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Academics - Anthropology

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Adam, Leonhard

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Agent TypePersonIdentifierUMA-AG-000001513Place of BirthBerlinActivities & OccupationsAcademics - AnthropologyGenderMaleHistoryLeonhard Adam was born on 16 December 1891 in Berlin, Germany. Adam studied at the Royal Frederick William Gymnasium, the Ethnological Museum, and the universities of Berlin and Greifswald. He was appointed judge in the provincial court, Berlin, and was also an academic lecturer and editor.

Adam was part Jewish, and in 1933, Nazi laws ended his career in Germany. In 1938, he went to the UK where he resumed his academic career at the University of London and published Primitive Art (1940). On 16 May 1940, he was classified as an ‘enemy alien’ and shipped on the Dunera to an internment camp in Australia.

The internment camp at Tatura, Victoria, held a number of eminent scholars. They organised their own ‘university’, the ‘Collegium Taturense’, and gave lectures to their fellow internees. Some Australians lobbied for Adam’s release, and on 29 May 1942 he was released to work at the National Museum of Victoria and the University of Melbourne, where he remained for the rest of his career. In 1943, he married Julia Mary Baillie.

He made field trips to central and northern Australia to study the art of indigenous Australians, and he argued for the acceptance of Aboriginal art as artistic equals to European art. His anthropological collections became the Leonhard Adam Ethnological Collection of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne.

Adam died in Bonn from heart disease on 9 September 1960.

Source: Greg Dening, ‘Adam, Leonhard (1891 - 1960)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A130699b.htmSearch records of this agent

Item

Correspondence

Drawing; tax return; orchestra booklet.

[1994.0060.00062] Photograph album of University of Melbourne expedition to Alice Springs area in May 1955, by David Corke.

Photographs and negatives from Indonesia and Netherlands

Photographs of African collection.

Photographs from the Laboratory of Anthropology and Brooklyn Museum

Picture of Cape Colony.

Scrapbook (newspaper clippings) and notebook.

Page proofs of Primitive Art

Primitive Art by Leonhard Adam, revised and enlarged edition, 1949, published by Pelican Books (Penguin Books)

Drafts and notes on Australia.

Manuscript on Aboriginal rock art

Manuscript of Chapter 8 [of Primitive Art]

Draft [of Primitive Art]

Revisions for 3rd edition of Primitive Art (1950s), in English.

Cartoon clippings, ‘The Bark Paintings of Groote Eylandt (Gulf of Carpentaria) in the Melbourne

[Articles on Anthropology; and art of the Aranda]

‘The Place of Anthropology in the Realm of Sciences and Arts’ in The Science Review, published by the Melbourne University Science Club.

Series

[UMA-SR-000000171] Correspondence of Leonhard Adam

[UMA-SR-000000087] Pictures and photographs

[UMA-SR-000000086] Newspaper clippings

[UMA-SR-000000085] Manuscripts and books

[UMA-SR-000000084] Articles and reports

[UMA-SR-000000083] Excerpts from other academics

[UMA-SR-000000082] Notes

[UMA-SR-000000081] Internment camp, Tatura

Accession

[2011.0013] Correspondence files of Leonhard Adam

[1994.0060] Papers of Leonhard Adam

Image

[University of Melbourne expedition to Alice Springs area]

Correspondence Roland W.Carter to Leonhard Adam and accompanying photograph of Roland W. Carter and Vera Carter

Place

Tatura Internment Camps

Dates

Date1891-1960

Names

Given NameLeonhardFamily NameAdam

University of Melbourne Archives

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Adam, Leonhard