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Sources vs. Text: An “Integrated Edition of Sources”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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The aim of this note is to attract attention to a new venture in scholarly publication—Beatrix Heintze's Alfred Schachtzabel's Reise nach Angola, 1913-1914. Und seine Sammlungen für das Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Rekonstruktion einer Ethnographischen Quelle (Köln, 1995), the first issue of Afrika Archiv, a new series to be devoted to text editions. That this is not to be confused with an ordinary text edition is already intimated by the work's title, which translates as Alfred Schachtzabel's Voyage to Angola, 1913-1914, and his Collections for the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Reconstruction of an Ethnographic Source. In other words, it speaks of a “reconstruction” and “a source edition,” not “text edition.” As well, Heintze is described as the author of this book rather than the editor. Yet she presents the work as a new kind of edition—the “integrated edition of sources.”

Heintze is an experienced text editor, having published both a voluminous conventional collection of documents and a set of ethnographic drawings. Yet when she examined the surviving documentation pertaining to Schachtzabel's expedition in Angola, she became convinced that a standard edition of all his work would be unwise. The unpublished materials at hand are too disparate and slender.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 23 , January 1996, pp. 461 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1996

Footnotes

1. Heintze, Beatrix, Fontes para a história de Angola no século XVII (2 vols.: Stuttgart, 1985), for the edition of a collection of documents, and idem., Ethnographische Zeichnungen der Lwimbi/Ngangela (Zentral-Angola), (Wiesbaden, 1988), for drawings from the literary estate of Hermann Baumann.

2. Schachtzabel, Alfred, Im Hochland von Angola. Studienreise durch den Süden Portugiesisch-West-Afrikas (Dresden, 1923); idem., Angola. Forschungen und Erlebnisse in Südwestafrika (Berlin, 1926). The illustrations are different, while the text remains nearly identical. Four chapters out of a total of twelve are ethnographic reports, the rest being the travel account per se. It also has a list of photographs, of drawings and an index.

3. Heintze, , Alfred Schachtzabels Reise, 34–35.

4. Heintze, , “Plädoyer fur eine integrierte Quellen Edition,” Baessler-Achiv, n.s. 41 (1993), 323–39.

5. Heintze, , Reise, 11-41, esp. 38.

6. Ibid., 39.

7. Ibid., 15-21, 39-41.

8. T. Delachaux traveled to Ngangela country south of the area covered by Schachtzabel in 1932-33. This expedition produced a record rather similar to this one: a travel book and two general ethnographic articles. Gerhard Kubik's fieldwork in the 1970s relates to an area further east.

9. E.g., Vansina, Jan, “The Ethnographic Account as a Genre in Central Africa” in Heintze, Beatrix and Jones, Adam, eds., European Sources for Sub-Saharan Africa Before 1900: Use and Abuse [Paideuma 33] (Stuttgart, 1987), 433–44.

10. As H. Klein did with these sorts of data from the first Frobenius expedition. Cf. her Leo Frobenius: Ethnographische Notizen aus den Jähren 1905-1906 (4 vols.: Stuttgart, 1985–1990).

11. Heintze, , “Plädoyer,” 325–27, for Angola. One also thinks of F. Starr or A. Hutereau for the Congo Free State, and perhaps even of B. Ankermann or M. P. Thorbecke for Cameroun.