From Wise Old Men to Educated Young Elites: The Changing Role of the Interlocutors and Translators of Adolf Ellegard Jensen and Eike Haberland in Southern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT:The German anthropologists Adolf Ellegard Jensen and Eike Haberland, both former directors of the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt, carried out research in southern Ethiopia between the 1930s and 1970s. In addition to their numerous publications, extensive archive material from a wide range of media (photos, films, diaries, letters, manuscripts, etc.) bear witness to this today. Although Jensen and Haberland, like most anthropologists at the time, reflected little on their research methods and circumstances in their publications, the dense and complementary documentation of their research allows us to take a closer look at it today. In this article, I use archival material to examine the role that interlocutors and translators played in Jensen and Haberland’s research. As the research took place over a period of 40 years, I also show how these roles changed over time.