He has researched and written extensively on Micronesian history and heritage.
During his presentation at American Memorial Park Visitor Center theater on Tuesday evening, he said the Sudsee Expedition led to the compilation of 23 published volumes of “amazing” materials including culture, traditions, customs, stories about Micronesia and Melanesia.
Spennemann said the researchers collected detailed information about indigenous cultures, including thousands of cultural artifacts and hundreds of photographs.
The expedition took place from 1908 to 1910 but preparations for it started in 1904.
Its objective was “to observe and record the final phases of an old, indigenous culture as long as it still had vitality and retained many remnants of old times that were little changed; and to collect objects and all aspects of people’s lives.”
The Micronesian team members included Augustin Kramer, Paul Hambruch, Ernest Sarfert, Hans Damm, and Kramer’s wife Elisabeth who was an artist, observer and ethnographer.
Spennemann said the team covered 45 islands from west to east in nine months. He said the German administrators realized that in order to run these islands, they had to understand their peoples.
“The administrators learned the local language very quickly. They observed what the people were doing and recorded them. Each of the administrators collected and published ethnographic specimen and systematically collected materials,” he said.
But because these administrators were not considered intellectuals, their work was never included in academic studies.
“The expedition leaders described everything they had observed. They were looking at food production, house construction, fishing, traditions, how the islands were shaped, etc.,” Spennemann said.
He said there is no library in all of Oceania that holds the files in one place. He said the materials are scattered and it takes years before a researcher can get hold of them.
Spennemann is currently translating two expedition volumes on the Central Carolines, the ancestral homeland of the CNMI’s Carolinian community. This is a NMI Humanities Council project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, call the council at 235-4785.
