Augustin Kraemer

Augustin Friedrich Kraemer or Krämer (27 August 1865 – 11 November 1941) was a German naturalist and ethnographer. Augustin Kraemer was a Navy surgeon who worked in the Polynesia in 1893–95 and 1897–99.

He wrote the Palau sections of Georg Thilenius five-volume ethnographic documentation of the Hamburg Südsee Expedition, which sailed through Micronesia to record the island peoples and their way of life during the early 1900s (Palau, Ergebnissse der Südsee-Expedition, herausgegeben von Dr G. Thilenius 1926, Hamburg). His second voyage is described in Hawaii, Ostmikronesien und Samoa. Meine zweite Südseereise (1897–1899) zum Studium der Atolle und ihrer Bewohner published in Stuttgart by Strecker & Schröder, 1906.

Photograph of Traditional house and canoe taken in Nauru by Kraemer

Hawaii, Ostmikronesien und Samoa. Meine zweite Südseereise

His extensive study of Samoan culture contained in Die Samoa Inseln (1903) is revered by the modern Samoans because of the detailed genealogies, village honorifics (fa'alupega), and details of chiefly rhetoric he included. However, linguistic analysis of his diaries indicates that he had extensive assistance of a Samoan chief, Tofā Sauni. The depth of this involvement by Tofā Sauni in Krämer's study should have led to him being a co-author of the volume by modern ethical standard in ethnography.[1][2]

References

1. Sanjek, Roger (1993). "Anthropology's Hidden Colonialism: Assistants and Their Ethnographers". Anthropology Today. 9 (2): 13. doi:10.2307/2783170.
2. Clifford, James (1983-04-01). "On Ethnographic Authority". Representations. 2: 118–146. doi:10.2307/2928386. ISSN 0734-6018.

External links

• The Samoa Islands, Vol. 1, Constitution, Pedigrees, and Traditions, Augustin Kramer, English translation by Theodore Verhaaren. University of Hawaii Press.
• The Samoa Islands, Vol. 2, Material Culture, Augustin Kramer, English translation by Theodore Verhaaren. University of Hawaii Press.
• BHL Über den Bau der Korallenriffe

Further reading

• Mönter, Sven: Dr. Augustin Krämer: A German Ethnologist in the Pacific. University of Auckland, thesis 2010
• Cox, Mary Elisabeth: "Indigenous Informants or Samoan Savants? German Translations of Samoan Texts in Die Samoa-Inseln." Pacific Studies 32 (1): 23–47. 2009.