Person

Eylmann, Erhard (1860 - 1926)

Born
3 September 1860
Krautsand?, Germany
Died
1926
Germany
Occupation
Ethnographer

Summary

Erhard Eylmann was a German ethnologist who worked in Australia between 1896 and 1912. He went on several expeditions which saw him cross the continent from Adelaide to Darwin and back. During this time Elymann, collected fossils (which he donated to the University of Bremen, Germany) and studied the life, culture and languages of the local Aborigines.

Details

Erhard Eylmann studied science and medicine at universities in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Leipzig and Würzburg, Germany. He and his wife Beate (nee Ruh) then moved to Cairo where they completed doctorates in philosophy (PhD) and medicine (MD). After the death of his wife, Eylmann returned to Germany (Berlin) in 1894 to take up studies in geology and ethnology. Almost immediately after completing his studies, Eylmann began a three year (?) expedition (1896 -1899) across Australia. He travelled by horseback, foot and train between Adelaide and Darwin and back. In 1908 he wrote "Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien" (The natives of the colony South Australia), which described the language, nature and culture of South Australia's Aborigines.

Published resources

Books

  • Eylmann, Erhard, A further translation of selected chapters of Dr Erhard Eylmann's Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Sudaustralie (The Aborigines of the colony of South Australia) (Canberra: Intellectual Property Publications, c.2002), 36 pp. Details
  • Eylmann, Erhard., Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Sudaustralien (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966), 494 pp. Details
  • Schröder, Wilfried, Ich Reiste wie ein Buschmann: Zum Leben und Wirken des Australienforschers Erhard Eylmann (Bremen: The author, 2002), 273 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Merlan, Francesca, 'The Australianist work of Erhard Eylemann in comparative perspective' in German ethnography in Australia, Peterson, Nicolas and Kenny, Anna, eds (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2017), pp. 275-99. Details
  • Schröder, Wilfried, 'Erhard Eylmann: ethnogrrapher and explorer' in Germans: travellers, settlers and their descendants in South Australia, Monteath, Peter, ed. (Kent Town, S.A.: Wakefield Press, 2011), pp. 188-203. Details

Journal Articles

  • Bunzendahl, O., 'Der Australien-Forscher Dr. Erhard Eylmann und seine Sammlung im Deutschen Kolonial-und Ubersee-Museum zu Bremen', Veroffentlichungen aus dem Deutschen Kolonial und Ubersee-Museum in Bremen, 2 (1) (1938), 33-80. Details
  • Monteath, Peter, 'Erhard Eylmann: a German anthropologist in Australia', Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 127 (1) (2015), 83-09, https://doi.org/10.1071/RS15008. Details
  • Monteath, Peter, 'Erhard Eylmann's missionary position', Anthropological Forum, 27 (3) (2017), 240-55. Details
  • Schröder, Wilfried, 'Erhard Eylmann: a Pioneer of Exploration and Anthropology in Australia', Anthropological Forum, 14 (2004), 43-51. Details

Resources

Annette Alafaci

EOAS ID: biogs/P004499b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 February (Kooyang - Gariwerd calendar)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#kooyang
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004499b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260