The Hamburg Südsee (South Seas) Expedition, which sailed through Micronesia to document island peoples and their ways of life, was sponsored by the Hamburg Museum of Germany from 1909-1910. Five volumes about mainland Palau and two volumes about the Southwest Islands were written.
“The expedition gathered an enormous amount of information in a matter of months — from chiefly titles and oral histories per village, to illustrations and descriptions of material culture, to depicting many of the then-existent bai beams and the stories and symbols carved into them,” Thomas Schubert, German Honorary Consul to Palau, said.
The Kraemer Ethnography Translation Committee headed by Minister of Community and Cultural Affairs Faustina Rehurer-Marugg, which was formed comprising representatives from both nations, developed a two-year project proposal and has applied for funding from the Federal Foreign Office of Germany in 2009. This year, the Committee received a grant of 48,800 Euro in total. The grant will run from August 2010 to December 2012.
According to Schubert, “Translating these volumes from the German language of the early 1900s to modern English will make the information shared by Palauan ancestors available to the peoples of Palau and researchers in an unprecedented way.”
The agreement to launch the project was presented by German Ambassador to Palau Christian Ludwig Weber Lortsch and signed by Minister Rehurer-Marugg, following a Presidential Directive from President Johnson Toribiong.
“Contracts will be finalized and sent to experts in their fields of German and Palauan culture and history,” Schubert said. “Once the initial translations are completed, the work will be reviewed by both the Kraemer Ethnography Translation Committee as well as a network of local cultural and community experts.”
“This project will give the voices from Palau’s history new life,” Minister Rehuher-Marugg said.
