The Civic Uses of Science: Ethnology and Civil Society in Imperial Germany
Author(s)
Penny, H. Glenn
Abstract
In an effort to move us toward a better understanding of the relationship between science and civil society in imperial Germany, this essay explores the creation and development of ethnographic museums in Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, and Munich. German ethnology became a locus of institution building during the imperial period, and an analysis of the actions and rhetoric surrounding these museums shows that the central developments in each institution were closely tied to the changes underway in its city. In each case, there was a mutual transformation of city and science that followed a general shift in the topography of public domains. Experts and professionals began colonizing and dominating areas of public space that autodidacts and local associations initially had carved out and occupied. This move reduced the importance of local associations in the science of ethnology at the same time that such civic associations were beginning to wane in general. The impact of this shift on these museums can tell us much about the ways in which changes and variations in civil society can affect the form and function of scientific institutions; it may also provide us with new answers to old questions about the “rise of the German sciences.
