Umlauff, Heinrich (1869-1925)
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Mr.
Description
Heinrich Umlauff was the son of Johann Friedrich Gustav Umlauff (1833–1889), founder of the J. F. G. Umlauff Company. Founded in 1868, the Hamburg-based company specialised in selling natural-history and ethnographic pieces. After his father’s death, Heinrich Umlauff continued the family business with his brothers Theodor and Johannes (Penny, 2002, 103-105[228]; Thoda-Arora, 1992[229]). He... Read more
Heinrich Umlauff was the son of Johann Friedrich Gustav Umlauff (1833–1889), founder of the J. F. G. Umlauff Company. Founded in 1868, the Hamburg-based company specialised in selling natural-history and ethnographic pieces.
After his father’s death, Heinrich Umlauff continued the family business with his brothers Theodor and Johannes (Penny, 2002, 103-105; Thoda-Arora, 1992). He was in charge of the ethnographic branch of the company, which he developed until his death. His widow and daughters kept running the business from 1925 to 1974, even after a bombing raid on Hamburg in 1943 destroyed most of the ethnographic inventory (Buschmann).
The Umlauff Company purchased objects from ship crews and European residents in the colonies and also from museum officials who sold ‘duplicates’ of their existing collections. These museums also employed Umlauff to ‘plug ethnographic acquisition holes’ (Buschmann).
Heinrich Umlauff sold a great number of objects from the Kingdom of Benin under the name ‘J. F. G. Umlauff’ as early as 1899, two years after the British Military Campaign on Benin, and until the 1920s. These objects are now in the collections of the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen; MARKK, Hamburg; Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo; Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin; Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt; Linden-Museum, Stuttgart; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden; Buffalo Museum of Natural Sciences; Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich; Museum der Kulturen, Basel; and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.
Roles
DealerPlaces of contact
Hamburg, DEExternal biography links
Edo designations
English designations
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Provenance names
65 objects
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