Guest Talk Luisa Marten

15 December 2025, 16.15
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Oettingenstraße 67
80538 München

Luisa Marten (LMU München):

The Mailopu Archive: Discussing heritage in Maluku

Abstract
This talk presents initial findings from my recent fieldwork in Maluku (Indonesia), conducted between September and November of this year. Archival records (written documents, photographs, artefacts, maps and sound recordings) stored in LMU’s University Archive and various other museums in Germany, attest to the encounter of Markus Mailopu from the island Seram in today’s Maluku province, Indonesia with the II. Freiburg Moluccan Expedition, conducted by three German scientists (geologist Karl Deninger, anthropologist Odo D. Tauern and zoologist Erwin Stresemann) in 1910-1912. Over the past two years, I have curated these dispersed archival records in the digital “Mailopu Archive” in a methodological approach to decenter and pluralize the interpretation of its content. During my fieldwork in Maluku, I discussed this approach as well as the archive’s content with Mailopu’s descendants, tua adat (local knowledge holders), activists, artists, university members, and civil servants of cultural institutions. During these conversations, the Mailopu Archive was placed in the framework of cultural heritage. Following this impulse, I am presenting initial thoughts on how heritage is conceptualized and manifested as such by different actors in Maluku and how the Mailopu Archive and its content are discussed within that framework.

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