OBJECT HISTORY
124
Given this, it was surprising to discover that a
weather charm in the collection of the Museum
Fünf Kontinente in Munich (inv. B.1674) is recorded
as being from the Kaniet Islands, which
are on the the northern fringe of the Bismarck
Archipelago (fi gs. 5a and b) and some 300 miles
south of the Carolines. It appears to be a unique
survival from that location.3
This charm is composed of a carved wooden
frog completely covered with kaolin and bound
onto a wooden stake. Its eyes are painted black.
Pinnate coconut palm leaves, artfully worked
into zigzag shapes at their extremities, secure
the frog to the stake. In a personal communication
with me, Dr. Michaela Appel, chief curator
at the Museum Fünf Kontinente, indicated
that the bamboo stake on the charm serves as a
substitute for a stingray spine that is no longer
present. Unfortunately, the documentation on
this work is limited to the name of its collector
and its place of origin, although the museum’s
registration card for the piece also states: “1 frog
idol, amulet used to ensure favorable winds.”
The object was formerly in the collection of
medical doctor, ethnographer, explorer, and curator
Max Buchner (fi g. 4), who may be best
remembered as an Africanist but also authored
the book Reise durch den Stillen Ozean (Berlin,
1878), which detailed his 1875 aroundthe
world trip. He in turn obtained the weather
charm as a gift from Max Thiel (fi g. 6), the
nephew of Hans Hernsheim, a principal in
Hernsheim & Co., a trading company specializing
in copra that had outposts on Yap in the
Caroline Islands, Jaluit in the Marshall Islands,
and Matupi Island in the Bismarck Archipelago.
Thiel had arrived in German New Guinea
in 1885 at the age of twenty-one to serve as a
manager and part owner of Hernsheim & Co.
He lived on Matupi in eastern New Britain, just
south of Rabaul, where he became a prominent
element of local colonial politics and society.
Buchner acquired many interesting and valuable
ethnographic objects from various individuals,
Thiel among them, who had spent time living
in German New Guinea. In 1887 Buchner became
director and curator of the then Museum
für Völkerkunde in Munich, and these pieces
ultimately found their way into that museum’s
collection.4
So how can an object for which so little information
is available be classifi ed and identifi
ed, especially in this little-published area? In
his interesting and heavily illustrated article on
the culture of the Hermit and Kaniet islands
that appeared in the summer 1997 issue of The
World of Tribal Art magazine, Philippe Bourgoin
provided a number of representative examples
of the art of the area, which serve as useful
stylistic comparanda.5 More importantly, Georg
Thilenius’ 1903 comprehensive work on the indigenous
peoples of the Western Islands of the
Bismarck Archipelago provides additional clues
(fi gs. 7 and 8).6 At the time that Thilenius visited
the Western Islands in 1899, some thirty people,
primarily older ones, still lived on Kaniet.
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who was the fi rst
European to sail by the Kaniet Islands 131 years
earlier, believed them to be densely populated,
but it is likely that no more than three to fi ve
thousand people inhabited the entire Western Islands
in pre-colonial times. That population was
so severely affected by the diseases that contact
with Europeans had brought to the islands that
only a handful of people had survived on them
by the time Thilenius arrived. Despite this tragedy,
he was able to record a great deal about their
material culture, although questions relating to
cultural origins remain open. Thilenius, who
would later become director of the Museum
für Völkerkunde in Hamburg, noted not only
Melanesian infl uences, particularly from the
Admiralty Islands, but Polynesian ones as well.
According to Barbara Treide, the former Oceania
curator at the Museum für Völkerkunde in
Leipzig, there is evidence that migrations by inhabitants
of the South Seas between Melanesia,
Micronesia, and Polynesia continued into the
middle of the nineteenth century.7
Since it is unlikely that the notion of the weather
charm originated in the Kaniet Islands, it is reasonable
to assume that it must have been brought
over from the Caroline Islands region, where we
know the tradition to have been pervasive. Thilenius
is the only researcher who provides a fi rsthand
account of various magical objects from
Kaniet. While he illustrates two of them, they relate
only indirectly to the weather charm in Munich.
8 What is noteworthy is his mention of the
incorporation of a live frog on a leaf in certain
FIG. 4 (above):
Maximilian Buchner,
c. 1890.
Silver gelatin print.
Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich.
FIGS. 5a and b (right):
Weather charm.
Kaniet Islands. Before 1890.
Wood, bamboo, palm leaves, vegetal
fi ber, pigments. L: 53.5 cm.
Ex Dr. Max Buchner, Munich; Max
Thiel, Matupi.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich,
inv. B.1674.