Markus Mailopu and the 'Second Freiburg Moluccan Expedition': Seeking out Dutch-German-Malukan entanglements in the archive

Markus Mailopu joined three German scholars in their 'Second Freiburg Moluccan Expedition' (1910-1912) on his home island Seram in 1911. The expedition had set out to collect all kinds of tangible and intangible materials in Maluku, which was at the time part of the Dutch colonial administration. 

Archival records held in various German collecting institutions show how much Markus Mailopu actually contributed to the expedition and its prominent scientific output and how much the expedition depended on Dutch colonial infrastructure. 

Taking a closer look at archival records (diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, artefacts, specimens and sound recordings) that have been dispersed across disciplines and institutions, this lecture revisits the history of the 'Second Freiburg Moluccan Expedition'. It examines the role of Dutch colonial administration as well as the significance of local individuals such as Markus Mailopu, who not only joined the expedition in their return journey to Germany but also became part of another expedition to the German colony of Kamerun. 

How did he experience his time as part of the Second Freiburg Moluccan Expedition and how did he describe life in Germany at the time?

About the speaker

Luisa Marten-Paschall, M.A. is a doctoral candidate at LMU Munich where she studied Social and Cultural Anthropology. She was member of the research project IndiGen and doctoral researcher in the research project 'Markus Mailopu and the II. Freiburg Moluccan Expedition: Reassembling, reactivating and redistributing "anthropology’s interlocutors" through the archive'. In her dissertation she examines the digital Mailopu Archive which she created as part of her doctoral research.