118 well fashioned, well balanced, because it has good contrasts, because it is powerful—the sculpture gives us a sense of aesthetic satisfaction.”16 Another remarkable Bismarck Archipelago collection that was built in the mid-twentieth century at about the same time as Brignoni’s was that of Ernst Heinrich (fig. 20). Heinrich started his life as a collector acquiring fossils and other prehistoric findings from the Baden-Württemberg region of southwestern Germany.17 His first tribal pieces were mainly weapons, given to him by his brother-in-law, a colonial officer in German East Africa. In the 1920s he started buying African objects and, shortly after, Oceanic pieces. In 1929, he met fellow Stuttgart collector Hermann Seeger at a local auction of African spears. At the sale, they agreed to not bid against each other and to split the lot they won between themselves, and thus started their lifelong friendship. By 1930 he was making purchases of African sculptures from important dealers such as Julius Konietzko in Hamburg. Heinrich specialized in pieces from the German colonies and traveled all over Germany asking former colonials about any possible artifacts that they might have brought back. Before the war he moved to Tannenbergstrasse 58 in Cannstatt-Stuttgart, and afterward, in 1948, was given special dispensation by the US Military’s Restitution Branch of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives to reopen his “Pacific and Africa Museum.” Like Brignoni, Heinrich had a high regard for artworks from across the archipelago, and he also had numerous New Britain and Admiralty Islands pieces in his collection. This contrasts with most of the other collectors of the time—and indeed later— who concentrated solely on New Ireland art. Over time, Heinrich focused a large part of his private collection on the Bismarck Archipelago, going so far as to build a separate house to keep it all in. He called this amazing place his “Kannibalen Haus,” and he played host to a stream of visitors from around the world—Paris, London, New York— all sharing in a bottle of wine and a cigar or pipe (figs. 19 and 21). Heinrich asked departing visitors to leave their card or write a comment about their experience in his personal guest book. Many left sketches of memorable pieces, and one left by Brignoni on April 10, 1951, is of Heinrich’s formidable uli figure, one of several he owned in his lifetime (fig. 22). The Heinrich Collection was special in that it included an incredible variety of object types, rare masks, and hard-to-find artifacts, works that could only be assembled over many decades of assiduous hunting and gathering. The collection was dispersed at auction in 1967 at FIG. 18 (left): Head, bur bur. New Britain. Wood, pigment. 146 cm. Ex Serge Brignoni, Lugano; Van Bussel, Amsterdam; Patricia Withofs, London; Bill Evans, Sydney. Private collection. Photo: © Hughes Dubois.
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