When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War:

The Cumbersome (Re-)Birth of sief in 1964

Bjarne Rogan
University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract
In September 1964, la Commission Internationale des Arts et Traditions Populaires
(ciap)the international organization for folklore and ethnology, was renamed sief
(la Socit Internationale dEthnologie et de Folklore). Its bylaws were changed and a
new executive Board elected. This change took place after a period of decline for ciap
and years of hard debate. Formal issues were the question of the name, the membership
structure, and the affiliation to unesco. What was at stake however was the unity
of the discipline, that is whether ethnology and folklore should be regarded as two independent disciplines or as different specialities of one common disciplinea unified
European ethnology, as well as the relationship to anthropology. One faction was led
by the German folklorist Kurt Ranke and the other by the Swedish ethnologist Sigurd
Erixon. The article presents the background, that is the troubled history of ciap and
the difficult situation in the late 1950s, and it discusses the train of events that led to
the putsch in Athens in September 1964, when the Ranke faction won and the idea of
a unified discipline was shot down for several decades.

The Winner Writes the History

n September 2014, the Socit Internationale dEthnologie et de Folklore (sief)
celebrated its 50th anniversary. From one point of view, the age is correct
and the date correctly chosen. sief got its name and its bylaws at a meeting
in Athens on September 8-9, 1964. From another point of view, it was a rebirth
or a rejuvenation that took place, rather than a birth. The adventure started in
1928, and the society was 86 years old at the time of its demicentennial.
When ciap (la Commission des Arts et Traditions Populaires) became sief during two September days in 1964, the victorious parties were careful to present the passage as a legal and democratic transition. On the one hand, they
claimed that a new organization was born, on the other hand, they claimed
the full heritage, material and immaterial, of the old organizationarchives,
treasury, working-groups or commissions, even its unesco affiliation; that is,

23

Cultural Analysis 13 (2014): 23-50

2015 by The University of California
All rights reserved

Bjarne Rogan

everything except the name. Even its rather somnolent scholarly life, which
the new leaders had wanted to escape from, continued more or less as before.
Hence, the debated question of the age of sief. The societys roots certainly
go back to a meeting in Prague in October 1928. But do a change of name and
amended bylaws make a new organization?
The transition was by no means a peaceful one. There are two scholars who
were especially central in the tug-of-war around ciap in the early 1960s, which
ended with a putsch in Athens. One was Sigurd Erixon (1888-1968), professor of ethnology in Stockholm and research director of the Nordiska Museet.
Swedens most influential ethnologist through more than a generation, Sigurd
Erixon was the founder of several international scholarly journals (Folk-Liv,
Laos, Ethnologia Europaea). He was very active on the European scene from the
early 1930s to the late 1960s, and to most European scholars his name was
synonymous with European ethnology. For Erixon, European (regional)
ethnology comprised the fields of material, social and spiritual culture; to
him, folkloristics was a branch of the discipline, and not a discipline in its own
righta position that brought him much opposition from folklorists.
The other protagonist was the German Volkskundler Kurt Ranke (19081985), professor of folklore first in Kiel and from 1960 in Gttingen. Ranke had
a dubious past from the war, but he rose quickly in the post-war hierarchy of
German Volkskunde and became one of the leading folk narrative scholars of
his time. He founded the journal Fabula, an encyclopaedia on international
narrative researchDie Enzyklopdie des Mrchens, as well as the world-embracing International Society for Folk Narrative Research (isfnr, 1962).
Erixon and Ranke each had their groups of adherents. Both parties claimed
democratic idealsErixon wanted formal representation and safe election
procedures (but accepted individual members in addition); the other wanted
an open society with membership for everyone. That was the front issue. But a
complex of other motives lurked underneath these ideals.
I call the Athens event a putsch, because in fact it was not members of ciap
who voted on the change. The majority of the voters were members of Kurt
Rankes two-years old isfnr, which hosted ciaps General Assembly in September 1964.
The Key, the Questions and the Sources
Looking at the past, it is the historians privilege to observe the results of an
action or a train of events. The key to what happened in Athens in 1964 is as
follows:

24

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

The concrete results of the putsch were that

The membership structure was changed, from a commission constituted by
elected national representatives to a society consisting of individual members.
A restricted number of official national representatives were replaced by an
unlimited number of individuals, with no control of scholarly qualities or
affiliation.
The name was changed from one defining the scholarly field to one saying
something about disciplines.
The further consequences were that
The independence of the separate disciplines of ethnology and folklore was
asserted, and the idea of a unified discipline was effectively shot down.
As the new structure was contrary to unescos requirements, the financial
basis was strangled.
The European scholarly world of ethnology and folklore was split, with
the Erixon/Ethnologia Europaea camp (ethnologists and some folklorists)
against a predominantly folkloristic sief.
A new journal, independent of siefEthnologia Europaeawas founded.
sief entered some somnolent decades, and the working-groups began their
independent lives, some liberating themselves from sief.
The questions that remain to be discussed are the hows and whys. ciap had
been Sigurd Erixons long-time concernand headache. Why did Kurt Ranke
want to take control of ciap, an organization that most German Volkskundler
had neglected for decades? Why was ciap so important for a Volkskundler who
had a firm grasp of another international organization (isfnr)? And how was
it possible for this folklorist to win a resounding victory over the internationally experienced ethnologist Sigurd Erixon? History is formed by individual
actors as well as by structures. This discussion includes some reflections on
elements of a more structural kindlike the amateur movement and membership organization.
Before we approach these questions, a presentation of the history of ciap
is in order. Without ciaps troubled past as a backdrop, the events in the 1960s
are difficult to digest. The main source material is correspondence, notes and
memorandums, minutes from meetings, etc. The archives of ciap and sief are
spread between many institutions, as the presidency and the secretariat of ciap
have moved around. I have had access to important collections of material in
Stockholm (Nordiska museet), Paris (Le Muse des Arts et Traditions Popu-

25

Bjarne Rogan

laires/mnatp, unesco), Amsterdam (Meertens Instituut), Arnhem (Nederlands Openluchtmuseum), and Lisbon (Museum Nacional de Ethnologia), in
addition to smaller public and private archives in Oslo, Uppsala, Dublin, Vienna, and Gttingen. Some of these archives are now being brought together
at the Meertens Instituut in Amsterdam, which is presently in charge of siefs
secretariat (including the mnatp archives from Georges Henri Rivire, the Rotterdam archives from Karel Constant Peeters, copies of parts of the epistolary
collections from Sigurd Erixon and Jorge Dias).
ciap Until the 1960sThe Short Version of a Troubled History
The roots of ciapla Commission des Arts et Traditions Populairesgo back to

October 1928, when the League of Nations after much hesitation gave the green
light for a congress on folk art, to be arranged in Prague by its sub-organization for cultural affairslInstitut International de Coopration Intellectuelle (iici).
ciap was the earliest general organization of ethnology and folklore in Europe.
The late 1920s and the 1930s were a difficult period in European politics, with
nationalist movements, unemployment, and the rising of Nazi, fascist and
communist regimes. The League of Nations was ambivalent; it wanted to use
cultureand the 1928 congressin the service of peace, coexistence and mutual understanding. But at the same time it feared what a discipline like folklore might offer of ammunition to belligerent parties on the European interwar
scene (Rogan 2007, 2008a, 2014). This fear emerges clearly from personal notes,
memos and correspondence between the iici officials and some participants.
The Belgian participant, Albert Marinus, gives a fuller explanation (Actes []
1956, 18):
You have perhaps observed that the word folklore was used neither
for the congress nor for the commission [ciap] that came out of it. The
simple reason is that to the former League of Nations, the word folklore was banished, just as was the word ethnography. Actually, they
believed that the word folklore would give stuff to political claims,
and that the populations would not resist from claims, with reference
to similarities in costume, songs, etc. Such attitudes were to be feared
especially for disputed regions between neighbouring countries.
The event was attended by 200-300 participants, and a battle was fought both
during and after the congress on how to follow up. There was a deep cleavage
between the scholars who wanted to establish a scholarly organization, and
those (mostly bureaucrats and official national representatives) who wanted

26

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

an organization with more practical cultural aims. The delegates of the League
of Nations preferred no organization at all, but they found an organization
controlled by iici to be the lesser evil.
Through the 1930s ciap was under the strict control of the Leagues suborganization for cultural cooperation, for its administrative as well as its scholarly activities.1 In addition, the declining prestige and influence of the League
itself in the interwar years were detrimental to its sub-organizations, ciap included. ciaps first president was German (1928-1933, Otto Lehmann) and the
second, Italian (1933-1938, Emilio Bodrero). Otto Lehmann (1865-1951) was
an educationalist and museologist and director of the Altonaer Museum near
Hamburg. Emilio Bodrero (1874-1949) was a central politician and specialist in
Greek philosophy and political history. From 1940 he got a chair in Rome in the
storia e dottrina del fascismothat is, the history and the doctrines of Fascism. Neither of them made noteworthy contributions to ciap, and both were
forced to retreatfirst Lehmann when Germany withdrew from the League
(1933) and then Bodrero when Italy withdrew (1937). If ciap had been a lame
duck under the League in the early 1930s, it became paralyzed by the political
situation in the late 1930s.
Post-war life in ciap started in an optimistic pitch. After a preliminary
meeting in Geneva in 1945 and a General Assembly in Paris in 1947, ciap was
given a new startwith new bylaws and a new structure. At the 1947 conference in Paris, the around 60 delegates boiled over with enthusiasm. There was
a unanimous will to be a strictly scientific organization, without the intervention of governmental authorities and to escape all the traps that the old
ciap had fallen into. At the same time there was an unrealistic optimism about
activities to be started, the creation and recreation of ethnological institutions
after the war, the use of the discipline to reconstruct the rural zones of Europe,
etc.2 The president elected in 1947, Salvador de Madriaga (1886-1988) Spanish diplomat, politician and professor of Spanish literaturewas a fervent
pacifist and anti-fascist who had fled the Franco regime. With no knowledge
whatsoever of ethnology or folklore, he functioned only as a symbolic head of
ciap (Rogan 2013, 98-100, 105).
In 1947 ciap had started out on its own, with an independent status in
relation to the United Nations and unesco, the successor to the League of
Nations. But with no funding there were no activities. Two years passed when
nothing happened, so a change of policy was necessary. In 1949 ciap joined
a group of international scholarly organizations to found the unesco organ
cipshle Conseil International de Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines. As a member of cipsh, ciap could find some funding for its scholarly projects.

27

Bjarne Rogan

The driving force in the scholarly activities of ciap in the 1950s was Sigurd
Erixon. At the outset Erixon was sceptical of ciap, but he saw the unesco affiliation as a golden opportunity to gain economic support for research projects
and in 1949 he made Sweden join ciap. He never wanted to preside over ciap
himself, but he held a predominant position through the presidency of several
of its commissions and through his repeated initiatives to make ciap function
betternot least as a tool for building bridges between all the heterogeneous
national varieties of ethnology, ethnography and folklore.
Erixon was in charge of ciaps dictionary, a work that took more than 15
years to complete (Rogan 2013, 131-34). The dictionary had originally been
proposed by Arnold van Gennep (Paris) and was published in two volumes;
one by ke Hultkrantz (Uppsala) on ethnological terms (1961) and one by
Laurits Bdker (Copenhagen) on folkloristic concepts (1965).
The most tangible result in other fields was the Internationale Volkskundliche
Bibliographie (IVB). The bibliography had been a Swiss-German project since
1917, with Swiss editors and German or Swiss publishers. In 1949 ciap took
over responsibility through its bibliography commission, with the Swiss Volkskundler Paul Geiger and later Robert Wildhaber as editors (Rogan 2013, 119-21).
It should be noted, however, that the scholarly commissions of ciap were
small and they differed from the later sief commissions. They consisted of
three to ten specialists, appointed by the Board. Two of the commissionsthe
ones for the dictionary and the bibliographyreceived support from unesco and worked for a concrete outputthe annual or biannual (and always
strongly delayed) bibliographies, and the (likewise delayed) dictionaries.
Erixon also presided over ciaps most active commission, the one on cartography. The cartography commission worked for the coordination of national atlas projects and practices, through homogenization of techniques and
methods, common questionnaires and topics, and with a European atlas of
popular culture as a distant goal (Rogan 2013, 121-131).3 Other commissions of
ciap tended to lead their own lives, more or less independent of the organization, and their activities are difficult to trace, as they neither received support
nor reported back.
It was also Erixon who edited ciaps journal Laos, until unesco stopped
supporting it in 1955 (Rogan 2013, 115-18). In vol. I (1951) he presented his
visions for the discipline. He saw regional ethnology as a branch of general
ethnology, applied to civilized peoples, their social grouping and their complex cultural conditions. Having abandoned his pre-war behaviourist and
functionalist ideas, Erixon now found his inspiration in American cultural anthropology or culturology, with its concepts of culture areas, folk culture

28

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

versus mobile culture, culture centres and ways of diffusion, acculturation

and assimilation. His references are first and foremost American cultural anthropologists. He proposes a historical and comparative study of a field that
embraces urban and industrial societies, societies in transformation as well as
traditional societies. He advocates a study of culture in its three dimensions
space, time and social strata. The theoretical apparatus is that of diffusionism,
and cartography is the tool par excellence. Such was the scientific programme
that he recommended for Laos, for ciap and for European (regional) ethnologyand which he also advocated through his cartography commission.4
On the organizational side, however, ciap was struggling. The strict iici
administrative regime before the war had been replaced in 1947 by lax management. Between 1947 and 1953, the Board and the General Assembly convened only oncewhen Erixon hosted a congress in Stockholm in 1951: The
International Congress of European and Western Ethnology.5 Erixon encouraged
the congress to discuss more efficient international cooperation, but the debate
was inconclusive. When Salavador de Madriaga resigned from the presidency
shortly afterwards, ciap was thrown into a new crisis.
Several factors contributed to the crisis: a legitimacy dispute in the presidency, criticism from unesco of bad administrative management, missing archives, and delays in the publication programs. Disorder in the accountancy
(project subventions)6 was discovered and ciap was threatened with examination by the unesco audit experts.7 The general secretary was forced to resign
for not following up the decisions of the Board,8 for disorder in the finances
and on suspicion of embezzlement.9
Behind the crisis another set of interrelated problems may be discerned: the
economic situation and the membership structure. Membership in post-war
ciap was first based on individual membership (1947-1953) and then on national committees (1954-1964). More will be said about this below, but in both
cases it turned out to be impossible to collect the yearly fees. ciap had no other
resources than the limited and earmarked project subventions from unesco.
Two persons who managed to keep above the quarrels in the secretariat
were Sigurd Erixon and Georges Henri Rivire, the leader of le Muse National
des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris. During two conferences, in Namur in
1953 and Paris in 1954, they managed to restore order and to gain support for
reorganization (Rogan 2013).
Erixon was urged to stand for the presidency in 1954, but be preferred the
rank of ordinary member of the Executive Board. Instead he launched another
candidate, the folklore professor Reidar Th. Christiansen from Oslo, who was
electedand who would remain ciaps president for the next ten years. Jorge

29

Bjarne Rogan

Reidar Th. Christiansen, ciap president from 1954 to 1964 (left), having a relaxed chat with ciap
Board member Stith Thompson from Bloomington, Indiana, probably 1960. Stith Thompson participated at the Brussels meeting in 1962. Place and photographer unknown. Photo from the collection of Elin Christiansen Smit.

Dias, professor of ethnology in Lisbon, was elected to the office of general

secretary, and as treasurer, Ernst Baumann, a folklorist from Basel. Jorge Dias
(1907-1973), who held the same view as Erixon on European ethnology, was an
efficient administrator as well as an excellent scholar. When Erixon proposed
Christiansen for the presidency, it was probably because Christiansen was a
folklorist who regarded folklore and ethnology as two faces of the same coin
(Rogan 2012a). Erixon knew only too well that the great majority of European
folklorists opposed his vision for a common discipline. With Christiansen to
front ciap, Erixon would have better chances to reach his goal.
At the Arnhem congress in September 1955 and the follow-up symposium
in Amsterdam, optimism still reigned after the remoulding of ciap in 1954
(Rogan 2011). The congress was hosted by Winand Roukens but organized by
Dias. The scholarly focus was on cartography and a European atlas of popular
culture, and there was an important debate on the profile and scope of Euro-

30

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

pean ethnology and the naming of the discipline, especially whether the term
folklore should be used. The follow-up symposium in Amsterdam just after
the congress stated in a recommendation10 that the term folklore should be
used on a national level, in countries where there was a tradition for this designation, whereas the name on the international level should be ethnology,
for a field embracing spiritual, material and social culture. If desired, the qualifying epithet regional or national might be used, to distinguish it from
(social) anthropology or the study of primitive or non-literate cultures. This
consensus would not last long, however. The resistance was especially hard in
German-speaking Europe, where the scholars wanted to stick to the traditional concepts (and dichotomy) of Volkskunde and Vlkerkunde.
Furthermore, problems on the administrative side would soon pile up
again. The general secretary Jorge Dias (1907-1973) found the office strenuous,
the membership system difficult to administer and the fees hard to collect.11
When the treasurer Baumann died in December 1955, no one was willing to
take over the treasury. The economy of ciap was a permanent headache. Dias,
who had more than enough to do in Portugal as well as in the Portuguese colonies, threw in the towel after three years.
President Reidar Th. Christiansen (1886-1971) was an acknowledged folklore scholar with long experience of international relations. But he was a prudent person who shunned conflicts12and conflicts were precisely what he
encountered in ciap. He had long absences, when his research and periods as
visiting professor led him to England, to Ireland and to the United States (Rogan 2012a). During the first part of his presidency he spent two years abroad
(1956-58), when he probably paid little attention to ciap. Furthermore, he
turned 70 in 1958, his health was not strong, and as a retired professor he had
no infrastructure to lean upon. The physical distance from Oslo to Paris, the
seat of ciaps only benefactor unesco, was also a complicating factor. When
Jorge Dias decided to resign in spring 1957, Christiansen lost almost all administrative support and was stuck in a trap he never got out of. As he wrote
to Sigurd Erixon in 1959, when the problems piled up: I regret sincerely that
I did not resign, I too, when the secretary left. But I thought for honours sake
that I had to try and keep things going.13
In July 1957, Winand Roukens, director of Het Nederlands Openluchtmuseum
in Arnhem, accepted the double function of general secretary and treasurer.
But the inherent problems of the national committees and his lack of success in
collecting overdue fees, made him resign after only five months.14
The bylaws of ciap prescribed a Board meeting once a year, but between
1955 and 1964 there were only two regular Board meetings: in Paris 1957 and

31

Bjarne Rogan

in Kiel 1959. Due to lack of money to cover travel costs, Board members met
only occasionally at other folklore congresses. No General Assembly was arranged after 1955 and there were no regular elections between 1954 and 1964.
As unesco required that its member organizations hold regular elections and
assemblies, the danger of exclusion from cisph was imminent.
These problems should by no means be attributed to the president only.
With the exception of Sigurd Erixon, and to some extent the Belgian Vice President Albert Marinus, ciap Board members were passive. In a series of letters
to Erixon, Christiansen repeatedly mentions the difficulties of getting response
and support from the others for arranging meetings. And the more or less
non-existent national committees seldom answered summons or invoices.15
ciaps difficult relations to cipsh and unesco would become a recurrent
theme in the following years. A certain percentage of the membership fees
should be returned to cipsh, in return for more substantial allocations back
to ciap for scholarly projects. From 1957 onwards, unesco repeatedly complained about lacking return payments. unesco threatened to reduce or withhold its subventions for the bibliography and the dictionary, as their publication was seriously delayed. In 1957, unesco had signalled that a fusion with
another member organization, iuaes (The International Union of Anthropological
and Ethnological Sciences), was desirable, and in 1959 ciap had to accept a de
facto joint representation with iuaes in cipsh. If the ethnologists saw this as a
minor evilthey only feared a harder competition for the allocationsmany
folklorists feared an anthropologization of their discipline.
By the end of the 1950s, ciap was by most standards bankrupt and paralyzed. President Christiansen constantly sought advice from Erixon, his only
confidant, but he seemed incapable of taking any initiatives, as well as of resigning, only hoping for more generous credits or asking for deferments from
an unwilling and critical unesco administration. In this situation, Sigurd Erixon, an ordinary Board member for all practical purposes, with the consent of
Christiansen, took over the leadership in ciap, while Christiansen nominally
remained president.16 However, this Nordic alliance would soon be challenged by a much younger colleague, Kurt Ranke, professor of Volkskunde in
Gttingen.
Some Glimpses of the Way to Athens
In August 1959, Kurt Ranke organised a congress on folk narrative research
in Kiel, where he offered a venue for a ciap meeting. The German ciap member Helmut Dlker (Stuttgart) was present, but it was the non-member Ranke
who offered to help ciap economically and to support ciaps Internationale

32

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

Volkskundliche Bibliographieon the condition that the administration of the

bibliography be transferred from Switzerland to Germany and a German publishing house take over the publishing. Certainly, the issue had been agreed on
beforehand with the editor Robert Wildhaber.
Those present at the meeting in Kiel decided to convene in Oslo to discuss a
reorganization of ciap. Christiansen obtained a small allowance from unesco
for an expert meeting in Oslo in September 1961. But in addition to Christiansen, only two ciap members met there: Erixon and Roukens. Non-member Ranke, however, came up from Gttingen. Ranke was by far the most active in the
discussions, and he proposed a close cooperation between ciap and the German
Zentralarchiv der Volkserzhlung in Marburg. A working group was established
to propose new by-laws for ciap, with Ranke as leader and Erixon, Roukens
and ke Hultkrantz as members. It is clear from his correspondence with Erixon that Christiansen disliked Rankes involvement and his proposal for a German-dominated Verein,17 and he disapproved of the idea of a working group.

From the Brussel meeting, 1962. Front row, from left: Sigurd Erixon (Stockholm), Paul de Keyser
(Gent), Roger Lecott (Paris), unknown person, Olav B (Oslo). Photographer unknown Nordiska museet.

33

Bjarne Rogan

The working group never convened, in spite of several reminders from

Erixon. In April 1962 Ranke unexpectedly came up with a Memorandum der
Kommission zur Reorganisation der ciap. Instead of a proposal for amended bylawsthe task given to the working group in Osloit contained a full program for a new society. The text argues for a Regionalethnologie covering all
fields of ethnology and folklore. It is surprising that Ranke argued so forcefully for what he called a Verein fr moderne kritisch-empirischer Social- und Kulturwissenschaft. The text proposed an expansive and ambitious program. Erixon
was content with the scholarly profile of the Verein in Rankes Memorandum,
but more uncertain about the proposed new membership structure.
During spring and summer of 1962, Erixon was squeezed between the entrepreneurial Ranke and the passive Christiansen. Erixon tried to organize a
dialogue within the working group to revise the text, but Ranke made himself
inaccessible. He neither answered letters nor gave the group a chance to discuss the text. On Rankes proposalor rather orderciaps Board was summoned to meet in September 1962, at the founding congress of his International
Society for Folk Narrative Research (isfnr). The congress was hosted by Karel
Peeters, professor of folklore in Antwerp, and it was combined with the 25
years jubilee for the Royal Belgian Folklore Commission (in Brussels).
Only four ciap members met in Brussels, Christiansen being absent. According to Erixon it was a farce and a first putsch.18 Ranke and the Belgian hosts
had not provided the necessary secretarial assistance to the ciap assembly; the
venue and the day of the meeting were suddenly changed, a new agenda was
presented and distributed together with Rankes Memorandum. The folklorists at the isfnr congress were invited to join the ciap meeting and to vote!
The most active personsaccording to Erixonwere an arrogant Ranke and a
very aggressive Robert Wildhaber:19
[ During the deliberations, Stith] Thompson demanded that a new
committee be appointed, to formulate new paragraphs, and he offered
to go to Paris himself and talk with [Jean] dOrmesson [unesco] and
later to present the case for you [Christiansen]. [Robert] Wildhaber reacted with frenzy to this proposal. He was suddenly lit by a flame to
new deeds. So energetic and excited as he was in Brussels have I never
seen him before. The Belgians supported him. Lecott [see below] mentioned that he, as a Parisian, knew what unesco would think and that
he had so strong an influence himself that there was no need for the
services of Thompson.

34

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

Erixon, who was the only ethnologist among approximately thirty folklorists,
tried to argue for more formal procedures, but as he reported in his letter afterwards to Christiansen:20
But to no avail. It was decided, by members and non-members alike,
that Rankes proposal be adopted and that a committee should be appointed and given the mission to formulate new bylaws. On Rankes
instructions, the following members were elected: [Robert Wildhaber
(Basel), Karel Peters (Antwerp/Leuwen), Roger Lecott (Paris), Roger
Pinon (Lige) and Ranke himself]. Now the masters in Belgium and
France have taken the lead, in connivance with Wildhaber and Ranke.
And he adds, not without irony: Let us hope this will lead to a new vitality
for ciap. The new ciap committee thus consisted of five folklorists, none of
whom were even members of ciap. Soon after, Ranke must have decided to
withdraw to a more inconspicuous position. Of the remaining four, Wildhaber
and Peters were professional folklorists with national positions (museum director and university professor), whereas the two latter, who worked in a library
and a school, were closer to the amateur folklorist movement. Some time later
Pinon reconstructed Minutes from the meeting, which according to Erixon
were full of errors and omissions and never sent out for approval.21 This private document however became the official platform for the new committee.
The Gang of Four, as they nicknamed themselves, worked for two years.
Three thick reports were distributed to four hundred scholars worldwide, and
one thousand pre-printed formulas of adherence to the new organization were
distributedlong before it existed! They launched a series of attacks against

The Gang of Four, probably 1964. From left: Roger Lecott (Paris), Roger Pinon (Lige), Robert
Wildhaber (Basel), Karel C. Peters (Antwerp). Photographer unknown.

35

Bjarne Rogan

Christiansen and Erixonor the technologist, as this Gang used to call

ethnologists (because they studied material culture). The documents and incidents are enough to fill a whole book. The Gang soon declared themselves the
legal Board of ciap and started deliberations with unesco. They dreamed of a
world-embracing organization with splendid headquarters in Brusselsin the
fashionable Palais de Congrs or the no less famous Parc du Cinquantenaire. They
even appointed close colleagues to the main officeswhich did not exist yet!
Reading these documents is like entering a novelin the genre of magic realism. Gabriel Marcia Mrquez or Jorge Luis Borges could not have done better!
The three reports produced and distributed by the Gang created turmoil.
With the tacit consent of Ranke, the Gang soon dismissed the idea of the broad
anthropological scope, which Ranke had originally proposed in his Memorandum, an idea that was dear to Erixon and his camp. Concerning the concept of
folklore, the reports triggered two parallel debates, one on the future designation of the organization, another on the contents of the discipline.
With their Germanic background, Wildhaber and Peters were relaxed
about a broad conception of folklore, in the sense of Volkskunde (including material and social culture). However, the French-speaking Lecott and Pinon,
who seem to have been the main authors of the reports, argued for the true
or pure folklore as a distinct scholarly discipline with material and social
culture left out. The latter two wanted only folklore in the name of the organization, and they produced strange strategies for replacing arts et traditions
populaires in the name of ciap with folklore.
This position was untenable for the scholarly community at large, for
whom the field and the organization should cover both material and spiritual
culture, regardless of whether they conceived of it as one common discipline
(as did Erixon, Rivire, Dias, de Rohan-Csermak, Bratani, Steinitz, Meertens
and their supporters) or two independent disciplines. Where Erixon wanted
only European ethnology in the name, a majority found a compromise in
keeping the old name for the future organizationof arts et traditions populaires. This was actually the conclusion of the voting at a meeting in Bonn
in April 1964, presided over by Roukens, which Ranke organized in preparation for the ciap general Assembly in Athens in September. As stated in the
minutes from the meeting, this was a compromise to end all the quarrels on
the name of the discipline.22 In Athens however, Ranke found no problem in
circumventing this decision.
Peters reported regularly and in detail to Ranke about the work in the committee and sent him copies of the most important letters. In turn, Ranke kept
him informed about important developments and offered advice on matters of

36

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

Kurt Ranke (right) at the isfnr congress in

Bucharest, August 1970, with Wayland D.
Hand from Los Angeles (left). Photo: Klaus
Beitl, Vienna.

policy. On occasion, the commander in Gttingen reproached his foot soldiers

in Belgium and France when they committed blunders or went too far.
To prepare for the final attack, Ranke organized the abovementioned meeting in Bonn in April 1964, with forty handpicked scholars. The situation before
Athens was that two groups claimed the right to convene ciap and to set the
agenda. The reason Ranke chose to convene in Athens was that he would arrange his isfnr congress there in September. The presence of so many folklorists would give him a safe majority.
What happened then in Athens on September 8 and 9, 1964? There are two
sorts of sources, the official minutes and the eyewitness reports. The first give
the winners version, with short, formal notices of the results obtained. The
second are the losers versions, revealing strategic election procedures, violation of procedural rules, and blunt attacks in the closed sessions. The official
minutes exclude all that happened behind the scenes, but the eyewitness reports render in detail what they experienced as an unfair battle and a putsch.
Only three ciap Board members were present. Non-members Ranke and
Wildhaber were most active in the debate, and once again all the isfnr folklorists were allowed to vote. The result was that folklorists took all the seats of the
new Board: Karel Peters as president; Mihai Pop, Carl-Herman Tillhagen and
Richard Dorson as vice presidents; Roger Pinon as general secretary and Roger Lecott as treasurer. And Ranke, Roukens and Wildhaber were among the
members of the new Administrative Council. The commission was reconstituted as a society and its name was changed from ciap to sief. Thus, the Gang of
Four finally managed to secure all the important positions, Ranke obtained his
society, and Pinon and Lecott got folklore into the name.23 The winner takes all!

37

Bjarne Rogan

All were not happy, though. A dissident German voice, Matthias Zender,
disliked both the procedure and the result. Having been elected to the new
sief Council, he offered to step down to give his seat to one of the opponents
Branimir Bratani.24 Geza Csermak-Rohan, ciaps interim secretary appointed
by Christiansen, wrote furiously about electoral campaigns and the ambush
by these Sturmabteilungsmnner.25 I wonder if the expression was used deliberately. Bratani wrote about the voting machine, the usurpation of power, die Alleinherrschaft of the folklorists in a narrow sense.26
Personally, I feel uncomfortable with the 1964 event.27 But it is important
to discuss how it could happen. The membership question is an issue that
needs further discussion. Also, there are some aspects of the study of folklore
that may contribute to a better understanding. One is the low degree of professional institutionalization combined with a broad and established amateur
movement.
Membership: a Structural Problem
Pre-war ciap had been based on national committees, as required by the League
of Nations. The ciap of 1947 was re-established on an independent basis, with
individual membership. But without economic support for ciap nothing could
be done. Consequently, in 1949 ciap became a founding member of the unesco sub-organization cipshle Conseil International de Philosophie et des Sciences
Humaines. From then onwards cipsh gave regular, earmarked support to the
journal Laos, the dictionary and the bibliography, and occasionally allowances
for meetings. It looks, however, as if unesco did not enforce any membership
rules the first years.28
But these allocations were not sufficient and the collecting of fees did not
function. unesco expressed its discontent with the administration of ciap,
first in 1953, when the general secretary E. Foundoukidis was forced to resign, and then recurrently through the latter half of the 1950s for the missing
return payments to unesco. When remoulding ciap a second time after the
war (1953/54), Erixon and Rivire reintroduced the system with a membership based on national committees, as required by unesco. Both Erixon and
Rivire had experience as delegates to unesco commissions, and they had better knowledge of the international bureaucracy than most of their colleagues.
From 1954 ciap was again based on national committees, which should each
appoint up to three members to its General Assembly, which in turn elected
the Executive Council.
However, there were not only economic arguments for this structure. To
carry through ambitious projects like the European atlasErixons cherished

38

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

ideawould require international coordination of research teams on the national level, that is teams (or national committees) invested with the necessary
authority and national fundingand not individual researchers.
To this must be added Erixons strong conviction that European ethnology,
his lifelong visionas presented and developed in article after article from the
1930s to the 1960swould be much more difficult to develop as a theoretically
based, comparative discipline, without an international forum which transcended the various sub-disciplines. And in Erixons eyes a firmly controlled
organization, with an elected and selected membership, would be a safer alternative for reaching that goal, than a loosely organised society (like ciap in the
late 1940s and early 1950s) where scholars and amateurs alike could become
members, and wherein his own wordsthe dilettantes reigned.29
But the system of national committees did not function. In many countries the level of institutionalization of folklore and ethnologyin the form
of universities, centres and archiveswas low; members disappeared and the
committees vanished, if they had been appointed at all. As general secretary
Dias did not manage to collect the fees and unesco therefore did not receive
its symbolic contribution, unesco threatened to withdraw all support from
ciap, or else to fuse ciap with its anthropological commission (iuaes). The
system of national committees and fees seemed to function for other unesco
commissions, like for instance the oim (later icom), but not with ethnologists
and folklorists.
After three years and more than three hundred letters and reminders, Dias
had had enough of non-existing or vanishing national committees. In June
1957 he resigned from his office in ciap. Winand Roukens took overonly
to discover that no more than 10 out of 60 (nominal) national committees had
paid.30 After he too threw in the sponge, ciap was mostly without a secretariat
from 1958 and 1961.31
On the other hand, Ranke and the Gang of Four wanted a society based on
individual membership. The argument presented in their widely distributed
reports seems to have been simply that it was more democratic. Opposition
to leaving the system of national committees came not only from Erixon and
Christiansen, but also from central scholars like Rivire and Bratani. Ingeborg Weber-Kellerman and Gerhard Heilfurth (Marburg), the latter the president of one of the few functioning national committees of ciapthe Deutsche
Gesellschaft fr Volkskundealso reacted negatively to a system based only on
individual membership.32 The argument for maintaining the national committee system was not only unescos formal requirement. It was repeatedly argued in the debate that national committees were indispensable for planning

39

Bjarne Rogan

and organizing big international projects. And there was the democracy argument turned around: designated national delegates would secure a more
equal and even representation and prevent special groups from dominating
the organization. The latter argument was repeatedly stressed by Rivire, who
would never serve on the Board but had obtained the lifelong title of Advisor
to ciap.
To all those who would never have a chance of being designated through
national channels, however, individual membership felt more democratic. By
addressing the proposal to a very large number of scholars and amateurs, the
Four would logically get support for individual membership. As demonstrated
by the voting in Athens, the majority wanted individual membership. Erixon
had proposed (in Bonn, April 1963) a combination of the two systems, but to
no availhis proposal was not even rendered in the minutes from the meeting.
History is full of irony and paradoxes. ciap/sief has alternated between
national delegations and individual membership from the 1920s to the 1980s.
In 1964, the new sief leadership wanted both a new membership system and
to keep the contact with unesco. But with the change in the membership,
the subventions stopped, as predicted by Erixon and Rivire. Only four years
later, in 1968, the folklorist-dominated sief once more knit contacts with unesco and cipsh, through re-incorporation in the iuaes (The International Union
of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences)an organization they had argued
against before 1964. The pretext was economic support for the forthcoming
congress in Paris (1970, adjourned to 1971) as well as later allocations.33 A consequence of this renewed affiliation to unesco was that sief had to renounce
its global ambitions and accept being a scholarly society for research on European culture(s)as a division of labour with the other anthropological associations. At the same time, sief expanded its Board to make room for more national representatives.34 Some years later, sief reverted to a system of national
delegates. To siefs 3rd congress, in Zrich in 1987, were invited its 35 national
delegates plus specially invited guests, or as stated in the invitation: sief has
35 delegates representing almost all European countries.35 From the 1990s,
however, membership has been open once again to all scholars.
A Low Degree of Institutionalization and the Amateur Movement
When Dias resigned as general secretary in 1957, his grievance concerned not
only the problems associated with national committees and formal membership. He was also very disappointed with the lack of interest in a general organization, especially among folklorists, many of whom he experienced as an
obstacle to ciap and to the scientific development of the discipline.36 He sig-

40

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

nalled time and again his scepticism towards the amateurs in the field and his
annoyance with the folklorists who claimed to be a separate discipline and
often refused to cooperate with ethnologists.37 In a retrospective published in
1964, just before the split in Athens, he stated:
It is difficult to create a[n] organism to co-ordinate the ethnological
study of Europe. During the three years I was general secretary of the
ciap I came to know the enormous difficulties, which were always arising, either from lack of internal understanding within some countries, or
from lack of the spirit of international collaboration in others. This lack of
the spirit of collaboration is due partly to ethnocentric prejudices, which
keep ethnologists from admitting that European peoples might be studied by ethnological methods as well as any other peoples. Therefore
there are ethnological societies of Africanists, Americanists, Orientalists
etc., but an ethnological society of Europeanists is not yet possible. []
The barrier is certainly due to the different attitudes of folklorists and
ethnologists: many folklorists do not want to consider themselves ethnologists, although actually a folklorist is an ethnologist who specializes
in oral literature [] (Dias 28.10.1963, in Jacobeit 1964, 182-83).
In other texts Dias invoked the low degree of institutionalization of the discipline, the amateurs and their excessive love of what is regional and particular:
This state of affairs is even worsened by the fact that in many countries
there is no university tradition in the field of regional ethnology. All the
research is in the hands of small groups of interested amateurs, who []
are normally opposed to a superior organization, where they fear they
may lose the state of personal prestige, which they have conquered in
their home setting. (Dias s.a. [1957]).38
A longstanding weak foothold at universities in several countries had marked
the discipline profoundly.39 Much collecting and dissemination was performed
by dedicated persons with little academic training in folklore studies, their
main bases being the local folklore society, the local museum and the local
journal. This can be observed through most the 20th century, not least in the former colonial powers, where anthropology was prioritized in the universities.
The collecting and the study of the national popular culture were relegated
to places outside of the universities, to local folklore societies and museums.
Many cases could be cited, but as sief now has its legal seat in Amsterdam, let

41

Bjarne Rogan

me quote what Pieter Meertensfounder of the Meertens Institute and a partisan of Erixons policywrote about the problem in 1951. He deplored that
In the Netherlands the study of folklore is greatly hampered by its unfavourable position in the curricula of the universities. The place it occupies there is indeed a poor one [ The] study of folklore has for the
greater part been left to amateurs. (Meertens s.a./1951).40
Half a century later, his compatriots Peter Jan Margry and Herman Roodenburg give a similar verdict, describing the history of the discipline until the
1990s as one of a few scholars and numerous amateurs, of a limited interest in
research and heavy emphasis on documentation and popularisation (Margry
and Roodenburg 2007, 261).
Let me mention just one case that corresponds to what Dias called the lack of
internal understanding and opposition to comparative research among amateur
folklorists. In Norway, where folklore was institutionalized very early, the greatest controversy ever concerning disciplinary issues was when the so-called War
of decentralization broke out around 1920. Hundreds of local folklorists, mostly
schoolteachers, had received small public stipends for collecting work. When Professor Knut Liestl claimed the custodial right to this material, on behalf of the
newly established central national archive for folklore at the University, a fierce war
broke out. The local collectors created their own organization and claimed property
rights to the material collected. To them, the material belonged to the locality where
it had been collected; it should be kept there and distributed back to the local population. In Norway this was a forceful ideological and democratic movement, with
a sting against an elite institution like the university, as well as against scholarly,
comparative research and university professors.41
I mention this Norwegian counter-movement because it comprised a large
number of local folklorists who would certainly have been utterly hostile to an
international organization, had it been proposed to them. Similar conditions
were found in other countries, as for example in Ireland where local collectors
tried to fight the centralized Irish Folklore Commission.42
My point is not that folkloristics in general can be reduced to amateurism. In
many ways, it was more theoretically inspired than the early material culture
studies. But much of the support that The Gang of Four got was from these
amateurs, as when they distributed membership formulas to one thousand
personswhen there were hardly more than fifty university scholars of folklore and ethnology in Europe.

42

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

A Poetic Incident
Among the many repositories of ciaps/siefs history, there is in the collection
of siefs first president Karel C. Peeters a very strange documenta poem,43
which I admit I do not quite grasp the full meaning of. In September 1964,
the Dutch folklorist and philologist Winand Roukens (1896-1974)the host
of the 1955 ciap congress in Arnhem, and short-term secretary of ciap (autumn 1957)was on his way home from Athens. Roukens was in an exuberant
mood after the meeting. He made a stop-over in Strasbourg, where he composed a euphoric poem.
The poem is entitled Europa-Gedanken (nach Athnes)Thoughts about
Europe (after Athens)and bears the dedication In Freundschaft fr Prof. Dr.
Kurt Ranke. It is dated September 17, 1964, eight days after the event in Athens,
and is signed Winand Roukens, Athen-Delegierter der Universitt Nijmegen.44
It is a pompous poem, with references to Goethe; it is about building bridges
between peoples and constructing the European housein the name of humanism, and with clear allusions to the war. But there are also some disturbing
elements from legends and folklore.
Europa-Gedanken (Nach Athnes)
Zur Cathdrale von der Hoch-Schule her schauich
still trumend in Hoffnung
mit ... Goethe;
an der Brck zwischen Vlkern hier bauich
in Sehnsucht still hoffend
mit Goethe ...
Von Deutschland nach Frankreich hin schauich,
wie einst Er, Kurt, nun trumend mit Dir;
am neuen Europahaus bauich
in schweigender Stille
mit Sagenhelden Willen
in hoffnungsschwerem Lenken
und ehrfurchtsvollem Gedenken
wie Goethe einst, mit Dir ...
Mit unsern Brdern schauen wir,
mit unsern Brdern bauen wir
mit stillem Sagenkmpfermut,
als Opfer fr Europablut,
schweigend am Europatempel

43

Bjarne Rogan

mit Goldstrahlendem Widmungsstempel:

humanitt

translation: Thoughts about Europe (after Athens)45

I am staring from the high school towards the cathedral

silently dreaming, filled with hope
with ... Goethe;
I work here on the building of the bridge between peoples
longing and silently hoping
with Goethe ...
I am staring from Germany towards France
as He, Kurt, once did, now dreaming with you;
I work at the construction of the new European house
in a hushed silence
with the will of legendary heroes
guiding heavy with hope
and awe-filled remembrance
as Goethe once did, with you ...
With our brothers we look,
with our brothers we build
with the silent courage of the warriors of the sagas,
as sacrifice for European blood,
silently at the temple of Europe
with the golden shining stamp of dedication:
humanity

Indeed, a very strange praise to bestow on a scholar like Ranke, with a dubious
past as a prominent member of the Nazi party (nsdap) and even its Sturmab
teilung, and with close ties to Alfred Rosenbergs organization Ahnenerbe and
nsdaps Hohe Schule, where Rosenberg had intended a leading position for
him.46 It should be added, however, that Roukens was known for his anti-Nazi
attitudes during the war, and he was removed from office during the war for
his refusal to collaborate with the Germans.47
Or, perhaps not so strange after all? Was sief planned as a bridge between
a German Volkskundethat was slowly recovering after its compromises with
the Third Reichand the rest of European ethnology and folklore? The
bridge between peoples, a new European house, in Roukens words, including France, the traditional enemy? Was it meant as a kind of exoneration for
Ranke for his past in the service of a totalitarian state?

44

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

But then there are the dissonances, the folkloristic elements making allusions to a Germanic past: with the will of legendary heroes; with the silent courage of the warriors of the sagas; as sacrifice for European blood? Is
it just clumsy praise couched in romantic vocabulary? This strange text leaves
some questions unanswered. It was not a private greeting to Ranke only, but
a document that ended in the archives of the new sief. Whatever its deeper meaning, the poem confirms what other documents also reveal, that Kurt
Ranke was the prime mover behind the new sief and that the victorious camp
in Athens was effusively happy with the result.
Roukens was a minor figure in European folklore, but he was an efficient
lieutenant for the mastermind behind the new sief, Kurt Ranke. Ranke was,
during most of the process, a withdrawn commander-in-chief. The dirty work
was done by his handpicked Gang of Four, with the assistance of Roukens
and a few others. And dirty work it was at times, to judge from the contents
of many of the letters and notes that circulated among the Four, not seldom
marked Confidential.
By Way of Conclusion
In the late 1950s ciap was in a deep crisiseconomically, scholarly, morally.
Everyone saw the need for a rejuvenation, but there was no unanimity as to
the solutions.
Elements that made ciap a difficult venture was the closed membership
system (as required by unesco, and desired by several of the protagonists),
the low level of institutionalization of the discipline(s), the high number of
amateurs with a limited interest in comparative research and scholarly cooperation, and also the philological/literary roots of folklore and hence a certain
fear of an anthropologizationas advocated by the Erixon camp.
The campaign towards sief (by Ranke and The Gang of Four) was partly
based on ideologythat is on the defence or promotion of folklore as an independent discipline. Furthermore, the campaign was conducted strategically;
decisions and voting took place only when there was a majority of folklorists
present. Rankes goal of establishing an open society may be viewed as a democratic solution; on the other hand, it opened the doors for that majority of
folklorists who would support him against the ethnologists.
This strategy appears clearly from meeting to meeting. ciap had no resources to organize meetings, and all President Christiansen could do was
to convene, at other conferences, those ciap members who happened to be
present. A strange coincidence, or perhaps not: it was always Kurt Ranke who
offered to host ciap at his folklorist conferences; once in Kiel, once in Brussels,

45

Bjarne Rogan

twice in Bonn and once in Athens. As Branimir Bratani (Zagreb) put it, if ciap
had chosen the Moscow conference in August 1964 instead of Athens in September, all the ethnologists and ethnographers present in Moscow would have
secured a different result.48
The unsolved problem is Kurt Rankes motives for wanting to control all
there was of European folklore and ethnology. He already controlled the journal Fabula, the Enzyklopdie des Mrchens, and the isfnr. Why this appetite for
ciap also? Erixon had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with ciap, but it is
hard to see what scholarly results Ranke wanted to obtain.
Was it to promote the progress of European ethnology and international
collaboration, as expressed in his Memorandum? As I see it, that was a strategy
in an early phase, but not a goal for his campaign. Was it the idea of peace and
reconciliation, cf. Roukens euphoric poem? Hardly, as no such argument was
presented during the four years of warfare.
Two plausible explanations remain. Was it a defence of folklore against a
rising ethnology, based on a fear of an anthropologization of the field? Or was
it simply a quest for personal power? My opinion is that Rankes campaign
was motivated by a combination of these two elements. A strong ciap might
turn out a rival to his isfnr, but a weak ciap would do no harm. And an anthropologization of the field might entail other inconveniences for the more
traditional, literary folklorists. By controlling and reorganizing ciap the way
he wanted, the scholarly landscape would become more clear-cut and folklore
would remain an independent discipline.
Rankes campaign was successful. isfnr became an important, specialized
organization, whereas ciap/sief remained a general but weak umbrella organization. Ranke won the battle, there and then. But by cementing the division of the disciplines and forcing sief into several sleepy decades, one may
ask whether his interference did not do more harm to European ethnology
than actually served the best interests of folklore in a restricted sense.
Notes

1 For a detailed presentation of the genesis and development of ciap in its early phase, see Rogan 2007.
2 Minutes/Compte-rendu sommaire des travaux de la 1re session plnire. Paris, Muse de
lHomme, 1-5 oct. 1947. mnatp: Org. app-ciap 1947-48-49 etc.
3 See Laos vol. III (1955) for a series of presentations of the cartograhy commission and cartography work.
4 Erixon 1951. In the first half of the 1950s Erixon published several articles of this type, in FolkLiv and elsewhere.
5 Erixon (ed.) 1956; Rogan 2013, 96-102.

46

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

6 Letter of September 4, 1950, from J. Thomas, director of the Department for cultural activities,
unesco. mnatp.
7 Note de Monsieur Marinus relative au Secrtaire-Gnral Monsieur Foundoukidis (undated/
August-September 1953). mnatp.
8 See stenographied minutes from the Board sessions, Namur. mnatp.
9 See correspondence. unesco, icfaf Reg. 39 A01.
10 Recommendation from the Amsterdam meeting, September 1955. meertens 35:1131. See also
Erixon 1955-56.
11 As for the archives, Dias seems to have kept them in good order, with the one curious exception that they suddenly disappeared in 1957, probably stolen. See letter of 7.1.1957 from Vieiga
dOliveira to Dias. lisbon Box 4. Dias 4.
12 Interview with his daughter Elin Christiansen Smit, September 2007.
13 Letter of 3.2.1959 from Christiansen to Erixon. se 8:28.
14 On the subject of collecting the fees, see letter of 16.10.1957 from Lopold Schmidt to Roukens.
vienna, ciap box 02. Roukens letter of resignation of 8.1.1959 to Christiansen, ibid.; also in se
8:28. It should be added that Roukens encountered some serious problems at his museum and
was forced to resign from his post as museum director the same autumn.
15 See for instance the comprehensive correspondence between Christiansen and Erixon on the
problems of arranging a Board meeting in 1958-59. se 8:28.
16 See correspondence between Christiansen and Erixon. se 8:28, 8:30, 8:31.
17 Letter of 29.4.1962 from Christiansen to Erixon, se 8:27. Other correspondence between the
two during spring 1962 (se 8:27, 8:30, 8:31) confirms Christiansens unwillingness to follow up
Rankes initiatives. The secretary of the Oslo meeting, Elin Christiansen Smit (Christiansens
daughter), whom I interviewed in 2012-13, has confirmed that the relationship between Christiansen and Ranke was far from hearty.
18 Letter of 12.10.1962 from Erixon to Christiansen, se 8:31.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Letter of 19.12.1962 from Erixon to Christiansen, se 8:27.
22 Compte rendu de la Runion tenue Bonn les 26 et 27 avril 1964 en vue dexaminer les dernires propositions de la Commission de Rforme de la ciap. se 8:27. Also mnatp.
23 For a more general discussion of the name question (ciap, sief), see Rogan 2008b.
24 Letters of 17.9.1964 from Zender to Peeters and of 12.10.1964 from Peeters to Zender. mnatp:
Peeters 8.
25 Letter of 26.9.1964 from de Rohan-Csermak to Nettelbladt. mnatp: Peeters 7.
26 Letter of 25.09.1964 from Bratani to a series of colleagues. se 8:27.
27 For a more detailed treatment of the Athens meeting, see Rogan 2008c.
28 This may also be due to a lack of archive sources. The archives after General Secretary E.
Foundoukidis, who was fired in 1953 for irregularities and alleged embezzlement, were more
or less inexistent. It was E. F. who had been the contact person with unesco.
29 Manuscript to Erixons speech, 14.12.1948, on the occasion of the establishment of the Swedish
national committee and a discussion whether to join ciap or not. se archives, Stockholm.
30 Minutes from the Board meeting in Kiel, 18.8.1959. mnatp, Org. App. ciap.
31 In 1958 Sigurd Erixon persuaded the Swedish doctor Anna-Maja Nyln to function as secretary
for ciap, but she too resigned after a short time. See letter of resignation from Nyln to Erixon
of 18.8.1959. se 8:28.
32 Stellungsnahme zu den Vorschlgen der Reorganizationskommission der ciap, 20.6.1963, signed
Heilfurth and Weber-Kellermann. mnatp: Peeters 5; se 8:31.
33 Minutes. Meeting of the Board of Directors in Bucarest on 28th August [1968]. mnatp: Peeters
13.
34 Minutes. General meeting of sief, held in Paris on 27th August 1971. NF, box 84.

47

Bjarne Rogan

35 siefs third congress. The Life Cycle. April 8-12, 1987. Zrich, Switzerland. mnatp: Comptabilit, Trsorerie (1976-1985).
36 Letter of resignation from Dias to Christiansen, 16.4.1957; Dias Rapport moral sur les activits du
secrtariat de la ciap, 30.5.1957. se 8:38.
37 Letter of 4.5.1955 from Dias to Rivire. mnatp.
38 Dias Rapport moral sur les activits du secrtariat de la ciap, 30.5.1957. se 8:28. Translation B.R.
39 See for instance Rogan 2012b for a discussion and further references.
40 The State of Folklore in the Netherlands. se 8:77.
41 This battle between amateurs and professionals is treated in several publications in Norwegian, i. a. Kristoffersen 2013, the title of which may be translated as follows: The institutionalization of folk narratives. Norsk Folkeminnesamling [the university archive] and the Battle of decentralization.
42 See f. ex. Briody 2011 on the internal fights in the 1920s and 1930s, even within the folklore
organizations, where many were indifferent or even hostile to folklore as an international research discipline and opposed a university affiliation.
43 Europa-Gedanken 17.9.1964. mnatp: Peeters 8.
44 The use of Delegierter/delegated in the signature clearly indicates that the backdrop for
the poem is ciap/sief, and not isfnr. Roukens was since 1955 one of 8 members of the ciap
Board, which formally consisted of representatives of the national committees. isfnr had no
such structure.
45 Translated by BjR. Thanks to Regina Bendix for assistance with the translation.
46 Klee 2005: 479. See also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Ranke_(Germanist). Date read:
2015-2.22.
47 Information from Peter Jan Margry, November 2014.
48 Letter of 25.09.1964 from Bratanic to a series of colleagues. se 8:27.

Works Cited
Actes de la Confrence de Namur de la Commission Internationale des Arts
et Traditions Populaires (ciap tenue Namur du 7 au 12 Septembre 1953.
Bruxelles 1956.
Actes du Congrs International dEthnologie Rgionale (20-24 Septembre 1955).
Arnhem 1956.
Erixon, Sigurd (ed.). 1956. International Congress of European and Western Ethnology. Stockholm 1951. Stockholm.
Jacobeit, Wolfgang. 1964. Intensification of International Cooperation in the
Field of European Agrarian Ethnography. Current Anthropology 5(3): 179
190.
Klee, Ernst 2005. Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und
nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2. ed.
Kristoffersen, Eirik 2013. Institusjonaliseringen av folkeminnene. Norsk Folkeminnesamling og Desentraliseringsstriden. Master thesis in cultural history, University of Oslo.
Margry, Peter Jan and Hermann Roodenburg. 2007. A History of Dutch Ethnology in 10 pages. In Reframing Dutch Culture. Between Otherness and

48

When the Folklorists Won the Battle but Lost the War

Authenticity, edited by Peter Jan Margry and Herman Roodenburg [Series:

Progress in European Ethnology], 261271. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2007. Folk Art and Politics in Inter-War Europe: An Early Debate on Applied Ethnology. Folk Life 45: 723.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2008a. From Rivals to Partners on the Inter-War European Scene.
Sigurd Erixon, Georges Henri Rivire and the International Debate on European Ethnology in the 1930s. Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 64: 275324.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2008b. The Troubled Past of European Ethnology. sief and International Cooperation from Prague to Derry. Ethnologia Europaea 38(1),
6678.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2008c. From ciap to sief: Visions for a Discipline or Power
Struggle? In Everyday Culture in Europe. Approaches and Methodologies, edited by Mirad Nic Craith, Ulrich Kockel and Reinhard Johler, 1963. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2011. A Remarkable Congress and a Beloved General Secretary. ciap & sief, Arnhem 1955 and Jorge Dias. [Inaugural keynote address at siefs 10th congress, Lisbon, April 17th 2011. In press/PDF version
at Siefhome.org].
Rogan, Bjarne. 2012a. An Internationalist among Norwegian Folklorists. A
Biographical Sketch of Reidar Th. Christiansen. Arv. Nordic Yearbook of
Folklore 68: 91119.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2012b. The Institutionalization of Folklore. In A Companion to
Folklore, edited by Regina Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem, 598630. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2013. Sigurd Erixon on the Post-War International Scene. International Activities, European Ethnology and ciap from 1945 to the mid
1950s. Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 69: 89152.
Rogan, Bjarne. 2014. Popular Culture and International Cooperation in the
1930s. In Networking the International System. Global Histories of International
Oranizations, edited by Madeleine Herren, 175185. Heidelberg: Springer.
Archives (Abbreviations used in the endnotes)
lisbon: The Jorge Dias collection, Museu Nacional de Etnologia, Lisbon.
meertens: Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam.
mnatp: Muse des Arts et Traditions Populaires, Paris.
nb: I use the mnatp references, although the greater part of this collection was
transferred to the Meertens Institute, Amsterdam, in May 2012. The rest is now
being transferred to Mucem in Marseille.
nf: Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo.

49

Bjarne Rogan

se: The Sigurd Erixon collections, Nordiska Museet, Stockholm.

unesco: The League of Nations, Paris (unesco building).
vienna: sterreichisches Museum fr Volkskunde, Vienna.

All translations to English from Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, French and German by Bjarne Rogan.

50