus review of Nimuendaju ''The Eastern Timbira.'' 1960. https://www.jstor.org/stable/663694
* Born, Joachim, "Curt Unckel Nimuendajú - ein Jenenser als Pionier im brasilianischen Nord(ost)en", Wien, 2007.
* Janet M. Chernela, ''The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: A Sense of Space,'' University of Texas Press, 1993.
* Virginia Kerns, ''Scenes from the high desert: Julian Steward's life and theory,'' University of Illinois Press, 2003.
* Claude Lévi-Strauss, ''Tristes tropiques,'' Plon, Paris, 1955.
* Georg Menchén, ''Nimuendajú. Bruder der Indianer,'' Leipzig 1979.
* Günther F. Dungs, ''Die Feldforschung von Curt Unckel Nimuendajú und ihre theoretisch-methodischen Grundlagen,'' 1991.
* Mércio Pereira Gomes ''The Indians and Brazil,'' University Press of Florida, 2000, 3rd edition.
* Frank Lindner, ''Curt Unckel-Nimuendajú. Jenas großer Indianerforscher.'' Jena 1996.
* Lúcia Sá, ''Rain forest literatures: Amazonian texts and Latin American culture,'' University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
* Welper, Elena M. "Curt Unckel Nimuendaju: um capítulo alemão na tradiçao etnografica Brasileira", 2002, TD PPGAS-MN/UFRJ.
External links
Video: Gedenktafel für Curt UnckelArtículo en "Revista de Antropología"(Portuguese)
* (Portuguese)
(Portuguese)
* (Portuguese)
Biblioteca Digital Curt Nimuendaju
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nimuendaju Curt
German ethnographers
German anthropologists
Brazilian ethnographers
Brazilian ethnologists
Brazilian anthropologists
1883 births
1945 deaths
Brazilianists
20th-century anthropologists
Brazilian murder victims
People murdered in Brazil