Robert Visser and his photographs from the Loango Coast.

The last decade has seen an enormous upswing of interest in historical photographs among ethnologists and historians. In many exhibitions and publications, scholars have raised questions about the value of colonial photographs as a source of research (e.g., Theye 1989; Schindlbeck 1989; African Arts 1991; Edwards 1992; Heintze 1994; Geary & Webb 1998; Maxwell 1999). Most of these writings address the extent to which white photographers created a picture of "exotic peoples" that was far more representative of a European cliched point of view than of reality.

Other critics have proposed that these recent publications represent a new confirmation of European arrogance whereby pictures of other peoples are doubly misused:

   Ethnographic pictures were, as one
   says in popular method-jargon,
   deconstructed in order to show the
   part that the European world
   played in their genesis.... In current
   studies on ethnographic photographs,
   the indigenous peoples
   often merely play the role of extras
   or requisites.

   (Nippa 1996:18)

Indeed, these studies often include illustrations that manifest the power of taking photographs (see Theye 1989:14): anthropological images, erotic genre scenes, documentations of alleged barbary. While such pictures are used to denounce the voyeurism of earlier observers, at the same time they feed the present-day voyeurism of the politically correct: Were these imperialists not contemptuous of human dignity? One need only view the pictures for proof!

Such "colonialist" photographs have been the subject of scholarly focus probably because other kinds were simply unknown or inaccessible to these authors (see Wirz 1982:32). The differences inherent in source material, written or pictorial, that was meant for public consumption and that of a personal nature have been apparent at least since the publication of Malinowski's diary and are constantly reaffirmed through independent studies. Christraud Geary has made this point with regard to photographic sources. (1) In her article on mission photography (1991), she distinguishes between private photographs and those intended for public presentation. Historical photographs of the latter kind thus served as general metaphors for the context at hand--in this case, life in the missions. A certain pictorial language was created through the choice of settings (school or church), accessories (clothing or the absence of it), and composition (e.g., the missionary as the central figure in a group of people). Colonialists used it to make certain ideas visually legible. Thus, "naked" or scantily dressed Africans photographed with clothed Europeans propagated the difference between black and white (accentuated even more by the latter's tropical garb), between "wild" and "civilized." In this way photographs became a public confirmation of supposed cultural superiority (Geary 1991:49-50). Further, Elizabeth Edwards has made distinctions among public photographs: those with scientific content principally directed toward a educated public and those intended for colonial administrative, missionary, or commercial purposes (Edwards 1992:13). Photographers oriented themselves to the conventions and expectations of their "clients." The criteria for a picture meant to meet scholarly standards were different from yet equally strict as those for an image intended to satisfy an audience interested in exotic genre-scenes.

One needs but a single quick glance at a contemporary photograph to recognize its message: one is an advertisement for a certain brand of pullover, the other portrays a well-known politician, and still another is a souvenir photograph of a trip to Paris. The situation becomes more difficult when looking at photographs from an earlier time and a different environment. In some cases neither the visual language nor the contents are understood--which persons or things are depicted when and where, or what the details are meant to relate. The viewer requires "supplementary documentation" (Nippa 1996:22; see also Heintze 1994:95)--that is, nonphotographic information--to shed light on the special significance of the picture.

In this contribution we would like to use such supplementary documentation to illuminate the photographs associated with Robert Visser (Fig. 1), a German merchant who lived on the Loango coast, in what is now Congo (Brazzaville) and the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, from 1882 to 1904. During his residence he collected a plenitude of ethnographica for the ethnographical museums in Berlin, Leipzig, and Stuttgart. Visser's name is linked primarily with Kongo "fetishes" (minkisi, or power figures; sing. nkisi) that are now in various American and German collections (Fig. 2). Some examples he acquired in this genre are considered outstanding examples of traditional African art, such as the privately held female power figure (Fig. 3a, b) or the minkisi in the Art Institute of Chicago (Berzock 1999:32) and the Detroit Institute of Arts (Falgayrettes 1989:46-47; Wochenpost 1995:39). With respect to his concentration on power figures and "fetish-objects," Eckart von Sydow wrote praisingly: "R. Visser takes a medial position between Peschuel-Loesche and Dennett ..., and as a collector of numerous fetishes ... may be credited with a comprehensive knowledge of the subject ..." (1930:353).

The many power figures Visser acquired have been accorded high regard, but researchers have given the collector himself little attention. Data on Visser's life and his collecting activities were gathered only in connection with Christine Stelzig's recent project concerning the registration and compilation of written archival material in the African department of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin (Stelzig 1998a). They revealed that Visser was not only a dedicated collector of ethnographica but an avid photographer as well. The latter activity is suggested by a few picture postcards bearing his name as photographer, for example the postcard of the Grand fetiche Mabialla Mandembe or the Voyage en hamac (Fig. 4; see MacGaffey 1993: figs. 12, 23). The "discovery" of photographs in the possession of his family uncovered an aspect of Visser's personality that had been completely unknown.

A Biographical Outline

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Robert Visser was born on December 2, 1860, in Dusseldorf, the fifth of thirteen children in a Catholic family of merchants and seamen. (2) Upon completing his education, Robert, who against his father's advice aimed to become a ship's captain, signed up on a freight steamship in Rotterdam. Stressful experiences on the first trip between the Netherlands and Russia--several near shipwrecks, among others--discouraged him pursuing that profession. According to the meager information that is available, Visser subsequently took part in a scientific expedition to Brazil, but nothing is known about the purpose, length, or course of that trip. From 1882 to 1904 he was employed as a plantation manager in Africa by the Dutch trading company Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handelsvennootschap. He was active in Cayo, French Congo, from 1882 to at least 1899, in Congo Free State in 1901, and in Chiloango, Portuguese Congo, from 1902 to 1904. By his own account, Visser was one of the first Europeans to establish coffee and cocoa plantations in these regions.

In April of 1904 Visser returned to Germany and in 1905 married Selma Schobbenhaus, with whom he had a daughter, Sieglinde. Soon after his return, he became an honorary member of the board of directors of the Dusseldorf Zoological Garden. Visser had been in contact with the zoo since 1888, when his collection of ethnographica was exhibited for the first time, and in the following years had often donated live animals from Africa. In 1906 or 1907, however, his financial situation changed drastically: Visser's eldest brother, Jacob, died, and it was revealed that he had evidently depleted the family's capital completely. Visser and his family were compelled to manage on his small pension and savings until 1909, at which time he assumed the paid position of director of the Dusseldorf tourist association, which he led until 1927. On November 19, 1937, Robert Visser died at the age of 77 in Buderich.

The Public Face: Collector and Lecturer

Visser's collections in the Berlin Museum fur Volkerkunde (now the Ethnologisches Museum) once amounted to some 600 ethnographical objects. Several hundred of them are minkisi--mostly anthropomorphic figures--that were acquired between 1894 and 1904, although Visser's first contact with the museum dates from 1888. (3) Flattered by the connection with "scholarship," Visser always attempted to comply with the museum's expectations by including indigenous designations and descriptions of the function of the objects he supplied. Sometimes only a few words were provided, for example "No. 8: Chimama, for women who live with the whites, to be fertile with them as well" (Museum fur Volkerkunde, Leipzig [MfVL] 1903/21). Other descriptions were more comprehensive, such as this one from the archives of the Ethnologisches Museum (EM):

   No. 19: Pumbo, the very old and
   most feared fetish of the Bavilli.
   This fetish was known to have
   murdered over 200 persons, whereupon
   it was vindicated by the
   French government but through
   which the authorities became
   involved in a bloody conflict themselves.
   The accessories, basket, staff
   and knife are used in enforcing a
   sentence. Unlike others this fetish is
   aggravated by throwing palm kernels
   at its head, and then the head is
   rubbed on the ground.

   (EM, Akte Visser, I/MV
   775:66-69)

Because of such accompanying information, the value of Visser's collection of power figures at the Berlin institution was estimated in 1905 at 15,000-20,000 German marks, or "close to $100,000" (Koloss 1990:21), by Felix von Luschan, director of the Africa-Oceania department. (4) After 1901 or 1903 Visser collected for the ethnographical museums in Leipzig and Stuttgart as well. He was most successful in playing the competitive institutions in Berlin and Leipzig against one another. His hopes of being honored for his services were not in vain, for in 1905 and 1906 both museums awarded him an order of distinction. (5)

Robert Visser was a self-taught man who had had no university education and hence viewed Africa initially through unschooled eyes. In time, however, he became increasingly confident about his expertise. On the occasion of his exhibition at the Dusseldorf Zoological Garden in 1888, Visser produced a catalogue with short explanations of the objects; it appeared in several editions. In 1894 he wrote a small book about his experiences and encounters in Africa, entitled Reminiscenzen. Afrikanische Briefe von Robert Visser, Cayo, Sud-West-Afrika (Reminiscences. African Letters by Robert Visser, Cayo, Southwest Africa), which he himself published in Dusseldorf and sent to the museums in Berlin, Stuttgart, and Leipzig. A loose compendium of dated chapters, it related, in a conversational tone, personal anecdotes, hunting adventures, ethnographical observations, and general impressions of Visser's life in Africa as well as his experiences at sea. At von Luschan's suggestion he also wrote a study on the "Bavilli" (Vili) based on his year-long observations. The completed manuscript was submitted in October 1897 but was never published (see Stelzig 1998a:394).

In 1911 Visser joined the Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld (Society for the Natural Sciences in Krefeld), and during the following years he gave several lectures about his African experiences that were summarized in the society's annual reports (Anon. [Visser] 1907-8, 1909-10, 1910-11, 1912-13), augmenting them with lantern slides and a presentation of "original idols." On occasion he distributed "African postcards" among the listeners (Anon. [Visser] 1909-10:7). And by issuing excerpts from these lectures and Reminiscenzen in various newspapers, Visser even made his works accessible to the general public (Stelzig 1998b:9).

In his newspaper articles and especially in his lectures, Visser rarely omitted any of the prevalent tropes which Nederveen Pieterse (1992) sees as defining the images of Africans in the popular culture of imperialistic Europe. Visser referred to an African's life as "a chaos of superstitious ideas and customs" (1907:63) and noted a range of stereotypical characteristics that contrasted with the European self-image: the perceived negligent raising of children, the "tendency toward every kind of sensual pleasure," the "limitless distrust" that could culminate in "outbreaks of hate, of cruelty and lust for murder" (Anon. [Visser] 1908-9:91), and even cannibalism. (6) In this context he seems to have particularly favored one motif: the juxtaposition of human beings, power figures, and apes (Figs. 5, 6). In his allusion to the abduction of a woman by a male gorilla (Anon. [Visser] 1909-10:70), another popular stereotype, he "[brought] together the racial and gender subtexts so frequently involved in Western treatment of the primitive" (Torgovnick 1990:53).

[FIGURES 5-6 OMITTED]

Visser provided vivid details on the topic of travel, the penetration into the unknown. One lecture held in 1910 was called "Colorful Pictures out of Africa--Caravan Routes into the Interior"; the term "caravan route" alone was intended to evoke an atmosphere of hardship, of primitiveness--and also of romantic adventure. In Visser's talks the voyage to Africa was strenuous, the landing unpleasant, the jungle both deceptive and wildly alluring, the insects disturbing, the wild animals dangerous, the native food an imposition, and the (black) servants unreliable. Yet, upon his return the homecomer could report of a tragi-comical experience and impart the impression that in the end, the European could master life in Africa with humor (Anon. [Visser] 1909-10:70).

In his lecture on "Negroes and Europeans as Planters," Visser's language insinuated warfare and conquest ("enemies of cultivated areas"). His audience heard cliches about the uncivilized natives, close to nature but inefficient: it was the whites who were stimulated to dear, cultivate, and urbanize the land, and--in the face of threatening nature (and the blacks)--to act with order and organization, to experiment, and to employ machines (Anon. [Visser] 1910-11:61). With great toil and effort, a station was gradually developed with "good living-quarters and warehouses" out of "a state of primitive huts" (Anon. [Visser] 1907-43:59; see also Geary 1991:53): African chaos, with its "primitive" inhabitants and its "wild" nature, salvaged by European rationality and civilization.

The Photographs

The photographic works from Visser's years in Africa originally numbered more than 500, according to his own account (Mf-VL 1904/28). (7) His correspondence preserved in the archives of the museums in Berlin, Leipzig, and Stuttgart illuminates the fact that for him the photographs were as important as the ethnographica: "... I made a raid [Raubertour] through the Majumbe woods and from this, aside from magnificent ethnographic things, I have brought a wonderful collection of stereoscopic pictures of the life of the natives" (MfVL 1904/28).

Our research confirms that the Berlin museum received at least 16 negatives and 10 photographs; Leipzig, 57 postcards and 16 photographs; and Stuttgart, 29 photographs. As early as December 1888, Visser had offered some of his photographs to the Berlin museum that depict "singular and rare things in the land of the Negroes" (EM, Akte "Erwerbungen," I/MV 708:63). A letter to the Leipzig museum states explicitly that the picture postcards he sent them were made from his originals and had been reproduced by his employer at that time (MfVL 1901/37). (8) The Berlin holdings of these photographs were among the many losses of ethnographic material suffered during the Second World War. (9) Nevertheless, its acquisition files show that the images were of interest to ethnologists because they illustrated not only the peculiarities of material culture but also those of people: besides pictures of objects Visser also sent anthropological photographs. For example, the caption to the image in Figure 7 explains that he placed a Pygmy woman next to a "Loango Negro woman of normal size" to illustrate differences in height. (10)

[FIGURE 7 OMITTED]

Visser's photographs and postcards in the museums in Leipzig and Stuttgart are unpublished to date, as are 50 stereoscopic pictures and numerous photographs and postcards, which Visser himself collected in an album that is now in the possession of his family. Some of the photographs from this album, henceforth denoted as the "Africa Album," will be presented in this article. A second album, generously placed at our disposal by the family, was compiled by Visser's daughter, Sieglinde, for her mother in 1960; it contains pictures of the Visser and Schobbenhaus (Visser's wife) family members. These consist of two silhouettes and 189 photographs, only two of which will concern us here (Figs. 1, 24).

The Africa Album

The Africa Album comprises 140 photographs of various sizes, three picture postcards, and an illustration removed from one of Visser's publications. The album is not dated, and except for six prints and two postcards, the contents are without captions. However, it can be maintained with certainty that some of the pictures were taken during Visser's stay in the former French and Portuguese Congo (Figs. 8-10; see also ill. in Ferreira da Costa 1970:69, 73 (11)). Visser himself can be identified in ten images. The pictures can be categorized by motifs, which in some cases overlap. (12) By and large, the album is ordered chronologically and, to an extent, along thematic lines: the property and homes, family pictures, and work scenes. (12) The photographs were carefully pasted onto the card pages of the album, but some have worked free and lie loose between the pages.

[FIGURES 8-10 OMITTED]

Some photographs reveal that Visser tried to create a bit of the European homeland in his African environment. A portrait of the German Reich chancellor Otto von Bismarck hung in his study (Fig. 11), the palm avenue reminded of a causeway leading to a large royal estate, the French-style garden had a decorative pond and fountain (Fig. 12). The quarters for the African servants were orderly and clean (Fig. 13): a row of small houses, each with a veranda extending to a tree-lined path, where Africans--usually dressed in white suits--strolled. Did Visser choose these motifs as proof of the "civilizing power" of merchants and planters, which indeed was his conviction (Visser 1894:26)?

[FIGURES 11-13 OMITTED]

Several pictures in the Africa Album document Visser's success as plantation manager. It is notable that he or a white colleague is seldom seen alone next to the lush coffee bushes; usually black workers are included, or they appear by themselves (Fig. 14). Visser seems to have been proud of them (and, naturally, of his men at work (Fig. 15). He emphasized more than once that the construction of "large water-pipelines" was instrumental to his excellent results in agriculture, for with them drought could be combated efficiently (Heimat-Zeitung 1935; Visser 1894:31). This piece of information, together with the Ordre du Merite Agricole he received, can be viewed as a "supplementary documentation" without which the pictures of the water channels and ditches as well as those of men with watering cans would have remained uncomprehended (Figs. 14, 16).

[FIGURES 14-16 OMITTED]

Yet, the European civilization that Visser endeavored to bring to this part of Africa had, in his view, an ambivalent character, for it carried the danger of ruining the indigenous peoples: "The genuine Negro expresses his thoughts about sexual matters openly--and the completely naked Negro, almost unpolished by European culture, is the more proper ..." (Anon. [Visser] 1912-13:74). Visser also alluded to Africans' presumed childlike, unreflective, and thus instinctive nature, that is, their paradisiacal innocence before European arrival.

This concept of paradise and a completely virginal environment, where it might be possible to establish a new form of society, seems to have occupied Robert Visser's thoughts. He often criticized the suppression of the common people and the misuse of power. In his lecture "On Fetish Cult, Superstition and Related Customs of the Congo Negroes" (Visser 1907), he sided with those he considered victims of manipulation by the nganga, the specialist who knew how to deal with "fetishes" (Fig. 17): (13) "In general, these Gangas in the service of the kings and village chiefs rule over the people; they are blind implements, great egoists and do not shy away from murder ... The whole [fetish] cult is their means to a purpose, and the expiration of the Negro race can be attributed to this activity alone" (Visser 1907:59).

[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]

Democratic reflections in a colonial planter? Visser's critical view of prevailing opinions is apparent in his Reminiscenzen, in which he reports on his brief imprisonment in Rotterdam, shortly before shipping out to Russia, on the grounds that he was an anarchist (Visser 1894:5). A description of a Russian Orthodox Easter celebration in Kronstadt included this note: "At the end of the service bakeries were sought where the Easter bread was eaten, the rich and the poor together with no separating barriers" (Visser 1894:15; our italics).

Finally, in the midst of the "African primeval forest," Visser erected a memorial to Heinrich Heine, the liberal Jewish writer who converted to Christianity in 1825, (14) that "no native would dare to touch." This was in angry reaction to the conservative, anti-Semitic city council of Dusseldorf (Heine's birthplace), which had rejected a proposed monument in 1893 (Anon. [Visser] 1907-8:60; Visser 1926:196). The memorial was a marble slab mounted on a massive iron column and protected by a roof (Fig. 18). According to Visser, acquisition of the necessary materials "under primitive conditions of the Congo jungle was no small thing, but it was successful, and so Heine stands safe and unhindered in idyllic peace among the wild and cannibals" (Visser 1926:196). This ex-seaman and merchant, who quoted Wilhelm Busch and Viktor von Scheffel (15) in his publications, wrote the following verses that were engraved in the monument (Visser 1894:9, 23, 28; 1926:196, our translation).

[FIGURE 18 OMITTED]

   Heinrich Heine!
   Here, beneath the darkened trees
   A German singer thought on thee.
   The jungle's echo yet prolongs,
   Melodious, thy poet's songs.

   Here! counts not the councillor's
   will,
   And as the world has laughed its fill
   Of that cannibalistic band,
   Shall Heine's monument here stand.
   Here, where nature divine still
   Asks not whether Christian or Jew,
   May sole the man remembered be,
   Whose songs for all sound
   splendidly. (16)

"Here, where divine nature still asks not whether Christian or Jew"--but did it ask whether black or white? The official sources--that is, letters to museums and scholars, documents in city archives, and the annual reports of the Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, together with the Reminiscenzen--reveal little about the personal relationships between Visser and the Africans around him. The portrayals are almost standardized--arrogant or, at best, distanced--with Europeans as civilized saviors, always superior no matter how heavy their burden. The relationship between whites and blacks even in Visser's publications is that of master and servant, employer and employee, Western observer and "primitive" subject.

The Private Photographs

Narrative documentation from Visser's descendants, however, presents a different picture. There was a black woman with whom Visser had a relationship for several years in Africa and with whom he had at least one son, Robert Anton Visser. Her name, the date and circumstances of their initial acquaintance, and exactly how long they lived together are unknown. (17) According to the family's accounts (personal communication, May 10, 2000), the woman was the daughter of a local chief, and Visser entered the union for political reasons. (18) She died before his final return to Europe.

In the Africa Album Visser's companion can be seen in twelve photographs. Pictured alone (Fig. 19), with other women (Fig. 20), or with children, she is portrayed with a tenderness that is seldom found in examples of colonial photographs (cf. Schindlbeck 1989, Theye 1989). There are no signs of the "soldier-like" pose, meant only to reveal physical attributes, that characterizes earlier official photographs of foreign peoples (Theye 1989:23): the personal relationship between the photographer and the photographed is tangible. Of course the impression the observer receives from a photograph is, in the final analysis, always subjective. Yet it must be remarked that the woman is always dressed appropriately, or even well. She wears jewelry, but she never appears to be dressed up exotically, nor is she presented in a sexual context. Her posture is as natural as the photographic techniques of the time allowed. In short, these images are true portraits that bring to the fore the personality of the subject. They offer a striking contrast to the "public" photographs Visser took of other African women, who are presented as physical specimens (Fig. 7).

[FIGURES 19-20 OMITTED]

This woman was evidently important to Visser, but she is not mentioned in any of the written sources known to us; Visser never wrote a word about her. In public he only referred to his German wife, Selma: "I brought a faithful wife home and founded my own hearth" (Heimat-Zeitung 1935).

While the record is silent about the existence of the African companion, there is definite documentation about their son, whose birth is recorded in the Dusseldorf archives, albeit without details about the parents. According to the entry, Robert Anton Visser was born on February 18, 1897, in "Kongo/Africa" and died on November 21,1960, in Dusseldorf. (19) The date of birth indicates that the actual birthplace was Cayo, the locale of Visser's initial activities in Africa. There are eight photographs of little Robert in the Africa Album. The first two show the infant's baptism (Fig. 21): the mother sits in an armchair with the child, corresponding to photographic conventions of well-situated Europeans, while Visser stands next to her with a protective hand upon the back of the chair, the pose of the proud father. Some of the photographs show Robert junior riding on various stuffed animals that his father either ordered for him or brought back after a trip to Germany (Stelzig 1998a:390). In other pictures he is accompanied by African children and women (Fig. 22). The motif of a European child in the care of African women or girls appears in other private photographs from the colonial period (e.g., Geary 1991:51). However, it is noteworthy that in the photo of young Robert, both African women stand next to him in a pose of equality.

[FIGURES 21-22 OMITTED]

This democratic attitude applies to other photographs in the Album as well: the Congolese women and men, who were obviously part of a close family community, appear self-confident and relaxed. They are well dressed, whether in African or European attire, and seem quite accustomed to the photographer and to being photographed by him. The Africa Album does not contain a single picture in which a white person is portrayed in a personal manner. Furthermore, the photographs that include Europeans (eighteen in all, excluding those of Visser alone) were apparently not taken on account of those persons.

The only known "public" photograph (in Geary's sense of conforming to conventions) of Robert junior is in the archives of the ethnographical museum in Stuttgart: it depicts the boy dressed in a suit and cap, holding a riding whip in his hands and standing in front of an Arabian-looking stool (Fig. 23). The undated photograph was made in a studio in the elegant Konigsallee in Dusseldorf. On July 30, 1904, Visser wrote Count Linden, director of the Stuttgart museum: "All of Dusseldorf and acquaintances send you their most cordial greetings, and especially the little African boy, who asks permission to send you his picture soon (It may be of ethnographical interest?) and who thanks you for the friendly greetings" (Linden-Museum, Stuttgart [LMS], Korrespondenz Visser, no. 998). Count Linden's reply to the letter evidently included a small gift for Robert, for which Visser thanked him: "Most honorable Count! With sincerest thanks I confirm the receipt of sweets thoughtfully sent to my little African. It was a joy without end, arm the little fellow has ordered me to thank the nice uncle most sincerely and to ask you to accept the enclosed picture" (LMS, Korrespondenz Visser no. 1025)

[FIGURE 23 OMITTED]

Visser obviously took pride in giving photographs of his son to acquaintances. Whether he also informed them of his parentage remains unknown. It is notable that in the three letters to Count Linden, Visser always refers to his son not by name but as the "little African," as if he were not a person but--however lovable--only a souvenir. This "public" manner contrasts with the private attitude of the family, as several photographs in their album confirm (Fig. 24). According to the Vissers, Selma Visser even adopted the boy, whom they recall as a lively, communicative, and welcomed member of the family. (20)

[FIGURE 24 OMITTED]

Visser's contradictory attitudes are substantiated in the Africa Album and in his publications and lectures. On one hand he was aware of the misuse of power and acts of violence by Europeans, who, for example, worked for the large trading companies and military in Congo Free State (see Hochschild 1999: esp. 111ff.):

   The American government sent its
   Colonel Williams; he carries the
   Honorable Doctor L.L.D. and his
   breast is decorated with honors of
   all sorts from heated Indian battles;
   he was given all possible honorary
   titles, only because he clears up the
   prevailing conditions here and
   wants to make the civilized world
   aware of the abuses. Nothing will
   harm the man here, he is no
   Negro ... and that his reports are
   whiter than the whole state together
   is beyond doubt.... If only all nations
   would send the appropriate representative
   here for this task, then
   many things would be resolved and
   protests from one or the other side
   would seem justified. Besides, if
   the humanitarian reactions "against
   slavery" are viewed more closely,
   the results can be surprising. War is
   carried out; why? To find as many
   old slaves as possible (the officers
   receive a bonus for each head and
   naturally they do their best!), and
   then the slaves are set free by the
   state. This freedom involves the following:
   They are used for all kinds
   of work ... and the majority goes to
   the mass grave "Matadi" to work on
   the railroad.... I would like to see
   someone who could hold out just
   one year in Matadi, not to mention
   seven years! Go there, you king of
   the Belgians, and let the people tell
   you how one is housed in your state.
   Of course, under these conditions
   the person who makes it known is
   feared.... banishment from the area
   is the mildest.

   (Visser 1894:32ff.)

On the other hand, however, Visser, who in general shared the prevailing opinion that Leopold II was ignorant of the goings-on in Congo Free State, did not shy away from pointing out the "brilliant development of civilization in the Belgian Congo," gained "in a relatively short time by the Belgians with their energetic ambitious king at the lead" (Visser 1907:61). What is the explanation for these contradictions? One thing is certain: Robert Visser dressed his experiences in Africa according to the situation at hand. In his publications, witty stories and details of the daily life of a European in Africa alternate with bitter complaints about the unbearable conditions in the colonies. His highly successful lectures, which were meant for an audience of laypersons interested in the natural sciences, made use of every cliche: Visser's tone is that of the superior European who must struggle against the hardships of the wilderness, which he of course masters. The rather popular marketing of his adventures was his one opportunity to attain at least some profit from his experiences in Africa.

By contrast, in his correspondence with scholars, Visser made an effort to maintain a sober and objective tone. Yet he was never granted a more serious scientific evaluation, although his "field surveys" were considered to be of scientific value--and from today's point of view they offer interesting source material, especially on the topic of "fetishes."

Visser's photographs echo these inconsistencies. The few pictures presumably shown to a broader public correspond to those typical of the colonial period (Schindlbeck 1989; Theye 1989). They depict the "natives" free of all European influences (Fig. 25) or the European in a situation thought to befit his position, as in the image of the traveler in a hammock (Fig. 4). (22) In Christraud Geary's words (1991:49), the photographs can be regarded as "visual metaphors" in colonial powers' discourse about Africa. Visser's images of a more scientific nature--for example, the documentation of a poison oracle--seem to have been taken by an observer who had no personal interest in the event, yet records it with exactitude. They are augmented by their similarly precise captions, which offer significantly more information than do the postcards intended for a broader public (Fig. 26).

[FIGURES 25-26 OMITTED]

Visser's private photographs disclose a completely different person, one who at least began to overcome the colonial differentiation between black and white, though he did not show this facet of himself in public. This duality was not unique among Europeans living in Africa during the colonial period (see Essner 1987:202-3; Wirz 1982:32). Geary has indicated another example in the photographs of the missionaries Wilhelm and Maria Schneider, taken at the station in Weh, Cameroon, from 1930 to 1940 (Geary 1991:50). It is striking how much the language of the public picture diverges from that of the private. Obviously the deeply ingrained cliches of the "homeland" demanded that the expected conduct be followed if the person wished to attain public recognition and remuneration. Nonconformity led to being branded as an eccentric outsider.

The case of Robert Visser also reminds us that the topic of the private lives of Europeans in the colonies has been neglected in research. As recommended by Jan Vansina (1987), further studies on the discrepancies between private and public sources of information are needed to gain an accurate picture of the multitudinous aspects of colonial life in Africa.

ADLER & STELZIG:

[This article was accepted for publication in August 2002.]

We extend our thanks to Emily Schalk for translating our article, including the quotations from German-language sources. We would also like to express special gratitude to the S. Dubbers and B. Jansen families for permission to publish photographs from both the family album and the Africa Album of their grandfather, Robert Visser, as well as for their helpful information about the family's history.

(1.) Cornelia Essner (1985, 1987) and Beatrix Heintze (2000), among others, have expressed this opinion with reference to written documentation.

(2.) The following biographical details derive from Stelzig 1998a:391ff.

(3.) Koloss erroneously gives the dates of 1895-1905 (1990:21) and 1882-1894 (1999:126). Visser also collected a few botanical and zoological specimens.

(4.) It is not known whether all objects from the original collection are still present: a complete reexamination has not yet been made, partly because a large number of the works collected by Visser are among the so-called Leipzig returns (Leipzig-Ruckfuhrungen), which are being recorded gradually. This term refers to approximately 50,000 ethnographic objects (23,000 of which are African), photographic collections, and written records that were stored in the Berlin Museum fur Volkerkunde during World War II and were taken to Schrabsdorf (today, Bobolice Zabkowicki) in Silesia in 1943/44. After their confiscation by the Red Army, the holdings were transported from Leningrad to the Museum fur Volkerunde in Leipzig in the mid '70s. In 1990 they were finally returned to the Berlin museum (Hopfner 1992).

(5.) In addition, Visser received two orders from France: the Ordre du Dragon d'Annam for his "scientific research" and the Ordre du Merite Agricole for his "services especially in the area of agriculture" (Stelzig 1998a:395).

(6.) Visser claimed to have encountered cannibals during his travels into the hinterland (Anon. [Visser] 1909-1910:70), and he regarded the performance of a poison oracle to have been primarily a "cannibalistic meal" (Visser 1907:58).

(7.) According to the family (personal communication, May 10, 2000), nearly all of the glass-plate negatives were destroyed in 1945 during the occupation of the Rheinland by American troops, who took possession of the Visser family house in Buderich.

(8.) The postcard captions, in French and German, were recorded in the accompanying list, which in turn allows the assumption that at least some of the private photographs served as models for the cards (Museum fur Volkerkunde, Leipzig [MfVL] 1901/37).

(9.) A considerable number of photographs in the Africa department of the museum were destroyed during a bombing (Kurt Krieger, personal communication, June 9, 1999).

(10.) The photograph is among those lost from the Berlin Museum fur Volkerkunde during the Second World War. It was first published by Felix von Luschan in his book Beitrage zur Vulkerkunde der Deutschen Schutzgebiete (Contributions to the Ethnology of the German Protectorates), with the note: "I make use of this opportunity [the first German colonial exhibition in Treptow, in 1896, at which von Luschan presented this publication], in order to publish a picture of a pygmy woman for the first time. She originates from the Sange River and a few years ago came into the possession of a Majombe chief in the Loango hinterland, where Mr. Robert Visser, whom we have to thank for numerous significant and instructive reports and gifts, was able to photograph her" (von Luschan 1897:15).

(11.) We thank Beatrix Heintze for calling our attention to this publication.

(12.) The themes are as follows: portraits (17), depictions of groups of people (29), anthropological pictures (1), pictures of humans and primates (3), indigenous and European architecture (39), countrysides and seascapes (15), scenes of people at work (19), pictures of animals (4), ethnographic observations (8), European leisure enjoyments (3), not clearly classifiable subjects (6).

(13.) The terms nganga and nkisi are found in all Bantu languages. According to Wyatt MacGaffey, in the ritual vocabulary of the Kongo, "nganga' denotes "[t]he expert owner-operator of an nkisi." MacGaffey designates as "nkisi" "[a] spirit personality controlling a particular activity or function (pl. bakisi). Also a material composite through which such a spirit can be approached (minkisi)' (MacGaffey 1993:27, 49).

(14.) Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was a German poet and author. Among his best-known works is the epic "Deutschland, ein Wintermarchen" (1844), which exposes German weaknesses with an unsparing, biting humor. Heine's democratic attitudes and his criticism of German society and politics led him to be rejected by those in conservative, bourgeois circles.

(15.) Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908), a well-known German poet, esteemed for his humorous writings and sketches; Joseph Victor von Scheffel (1826-1886), a German author of historical novels and a lyrical poet.

(16.) Heinrich Heine!

Hier hat in einer dunklen Nacht
Ein Deutscher Sanger Dein gedacht.
Den Wohlklang Deiner schonen Lieder
Gab hier des Urwalds Echo wider.

Hier! Hat der Stadtrat keine Macht,
Und da die Welt genug gelacht
Ob dieses kannibal'schen Treiben,
Soll Heine hier ein Denkmal bleiben.

Hier, wo die gottliche Natur
Noch nicht nach Christ und Jude frug,
Da sei des Menschen nur gedacht,
des Sangers, seiner Liederpracht.

(17.) For the various facets of "living together" in Africa in the early period of colonialism, see recent publications by Heintze (1999a) and Fabian (2000). In regard to our contribution, Jenkins 1987:313-35 is especially noteworthy.

(18.) According to the family (personal communication, May 10, 2000), Visser had many scars from wounds suffered in Cayo during violent conflicts with local African rulers. Therefore, his commitment to the alleged chief's daughter could have been an attempt to improve strained relations.

(19.) Written communication from the city archives of Dusseldoff, July 15,1998.

(20.) Further information about Robert junior will not be included here; he is the subject of separate study. Suffice it to say that he participated in World War I, married, and had a son (B. Jansen, grandson of the elder Robert: personal communication, May 10, 2000).

(21.) In contrast, Visser's Congolese companion always appears clothed, be it in African or European dress. Concerning the manipulation of the European public through photographs of clothed and naked Africans, see Heintze 1996:4f.

References cited

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Anonymous [Robert Visser]. 1907-8. "Der Kaufmann unter Wilden (Entwicklung des Handels am unteren Kongo)," Jahresbericht Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, pp. 59-60.

Anonymous [Robert Visser]. 1908-9. "Des Negers Lebenslauf," Jahresbericht Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, pp. 91-92.

Anonymous [Robert Visser]. 1909-10. "Bunte Bilder aus Afrika--auf Karawanenpfaden ins Innere," Jahresbericht Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, pp. 6%70.

Anonymous [Robert Visser[. 1910-11. "Neger und Europaer als Pflanzer," Jahresbericht Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, p. 61.

Anonymous [Robert Visser]. 1912-13. "Poesie und Prosa der KongoNeger," Jahresbericht Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, pp. 73-74.

Berzock, Kathleen Bickford. 1999. "African Art at the Art Institute of Chicago," African Arts, 32, 4:18-35.

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Visser, Robert. 1894. Reminiscenzen. Afrikanische Reise. Dusseldorf: Selbstverlag.

Visser, Robert. 1901. Katalog zur Sud-West-Afrikanischen Ausstellung im Zoologischen Garten zu Dusseldorf. Dusseldorf.

Visser, Robert. 1907. "Uber Fetischdienst, Aberglaube und damit zusammenhangende Gebrauche der Kongo-Neger," Jahresbericht Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein zu Krefeld, 1906-07:52-67.

Visser, Robert. 1926. "Das Denkmal Heinrich Heines in den Urwaldern des Kongo," Jan Wellem 1, 8:196.

Wirz, Albert. 1982. "Beobachtete Beobachter: Zur Lekture volkerkundlicher Fotografien," in FremdenBilder, ed. Martin Brauen, Ethnologische Schriften Zurich, pp. 44-60. Zurich: Volkerkundemuseum der Stadt Zurich.

Wochenpost. 1995. Mar. 30.42. Jg.:38-40.

Archives:

Ethnologisches Museum Berlin (EM) EM, Akte "Erwerbungen ethnologischer Gegenstande aus Afrika," I/MV 708:63

EM, Akte "Die Erwerbung ethnologischer Gegenstande durch den Plantagen-Director Visser," I/MV 775:66-69

Museum furr Volkerkunde Leipzig (MfVL) MfVL 1901/37, 1903/21, 1904/28

Linden-Museum Stuttgart (LMS) LMS Korrespondenz Visser no. 998, 1025

CHRISTINE STELZIG studied cultural anthropology, modern history, and African history in Munich and Paris as well as Leipzig, where she received her Ph.D. She has been an assistant at the ethnographic museums in Munich (1985-89), Pads (1991-92), and Berlin (1994-2002) and is now working in the Generaldirektion of the State Museums of Berlin. Dr. Stelzig is also an independent curator of African art exhibitions. Her current project is a publication about the African art collection of the German artist Georg Baselitz.

KATRIN ADLER studied cultural anthropology and Hispanic literature in Munich and Paris. She was an assistant in the Europe and Africa departments in the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin before becoming an editor in the Bertelsmann media group in Munich.