Wood (Alstonia), 92 cm high. These figures were used as a legal claim to territory during the Malangan rituals, of the north coast of New Ireland. The Malangan is a complex religious and philosophical concept central to the change of power and affirmation of the identity of clans. Malagan figures and masks are very elaborate and each one is completely different with certain recurring themes. The ownership of Malangan objects is similar to our concept of copyright; when a piece is sold, the seller transfers the right to use that particular Malangan style, the form in which it is made. This explains the wide variety, as more elaborate variations are made to replace the ones that have been sold. (VJ)

Provenance:
Collected by Austrian Fregat Captain Rudolph Brosch in 1894, for the 1893–1895 Austrian Imperial Expedition. Captain Brosch was an avid fencer and had persuaded the Viennese military administration make the tuitio of the Italian school of fencing mandatory by special military decree at the Theresian military academy, which was then taught by all military fencing instructors in the monarchy after 1895. In 1893, Captain Brosch was asked to join the Imperial expedition for to the South Seas under Commander Elder von Adamowicz on the S. M. Corvette “Fasana”, a three masted wooden sailship that went 5 times around the world between 1871 and 1895. Rudolph Brosch joined the final voyage from Pula, Italy. The Auckland Star from 1894 writes that captain Brosch stayed to recuperate from a fever in Batavia, Java and that he would rejoin the expedition in Sydney. The special expert for the Ethnographic research was the physician Dr. Alexander Kukic. Many of the objects collected ended up in the Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum ) in Vienna, a large “Godfigure”from New Ireland was purchased a year later from a later expedition. In 1895 Franz Ritter von Hauer wrote enthusiastically about the great importance of this expedition and the new additions to the Museum: These figures were used a a legal claim to territory during the Malangan rituals, of the north coast of New Ireland. The Malangan is a complex religious and philosophical concept central to the change of power and affirmation of the identity of clans.
Malagan figures and masks are very elaborate and each one is completely diferernt with certain recurring themes. The ownership of Malangan objects is similar to our concept of copyright; when a piece is sold, the seller transfers the right to use that particular Malangan style, the form in which it is made. This explains the wide variety, as more elaborate variations are made to replace the ones that have been sold.

Collected by Austrian Fregat Captain Rudolph Brosch in 1894, for the 1893-1895 Austrian Imperial Expedition.

Captain Brosch was an avid fencer and had persuaded the Viennese military administration make the tuition of the Italian school of fencing mandatory by special military decree at the Theresian military academy, which was then taught by all military fencing instructors in the monarchy after 1895.

In 1893, Captain Brosch was asked to join the Imperial expedition for to the South Seas under Commander Elder von Adamowicz on the S.M. Corvette “Fasana”, a three masted wooden sailship that between 1871 and 1895 went 5 times around the world. Rudolph Brosch joined the final voyage from Pula, Italy. The Auckland Star from 1894 writes that captain Brosch stayed to recuperate from a fever in Batavia, Java and that he would rejoin the expedition in Sydney.

The special expert for the Ethnographic research was the physician Dr. Alexander Kukic.
Many of the objects collected ended up in the Natural History Museum (naturhistorischen Hofmuseum ) in Vienna, a large “Godfigure” from New Ireland was purchased a year later from a later expedition. In 1895 Franz Ritter von Hauer wrote enthusiastically about the great importance of this expedition and the new additions to the Museum:

“The inventory for the Institute consisted of 857 numbers,327 are Solomon Islands numbers, 3o8 numbers (mostly arrows) from New Guinea. Also represented: New Britain (35 numbers), New Ireland (55 n.), the Admiralty Islands (63 n.), Samoa (18 n.), Mortlock (2 N.), several Malaysian objects, namely from Macassar and Amboina, and finally, some pieces of Ceylon”

Provenance:
Heritiers from Rudolf Brosch

-Auckland Star VOL. XXV.—No. 109. AUCKLAND, JN.Z.V TUESDAY, MAY 8,1894
- Jahresbericht für 1895, Dr. Franz Ritter v. Hauer