Wilhelm Wostrack: Colonial Officer at the Namatanai Station in central New Ireland
Wilhelm Wostrack: Colonial Officer at the Namatanai Station in central New Ireland
By Rainer Buschmann
Wilhelm Carl Friedrich Wostrack (1870-1919) was a German colonial officer stationed in central New Ireland. He collected artifacts mostly for the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, donating close to 200 pieces to that institution. Wostrack was a Saxon native who had arrived in German New Guinea in the 1890s to work for the New Guinea Company. His training as a medic was very much in demand and in April of 1904, he was called upon by Governor Hahl to head the newly opened colonial station at Namatanai in central New Ireland. Namatanai was the second station to open on this vital island in the Bismarck Archipelago following that of Kavieng at the northern tip. Wostrack is sometimes overshadowed by the work of Franz Boluminski at Kavieng, who skillfully turned his ethnographic treasures into many German state decorations.
Wostrack’s career as collector predated his arrival at Namatanai as he collected stamps issued by the territory and natural scientific specimens--possibly to supplement his meager salary. He had also started collecting ethnographic artifacts and human remains for the Berlin Ethnographic Museum. Yet, it was during his tenure as station official at Namatanai that brought Wostrack right into the crosshairs of Karl von Linden in Stuttgart. It was in a 1906 collection of 87 artifacts assembled by both Wostrack and Albert Hahl that arrived in Stuttgart which contained four Uli figures that alerted Linden to these remarkable artifacts. While Franz Boluminski in Kavieng stood at the center of the Malagan festivities, Wostrack was in Namatanai near where the Uli festivities that produced the legendary figures having both distinctly male and female features. The German nascent ethnographic community referred to these figures as “hermaphrodites” (Zwitterfiguren).
Desperate to get a monopoly over these wonderful carvings, Linden continued to hound Wostrack--not realizing the tragic death of Wostrack’s first wife Wilhelmine after the birth of their second child (daughter Erika), had deeply impacted the colonial official. Despite such setbacks, Wostrack forwarded, in 1908, his second collection to Linden. It comprised 99 artifacts including eight Uli figures and a number of over-modeled skulls. What the collection lacked in quantity, it more than made up in quality. Not only did the collection contain many of the fabled Uli figures, it meticulously recorded the provenance of each artifact, a fact that was quite unique among resident collectors (such as the objects dispatched by Franz Boluminski from northern New Ireland…).
Uli Figure from the Stuttgart based museum, Linden Museum Digital, 45810
Wostrack would return to Germany on leave in 1908 and remarry. His second wife, Martha Zimmermann (1886-1971), would keep a detailed diary about her stay in Namatanai between 1909 and 1911. With his new wife and two kids, Wostrack would visit Linden in Stuttgart in February of 1909 to assist further in the deciphering of the Uli rituals and provide additional information about his collections. Pleased with these developments, Linden decided to encourage a decoration for Wostrack. The colonial official would receive the Knight’s Cross II class of the Order of Frederick from the Crown of Württemberg in late 1909.
Unfortunately, this was to be the only decoration he would receive before the Great War. Numerous individuals made an attempt to land Wostrack a Prussian decoration. Albert Hahl nominated him for the Kronen Orden IV class, the same decoration that was also suggested by Naval Expedition leader Emil Stephan to stir his collection activity away from Stuttgart towards Berlin. When Stephan first arrived at Namatanai, Wostrack regretted that he had donated his collection elsewhere, but promised the expedition leader to put a similar one together for Berlin within 18 months. Unlike that of Boluminki’s, Stephan was deeply impressed by Wostrack’s more systematic way of ethnographic collecting. Wostrack also promised to share his notes on ethnographic matters with Stephan, swaying the expedition leader to consider a decoration for the colonial official in the near future.
It is very probable that Wostrack would have obtained the decoration were it not for Stephan’s death and his own leave to Germany in 1908/09. Emil Stephan did most of his research from his base camp at Muliama in southern New Ireland and in May of 1908, he fell gravely ill of black water fever and was swiftly transported to Namatanai where it was hoped Wostrack and his medical training would provide a cure for Stephan. After arriving at Namatanai, however, Stephan died literally in Wostrack’s arms. Shortly after this event, Wostrack went on leave to Germany. Wilhelm Adelmann, Wostrack’s deputy, took over the Namatanai station and hosted Augustin and Elizabeth Krämer who succeeded Emil Stephan following his death. The timing could not have been worse, while Adelmann obtained a Prussian decoration through Krämer’s intervention, Wostrack, despite his early assistance to the Naval Expedition, did not.
Wostrack was to remain in his Namatanai post until 1912 when, following a home leave, he transferred to the Nauru station in 1913. However, his stay there was brief having been forced to surrender to an Australian warship in September of 1914. Shipped back to Rabaul and later to Sydney, Wostrack and his family were interned until 1915 when they were allowed to leave for the still neutral United States. Ultimately, he reached Germany and joined the medical corps for service in the Balkan campaigns of the First World War. At the end of the conflict, Wostrack, agreed to accompany German prisoners of war being repatriated from Russia. On the transport, Wostrack contracted typhus and passed away in 1919 in Leipzig.
Copyright Linden-Museum Stuttgart (Foto D. Drasdow)
Copyright Linden-Museum Stuttgart (Foto D. Drasdow)
