TILMAN HEBEISEN
123
FIG. 19 (left):
Letter from a Munich
gallery quoting the price
of 65,000 DM for one of
Hebeisen’s copper “Kota”
blades.
Image courtesy of Tilman Hebeisen.
FIG. 20 (below):
“Zande/Makaraka” blade
in Hebeisen’s workshop.
Photo by Tilman Hebeisen, 2010.
qualities. His fi ndings are available online at ERTribal.com.
3. While some larger copper rivets on Sudanese blades have
been rounded on both sides, this exception is rare and is
present only on blades where either side could be presented
as the front. This is not the case for the Yakoma blade, which
has a dedicated front and a dedicated back.
4. “Afrikanische Waffenkunst” (author attributed to the user
‘afropapa’), Afrostore.biz, 6 July 2014, http://www.afropapa.
de/afrika/afrikanische-waffenkunst.
5. Ingo Barlovic, “Geschmiedete afrikanische Kurzwaffen made
in Österreich?,” Kunst & Kontext, July 2017.
6. Barlovic, ibid.
7. Hebeisen’s fi nished products would all be larger than 360 x
160 x 10 mm, the result of hammering and fl attening the
copper sheets, which augmented their surface area.
8. Manfred A. Zirngibl, Seltene Afrikanische Kurzwaffen,
Grafenau: Morsak Publishing, 1983, 137.
9. The second edition of the catalog was substantially redesigned
and did not include these objects.
10. He published this photo on his Facebook page at the time
as an example of his handiwork. When he came to realize his
involvement in the larger scheme, he updated this post with
additional information.
11. Barlovic, op cit., cites this as Rudolf Kmunke, Quer durch
Uganda: eine Forschungsreise in Zentralafrika 1911/1912,
Dietrich Reimer, 1913.
12. Barlovic, op cit.
13. There are a number of Akan goldweights depicting knives
that are composed of a single piece of metal, but these are
cast-bronze symbolic objects rather than functional knives.
14. The 1995 annual average ratio of Deutsche Marks-to-dollars
was 1.43:1, making the price of the Munich gallery “Kota”
blade $45,454.54. Harold Marcuse, “Historical Dollar-to-
Marks Currency Conversion Page,” UC Santa Barbara, 9 Feb.
2013, http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/
currency.htm.
15. Luc Lefebvre, Ngbandi Yakoma: Armes Traditionelles, 2017.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barlovic, Ingo. “Geschmiedete afrikanische Kurzwaffen made in
Österreich?” Kunst & Kontext, July 2017.
Elsen, Jan, and Marc Leo Felix (eds.). Fatal Beauty: Traditional
Weapons from Central Africa. Taiwan: Suhai Design and
Production, 2009.
Fischer, Werner, and Manfred A. Zirngibl. Afrikanische Waffen.
Passau: Prinz-Verlag GmbH, 1978.
Lefebvre, Luc. Ngbandi Yakoma: Armes Traditionnelles, 2017.
Spring, Christopher. African Arms and Armor. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
Westerdijk, Peter. The African Throwing Knife: A Style Analysis.
Utrecht: OMI, 1988.
Zirngibl, Manfred A. Seltene Afrikanische Kurzwaffen. Grafenau:
Morsak Publishing, 1983.
Zirngibl, Manfred A., and Alexander Kubetz. Panga Na Visu.
Riedlhütte: Hepelo Publishing, 2009.
/ERTribal.com
/www.afropapa
/
