OLDENBURG
143
FIG. 23 (above):
Rudolf or Helene
Oldenburg,
Baumwollbaum; Conakry
(Kapok Tree, Conakry),
1902–1906.
Silver gelatin print, 12 x 16.5 cm.
Weltmuseum Wien, Fotosammlung,
inv. VF 15918.
In this photograph, the massive
trunk of a kapok, or white-silkcotton
tree, dwarfs the person
leaning against, an allusion to the
power of nature that Europeans
came up against in West Africa.
In addition to beautifully posed
and staged scenes like this one,
Oldenburg also took many photos of
a more documentary nature of the
vegetation he encountered.
ti. Whether because of these events or
other reasons, Rudolf and Helene Oldenburg
left Cameroon in 1913, returning
to Vienna just prior to the outbreak
of the First World War.
Rudolf Oldenburg clearly held his
Cameroon collection in high esteem.
These objects, along with the ones
from Guinea and the hundreds of glass
plate photographs, were extremely expensive
to ship from West Africa to Europe.
All of this material was kept in
a storage space that also served as an
offi ce. Oldenburg wanted to continue
doing research, but his fi nancial and
professional situations were precarious.
The windowless storage and offi ce
space soon became the Oldenburgs’ living
quarters as well. In June of 1922,
Helene succumbed to an attack of
malarial fever. The Naturhistorisches
Museum of Vienna acquired some 200
Guinea artifacts from Oldenburg in 1924 along
with about a hundred prints. The city’s newly
established Völkerkunde museum purchased the
Cameroon collection from Oldenburg, as well
as the original negative plates he had hoped to
keep, in several installments beginning in 1929.12
Even this was not enough, and he died alone and
penniless on January 23, 1932.
NOTES
1. Christraud M. Geary, Adamou Ndam Njoya. Mandou Yenou:
Photographies du Pays Bamoum, royaume ouest-africain
1902–1915, Trickster Verlag, Munich 1985: 166, 203.
2. Rudolf Oldenburg. “Bamum. Ein Negerreich im Innern
Kameruns,” in Atlantis, vol. 2, Atlantis-Verlag, Berlin-Zürich
1929: 161–164.
3. Helene Oldenburg, Österreichische Illustrierte Zeitung,
Heft 6, 11, and 12, 1922, cited in the bibliography of Petra
Jebinger. Ein “Sonderling” auf Reisen: Die fotografi sche
Sammlung von Rudolf und Helene Oldenburg im Museum
für Völkerkunde Wien. Magisterarbeit, Vienna, 2012.
4. Christraud M. Geary, Postcards from Africa. Photographers
of the Colonial Area. Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder
Postcard Archive, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2018: cover
blurb.
5. In January of 1924, when Oldenburg sold 204 ethnographic
objects collected in Conakry and neighboring areas from
1901 to 1906 to the Vienna Museum, the price also included
the right to borrow 186 negatives for use to make copies.
He wanted to keep the originals, however, “until his death,”
These are inventory numbers VF 15765 through VF 15950
(Jebinger, op cit.: 50).
6. Jebinger, op cit.: 129.
7. The museum’s photo collections were comprehensively
inventoried, cataloged, and made searchable by Christian
Feest beginning in 1980. They were digitized in the 2000s.
Petra Jebinger (2012) researched the complex story of the
acquisition of the Rudolf and Helene Oldenburg photo
collections for her thesis. There was some confusion since they
entered the collections at various different times (Jebinger op
cit., for example, page 55ff).
8. See Geary and Njoya, op cit.: 31.
9. The muddled relationship between the German colonial
authorities and Njoya was the subject of the 1984 fi lm
titled Mandu Yenu—Schwarzer König zwischen Anpassung
und Widerstand by Peter Heller. Oldenburg’s photographs
appeared in it to provide historical context.
10. Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, 1815–1950, vol. 7
(lfg. 33, 1977), page 226.
11. Christraud M. Geary. “Political Dress: German-Style Military
Attire and Colonial Politics in Bamum,” in Ian Fowler & David
Zeitlyn (eds.), African Crossroads, Oxford 1996: 172; see also
Claude Tardits, “Pursue to Attain: A Royal Religion,” in Ian
Fowler & David Zeitlyn (eds.), African Crossroads, Oxford
1996: 141–163.
12. In addition to the ones mentioned in the Grassi Museum in
Leipzig, photographs by the Oldenburgs are also said to have
entered into the collections of the Stuttgart, Colon, Hamburg,
and Berlin museums. Not much research could be done on
this question within the framework of this short article, but
in reply to an email inquiry addressed to the Linden Museum
on July 2, 2018, I was informed that no entries mentioning
“Rudolf and Helene Oldenburg” were found in their
photographic archives.
13. See postcards in the Vienna archive: VP 52, VP 111,
VP 245, VP 285, VP 526–531, VP 561–564, VP 570, VP
578, VP 602/603, VP 606/607, VP 834, VP 845/846.
14. Christraud Geary, personal communication, July 2018.