Picking Over the Bones: Amalie Dietrich and Colonial Queensland

Comment on Stefanie Affeldt and Wulf D. Hund: "From ‘Plant Hunter’ to ‘Tomb Raider’. The Changing Image of Amalie Dietrich"

From ‘Plant Hunter’ to ‘Tomb Raider’: The Changing Image of Amalie Dietrich

In the context of her bicentenary in 2021, Amalie Dietrich will again be celebrated as a feminist paragon or condemned as a racist culprit. Her stay in Australia will be central to these contrasting approaches to her biography. There, she gathered a remarkable amount of native plants, animals, ethnological everyday objects – and human remains. In this context, she was subjected to suspicions of incitement in murder early on and to allegedly critical investigations concerning her role in the anthropological desecration of corpses in recent times. In this paper, we contribute some arguments to the clarification of this controversial subject. It focuses on the treatment of image of Amalie Dietrich in the German discourse from the Kaiserreich via the Weimar Republic, the fascist ‘Reich’, the Federal Republic as well as the Democratic Republic to reunited Germany. As a result, we argue that a critical biography of Amalie Dietrich must integrate the appreciation of her contribution to botany and zoology with a critique of her role in the racist history of anthropological grave robbery and desecration of human remains.

Translating the History of Race: Indigenous Australian Literature in German

German interest in, and reception of, Indigenous Australian cultures have a long and also burdened history. With the emergence of German translations of Indigenous literature in the 1980s – that is, literature not about, but penned by, Indigenous authors – one-sided politics of representations and thus also stigmatised images started to change. Yet, the translation of literature per se does not simply entail a representation free of clichés and prejudices. Cultural knowledge cannot be simply rendered ‘correct’ according to the regimes of the source culture, but need to be adapted to the regimes of the target cultures. This article focuses on the ways the manifold concepts of race have been translated into three German audiobooks. Important aspects of race, it shows, have been lost in translation, while the racial history of the target culture poses new challenges for a literature that is intricately enmeshed with race and that seeks to rebut racism.

Australian Bushfires: Current trends, causes, and social-ecological impacts

Bushfires are common events in Australia reaching their peak each summer season. However, the last bushfire season from July 2019 until March 2020 was unprecedented. An estimated area between 240,000 up to 400,000 km² burned, with the southeast coast being particularly affected. The images of burnt flora and fauna and the fires that raged for months went around the world. It became clear how vulnerable both Australia’s communities and ecosystems are to this natural hazard, which is becoming more frequent and intense. Australia’s southeast is increasingly vulnerable against the often sudden event of bushfires. This article discusses the current trends, causes for this extreme fire season, the socio-economic and ecological impacts, and the resulting adaptation processes.

Die Demaskierung des Virus oder die Konstruktion einer historischen Analogie: Der Pressespiegel des Dr. John Howard L. Cumpston und die ‘Spanische Grippe’ von 1918-1920 in Australien

At least 15,000 Australians died as a result of the so-called ‘Spanish Flu’ between 1918 and 1920. The administrative strategies for containment remained primarily the responsibility of the government authorities – successes and failures in fighting the pandemic correlated with the degree of harmonization between medical advice, official rules and civic responsibility. Dr. John Howard L. Cumpston who in 1921 became the first Australian Director-General of the Department of Health created a large volume of press cuttings on the influenza epidemic. This set ’appears to have been collected for use in the preparation of a series of official pamphlets‘. Today, this press kit sheds light on Australia’s contemporary view of the ’Spanish Flu‘. The following analysis illustrates Australia’s response to the spread of the virus (also with regard to the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic after exactly 100 years) under the aspects of collective action and individual denial – without arguing for a historical analogy.