Endangered Archives: Provenance and Digitisation of the Elisabeth Seesemann Recordings (1906 to 1909)

Elisabeth Seesemann (1869–1957), a missionary teacher with the Leipziger Mission, first worked in Moshi (Kidia) and later in Mamba (Ashira). Between 1906 and 1909, she systematically documented the music and poetry of the Wachagga people of Kilimanjaro. Her recordings, now preserved at the Phonogramm-Archiv at Media Department of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, comprise more than 86 items, including over 68 distinct songs, some recorded multiple times with different singers on wax cylinders.

The collection covers a wide range of themes, including marriage, circumcision, agricultural work, warfare, and politics, as well as fairy tales, legends, and accounts of local events. It provides a rare perspective on everyday life and offers valuable insight into Wachagga society, particularly the Kimamba dialect of the period, showing how social life was expressed through song. Notably, many recordings focus on women’s experiences, such as anxieties surrounding circumcision, marriage, and moving to a husband’s family, making the collection especially distinctive. The recordings involved subjects whose lives were affected by colonial dynamics and included performers from the colonized community; their cultural expressions might have been influenced by colonial pressures or framed to appeal to European audiences. Furthermore, Seesemann mentions the names of some lead singers. Still, it is unclear whether the persons recorded consented to the recording or were aware of how the recordings would be used or displayed.

Until 2024, these recordings were unknown in Kilimanjaro. That year, Hartmut Andres visited Ashira parish to inform the community about Seesemann’s work. A workshop with Ashira elders, funded by the Leipziger Mission, was then held to discuss next steps, leading to the current project. This community-based provenance initiative emphasizes consultation with local communities and stakeholders on research and repatriation processes. It adopts an egalitarian approach, ensuring that all stakeholders can contribute to discussions on sensitivity and the rehumanization of precolonial intangible heritage held in Germany. As experience shows, translation in this context requires not only linguistic accuracy but also cultural sensitivity. The project aims to promote meaningful community involvement by ensuring that provenance research and repatriation are conducted collaboratively, respectfully, and with accessible, reliable information.

In the current project Hartmut Andres, Albrecht Wiedmann from Germany work together with Dr. Valence Silayo from Tanzania to make the recordings and background information accessible for the community. Key steps within the project are

· Research in various archives in Germany

· a fieldwork-based research phase at the Kilimanjaro

· two dissemination workshops in the region and

· a website or other resource that makes the recorded materials available locally

© Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin