STARTING WITH MARCH 2018
SCIENCE AND ETHNICITY. AUSTRIAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN BANAT IN THE 1930S
The exhibition will consist of the material gathered by Austrian researchers Josef Weninger (Margarete Weninger, Eberhard Geyer, Dora Maria Könner, Robert Routil and Albert Harrasser in the Swabian town of Marienfeld (Teremia Mare) of Banat, in 1933 and 1934. The Vienna Natural History Museum has provided this material, which will be exhibited in Romania for the very first time.
The Viennese material on Marienfeld will be accompanied by other documents tied to the biological issues of Saxons of Transylvania from the same period, based especially on the work of Doctor Heinrich Siegmund and the research of anthropologist Viktor Lebzelter in Transylvania, who was the director of the Natural History Museum of Vienna’s Anthropology Department in the 1930s.
There will also be a film in the exhibition, produced by Viennese artist Nicole Prutsch, titled Massnahme (2013), dedicated to the research of anthropologist Josef Weninger, who led the team of Austrian researchers.
Aside from the scientific aspect linked to the anthropological research focusing on German communities in Banat and Ardeal, the exhibition aims to familiarise the public and young generations with local and regional history, in the hope that a better awareness of this history regarding German communities will contribute to an improved acknowledgement of the common Romanian-German history in these regions.
The exhibition organisers are Professors Marius Turda (Oxford), Maria Techler-Nicola (Vienna), and Adrian Majuru (Bucharest), representing the collaboration between the following institutions: the Bucharest Municipality Museum, the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria, the Centre for Medical Humanities, Oxford Brookes University, UK, the University of Oxford, UK and the Arts & Humanities Research Council, UK.
Marius Turda