Roland Carter and Leonhard Adam: Friendship in the Preservation of Ngarrindjeri Knowledge and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Focused around a 1929 publication of accounts of Ngarrindjeri history and culture provided by prisoner of war, Roland Carter, in Wünsdorf, Germany in 1918, to jurist and ethnographer, Leonhard Adam, this article examines the function of social connection, and dislocation, in the preservation of cultural heritage. In 1940, Adam was interned in Australia as an enemy alien. In 1947 the men briefly renewed contact, but, it seems, never met. This story of friendship and of shared interests demonstrates the labile and resilient nature of social connection as a mechanism in cultural heritage preservation.