Afrika-Archiv: A New Series of the Frobenius Institute for the Purpose of Publishing Source Material

Extract

“[D]as Wirkungsvolle wird gepflegt, die Gewissenhaftigkeit schwindet; an Stelle der Fähigkeit zu bergründen, der Kraft zu überzeugen, tritt die Sicherheìt im Behaupten.”

[T]hat what impresses is cultivated, conscientiousness dwindles; the capability to explain, the power to convince are replaced by self-confidence in asserting.

There is nothing more absurd—yet also nothing more common—than a scholarly lifetime of publishing based on materials to which no one else has access.

The series “Afrika Archiv” (“Africa Archives”) was founded recently with the aim of publishing source material referring to the history and anthropology of Africa. In this connection the term “source material” shall be considered in a very broad sense. Thus, beside the usual library and other written sources, as well as written records of oral traditions, for instance, even editions of ethnographic collections or photographic documentation will be taken into consideration. African scholars will be able to publish material from their own countries to which we Europeans and Americans have only difficult access. Western scholars, on the other hand, could publish sources from public and private European or American archives, museums, or even widely dispersed articles in periodicals and newspapers on African history of the nineteenth century which are available only with great difficulty and expenditure of time. As a reviewer once commented, such source editions will still continue to be valued when contemporary interpretations have already long fallen into oblivion.

Endeavors to record systematically varied sources on the history of the continent, the cultural and scientific history of Africa, and to make the essentials generally available to the scientific public still appear inadequate.