Hartmut Krech

Beginning in my early youth, I have taken a deep interest in the cultures and history of North American Indians. I am convinced that cultural anthropologists are obliged first and foremost to act as interpreters and mediators of the cultures they study. It followed quite naturally for me, that I was the first in Germany who gave publicity to the recording and publishing of traditional Native American music by Native Americans themselves and also one of the first to write feature-length radio programs introducing American Indian music to German audiences. I also edited a volume of Native American autobiographies that saw three editions.

Between 1970 and 1978, I committed myself to the aims of the American Indian human rights movement, organizing public speaking engagements for Native American delegates, translating their messages and reconstructing for German audiences the wider theoretical and historical background to their cause. In 1973, I founded a non-profit organization for Native American and indigenous peoples' rights (Vierte Welt e.V.). At least six doctors of philosophy issued from the members of this group. The declared goals of this association were accomplished when an organization, that had been supported by Vierte Welt e.V. from its very beginnings (the International Indian Treaty Council), became the first Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) of any indigenous people anywhere in the world to be recognized by the United Nations. I very specially like to remember the joint effort with Professor Robert Jaulin (1928-1996) – author of books like Le Livre Blanc de l'Ethnocide and La Décivilisation, then holding the prestigious chair of ethnology at the University of Paris –, who distinguished me by calling me his "cher ami."

From this practical work of mediating cultural interests came the idea that the practice of cultural anthropology had to be studied within the wider context of communication studies, involving scientific observation and various forms of (re)presentation, including image and sound recording. Having developed the concept of a dynamic ethnology as the methodological basis for the Fourth World support group that I had founded, I began to study the history of anthropology from the perspective of communication and media studies. My doctoral dissertation, Ein Bild der Welt (An Image of the World), presented in 1984 and published in Constance in 1989, identifies a wide selection of primary sources, beginning with the invention of letter printing and leading up to the early years of photography. As one theoretical outcome of this exploration about the historical foundations of modern information society, I introduced the concepts of ethnopraxis and ethnotechnics as well as polysynthetic interpretation.

On the completion of my university studies, I served as a temporary research associate to the Uebersee Museum Bremen, organizing a collection of about 20,000 historical photographs. Next I electronically catalogued the collection of artworks at the Coburg House Municipal Art Gallery in Delmenhorst on historical and systematic principles. I remember with gratitude a brief affiliation as a volunteer assistant to the Museum of Mankind, The Ethnography Department of the British Museum, in London, where I was given the encouragement and support that are necessary preconditions for successful professional work.

In recent years, I filled assignments as an appointed professor (Lehrbeauftragter) at the universities of Bremen and Marburg, integrating internet communication and e-learning within the regular course work. The subjects of my courses related to the history of the cultural sciences and the concept of culture within the Western tradition, classical conceptions of human nature, the contribution of the German classics to cultural theory, theories of intercultural communication, cultural pragmatics, filmology, the anthropology of science, and theories of cultural anthropology in the 20th century.

I have travelled widely in Great Britain and northern Europe, around the Mediterranean Sea (Turkey, the Aegean, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Spain), and in the United States, and made my home in Japan for a couple of months. I have also worked as a free-lance journalist, contributing to public radio stations, science news agencies, and national newspapers, and I set up four internet platforms abstracting current international research findings from the fields of cultural anthropology and the history of science.

During the past three decades, my research has primarily been focussed upon the system of basic concepts and the disciplinary history of European science. In the course of these studies, I have become acquainted with the special collections of many research libraries and museums throughout Germany. I am still looking forward to find an academic setting for the publication of my historical research in the history of science and the humanities and welcome any serious offers from academic institutions or individuals willing to help me utilize my research findings on the forerunners of modernity within their cultural contexts.