Benutzerin:Anne Lida Langbehn/Eric Mjöberg

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Vorlage:Importartikel/Wartung-2025-01

Eric Mjöberg around 1920

Eric Georg Mjöberg (* 6 August 1882 in Ås, Gemeinde Varberg, Provinz Halland, Schweden; † 8. Juli 1938 in Stockholm) war ein schwedischer Zoologe und Ethnograph, der am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts die erste schwedische wissenschaftliche Expedition nach Australien leitete und in Indonesien arbeitete.

Leben (alles überprüfen)

Von 1903 bis 1906 arbeitete Mjöberg bei einer entomologischen Forschungseinrichtung. Zwischen 1902 und 1909 reiste er zu Studienzwecken durch Schweden. 1903 und 1910 war er wiederholt am Naturhistoriska riksmuseet in Stockholm tätig. In den Jahren 1907 bis 1909 lehrte er an verschiedenen höheren Schulen in Stockholm. Mjöberg erlangte 1908 ein Lizenziat der Universität Stockholm und promovierte 1912 an der Universität Lund.

Er leitete 1910/11 die erste schwedische Expedition nach Australien, die ihn in den Nordwesten des Kontinents führte. 1912/13 folgte eine weitere Expedition nach Queensland.

1916 und 1917 befand er sich auf einer Vorlesungsreise in den Vereinigten Staaten. Mjöberg arbeitete von 1919 bis 1922 für die Forschungsstation in Deli, Sumatra (heute Medan). 1920 war er schwedischer Konsul in Sumatra. Von 1922 war er Kurator des Sarawak State Museum auf Borneo. Darüber hinaus arbeitete er für mehrere schwedische Museen. Eine weiterer Studienaufenthalt in den Vereinigten Staaten währte von 1921 bis 1925.

Expeditionen nach Australien

In the early 1900s Mjöberg set off to the Kimberley region of Western Australia in an attempt to prove his Darwinian human evolution theory. What he did not know was that his expedition would have dire repercussions for years to follow for indigenous Australians, and for himself. In Western Australia, Mjöberg became obsessed with the Aboriginal people, and what started off as collecting native flora and fauna for research, soon led to the desecration of sacred burial grounds and the smuggling of human remains back to Sweden.

Historians have described Mjöberg as aggressive, arrogant and devious, a leader who made enemies with local Aboriginal people, pastoralists and even his own scientific team.

After 1911, he made a second expedition to Australia's east coast: Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, removing one set of remains from each.

Controversy

The 1915 publication of his diaries about the 1910 expedition exposed his unethical and illegal collection of material from Australia. Most of the material kept in Sweden's Museum of Ethnography was brought there between 1910 and 1911. Swedish anthropologist Claes Hallgren of Dalarna University wrote the book Two Travellers – Two Pictures of Australia, examining Mjoberg's methods, prompting an ethical debate that led the Swedish Government to contact the Australian authorities. Ninety years after their removal, his great-niece Lotte Mjöberg, a journalist in Stockholm, initiated the return of skeletons to the Aboriginal people in September 2004. Aboriginal elders travelled to Stockholm to receive the remains and start the process of spiritual healing. Spokesman for the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, Neil Carter said: "The belief is that once a burial ground has been disturbed, the spirits and the country will not rest until the remains have been brought back." Aborigines believe that the spirit of the departed cannot go on into the afterlife if the bones are disturbed. Eighteen boxes containing bones, believed to include the skeletons of two small children, were sent to the National Museum of Australia for identification before being interred at their traditional lands.

Taking them without permission, Mjöberg passed them off as kangaroo bones to get them out of the country. His attitude was representative of the Social Darwinism of the times according to Dr Hallgren, who writes that the popular "Gothic Horror" presentation, and demonising Aborigines was the context and "justification" for Mjöberg's hunting for skeletons. It was designed to impress his audience of his work as an adventurer.

Decline

Mjöberg died in poverty in Stockholm after a long, undiagnosed illness during which he had constant nightmares reflecting his experiences in the Kimberleys, including a sense of being pursued by Aboriginal people and contact with the Wondjina – creation spirits of the Dreamtime. During this time he was forced to sell part of his collection. Despite his ill health he managed to write an account of this experience.

In the Australian documentary Dark Science, an elder explains that the spirits give intruders a hard time, making them sick, but that Aboriginal people know ways to forestall these effects, and that outsiders do not.

Dedikationsnamen

Vaccinium mjoebergii J.J.SM. (Ericales: Ericaceae)

Uperoleia mjobergii (Andersson, 1913) (Anura: Myobatrachidae)

Austruca mjoebergi (Rathbun, 1924) (Decapoda: Ocypodidae)

Mjöbergs Winkelkopfagame (Gonocephalus mjobergi Smith, 1925), (Squamata: Agamidae)

Glaphyromorphus mjobergi (Lönnberg & Andersson, 1925) (Squamata: Scincidae),

Philautus mjobergi Smith, 1925 (Anura: Rhacophoridae),

Arthrorhabdus mjobergi Kraepelin, 1916 (Scolopendromorpha: Scolopendridae)

Leptobrachella mjobergi Smith, 1925 (Anura: Megophryidae),

Neobidessodes mjobergi (Zimmermann, 1922) (Coleoptera: Dytiscidae)

Publications

As well as numerous contributions to the scientific literature, he wrote:

• Bland vilda djur och folk i Australien, his travel account, Bonnier, Stockholm, 1915. Translated as Among Wild Animals and People in Australia by Margareta Luotsinen and Kim Akerman, Hesperland Press, 2012 Vorlage:ISBN
• Mjöberg, E. G. (1930). Forest Life and Adventures in the Malay Archipelago. Allen & Unwin: London.

Further reading

Jeanette Greenfield, The Return of Cultural Treasures (Third Edition), Cambridge Press, London, 2007, p. 310

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[[Category:Swedish curators]] [[Category:20th-century Swedish zoologists]] [[Category:Swedish ethnographers]] [[Category:Explorers of Australia]] [[Category:1882 births]] [[Category:1938 deaths]]