Short Portrait: Günther Hartmann

Günther Hartmann
Günther Hartmann

Prof. Dr. em. Günther Hartmann was born in Berlin in 1924. His father worked as a chemist and due to his occupation the family often moved when Hartmann was a child. He had an early interest not only in the books of Karl May but started to read some classics works of Anthropology (e.g. Malinowski) as well as the books by Theodor Koch-Grünberg. In 1942 he finished school and began to study Anthropology in Leipzig, where Fritz Krause and Paul Germann were his main teachers.

In 1944 Hartman had to join the German Army and eventually became a prisoner of war. He was disbanded in 1945 and returned to his family, which lived in the Soviet Sector in Thuringia. Not having permission to complete his studies, Hartmann started to work in the newly founded company and private technical college of his father. After the death of his father Hartmann fully took over all business duties but since the equipment of his company was expropriated and brought to Russia, he moved to the western part of Berlin in 1950. There he not only tried to establish a new technical college but two years later also took up his studies again, namely at the newly founded Freie Universität. His regional focus was mainly on America; Richard Thurnwald, Sigrid Westphal-Hellbusch and several custodians of the Ethnographic Museum were among his teachers.

In 1956 Hartmann graduated and took up a voluntary position at the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin. Eventually he held a newly founded position at the very Museum, being the custodian for the region of South America. During the following years Hartman also worked at the Museums Department for North America and gave academic lectures at the Freie Universität. For many years he also was the head chairman of the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory (Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, BGAEU) as well as the editor-in chief of the anthropological journal Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (ZfE). Until his retirement Hartmann organized a various number of exhibitions at the Ethnographic Museum and moreover did several field researches, e.g. in Chile and Brasil.