Sources vs. Text: An “Integrated Edition of Sources”

Abstract

The aim of this note is to attract attention to a new venture in scholarly publication—Beatrix Heintze's Alfred Schachtzabel's Reise nach Angola, 1913-1914. Und seine Sammlungen für das Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Rekonstruktion einer Ethnographischen Quelle (Köln, 1995), the first issue of Afrika Archiv, a new series to be devoted to text editions. That this is not to be confused with an ordinary text edition is already intimated by the work's title, which translates as Alfred Schachtzabel's Voyage to Angola, 1913-1914, and his Collections for the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Reconstruction of an Ethnographic Source. In other words, it speaks of a “reconstruction” and “a source edition,” not “text edition.” As well, Heintze is described as the author of this book rather than the editor. Yet she presents the work as a new kind of edition—the “integrated edition of sources.”Heintze is an experienced text editor, having published both a voluminous conventional collection of documents and a set of ethnographic drawings. Yet when she examined the surviving documentation pertaining to Schachtzabel's expedition in Angola, she became convinced that a standard edition of all his work would be unwise. The unpublished materials at hand are too disparate and slender.