Ethnography in the metropole. The production of cultural forms of knowledge and the ethnographic knowledge milieu in Berlin (1900-1945)

Due to the fact that the big city turned only late into a field of research for ethnography, Berlin, this “laboratory” for modern and urban cultures at the beginning of the 20th century, may appear first as an a-typical place for the constitution of an ethnographic discipline. Indeed ethnographic researchers found first their objects of research, as collections of objects, habits and usages, songs, clothing, tales and forms of domestic life, mostly in the rural, peasant context. The rural population, they assumed, had preserved the traditions of German culture in their original and authentic form. On the other hand, Berlin as a stage for a new approach to cultural and social forms provided also for ethnography some particularly attractive opportunities for a thematisation, an institutionalisation and a presentation of its materials. It was precesely here that ethnography was able participate in processes of social self-description and in the design of not only regional and national, but also urban “identity policies”, by means of its modern documentation, representation and formating practices. The project investigates the complex relationships and influences between the metropole, ethnographic-ethnologic knowledge and the socially active people within the specifically Berlin context between 1900 and 1945, and attempts to extend the existing scientific narrative to include the relationships of ethnography with the city in a definitely scientific perspective. We search for indications on how ethnographers and ethnographic knowledge “move” within the synchronic and the diacronic perspectives of the urban context, and for the feed-back resonances on this knowledge. We examine two case studies as characteristic interfaces of the Berlin ethnographic milieus with other social groups, areas and practices. The thematic areas “clothing” and “home” are used to investigate how the urban areas of action of the ethnographic knowledge milieu take shape, through which forms of knowledge ethnographic knowledge spreads, such as exhibitions in museums and fairs, popular magazines or scientific colloquia, and to what extent all this may have an influence and contribute to the urban “habitus” and “habitat”.