History of SIEF
I The early history of CIAP (1928-1939)
The initiative to the creation of la Commission des Arts et
Traditions Populaires (CIAP) was taken in Prague in October 1928, at the
Congrès des arts populaires organised under the auspices of the League
of Nations. CIAP’s early history is strongly marked by the political
tensions in inter-war Europe. Scientific and cultural activities under
the umbrella of the League and its suborganizations were strictly
supervised and controlled, as the politicians feared the role of culture
for propaganda and territorial claims. Even if CIAP was a French
initiative, German, Belgian, Dutch and Italian researchers played the
most active roles in the first years. Its first president was the German
Otto Lehman, who had to retire when Germany withdrew from the League in
1933. His successor, the Italian Emilio Bodrero, had to follow his
example when Fascist Italy also withdrew a few years later.
CIAP was a resounding success from the start. It was a global
organization, organized as a network of national commissions, and within
one year the number of member countries passed 30. Already at its
first assembly, in Rome in October 1929, it was reorganized in order to
escape from the iron grip of the League. Its first and only independent
interwar congress was held in Belgium in September 1930. However,
the League of Nations soon after regained control over CIAP, through its
suborganisation for culture in Paris, the IICI, which among other things
appointed its general secretary.
During the following years CIAP withered quickly. Most meetings,
including the planned general assemblies and congresses, were cancelled,
and the scientific activities were kept at a low level. The crisis was
triggered by a very meagre economy, but the political problems of and
within the League were detrimental to CIAP. Several European scholars
saw the need for international cooperation, but both the
anglophone/Nordic and the francophone spheres preferred to establish
their own competing international organisations from 1936, the first one
led by Sigurd Erixon (Sweden) and the second one by Georges Henri
Rivière (France). The rising Nazi and Fascist movements in Europe caused
great problems, however, and world War II put an end to all cooperation
efforts.
II Postwar CIAP (1945-1964)
In 1945 CIAP was resurrected, mainly thanks to its (then)
UNESCO-attached general secretary E. Foundoukidis. In October 1947 CIAP
was formally reorganized again, at a general assembly in Paris, and in
the following years it was hosted by the Musée des Arts et Traditions
Populaires in Paris. Its membership was now based on individual members,
not national commissions.
The Paris assembly in 1947 seethed with postwar optimism and literally
boiled over with proposals and ideas for the envisaged role of ethnology
and folklore in the reconstruction of Europe. The program for cultural
action ended up in nothing, however, but the scientific activities were
not insignificant. The CIAP journal Laos was edited by Sigurd Erixon,
who also led the cartography commission. A dictionary of ethnological
terms was proposed by Arnold van Gennep (France) and worked out by Åke
Hultkrantz (Sweden), and Robert Wildhaber (Switzerland) was in charge of
the international bibliography. These projects received some economic
support from UNESCO. Already at the 1951 congress in Stockholm, however,
it was obvious that the administrative problems were growing. The
situation worsened in the following years, with the withdrawal of its
Spanish president, legitimacy quarrels among some of its main officers,
accusations of embezzlement and the subsequent forced demission of its
general secretary.
The rescue operation started at the Namur (Belgium) conference in 1953
and was concluded at the Paris conference in 1954. The architects behind
the remoulding were Georges Henri Rivière and Sigurd Erixon. The
following three years may be called the Dias period, after its new,
popular general secretary Jorge Dias (Portugal). The congress in
Arnhem/Amsterdam in 1955 represents a peak in the scholarly life of
CIAP. In 1955 the congressists were willing to discuss difficult issues
like the importance of studying contemporary topics and the social
dimensions of culture, the unity of the discipline (ethnology versus
folklore), its delimitation towards general anthropology and its
designation. The congress was also marked by the Loorits–Steinitz
controversy, an epitome of the Cold War and the difficult relations
between ethnologies of the two sides of the Iron Curtain.
However, two administrative issues should continue to haunt the
organization: the economy and the membership question. CIAP’s president
from 1954 to 1964, the Norwegian Reidar Th. Christiansen, was mostly
occupied elsewhere and strived hard to keep the organization together.
In 1954 there had been a return to membership based on national
commissions, a solution that did not function. When Dias resigned as
secretary in 1957, CIAP was thrown into its worst crisis ever. The years
until 1960/61 were marked by a continuous lethargy, except perhaps in
some of the commissions. It was obvious to everyone that a new
remoulding of CIAP was necessary, but this work brought to the surface
all the latent oppositions in the field of European ethnology and
folklore. The years from 1961 to 1964 were marked by a continuous and
conspicuous warfare. The two protagonists – and antagonists – were
Sigurd Erixon and Kurt Ranke (Göttingen). One of the main issues at
stake was the relation between folklore and ethnology (understood as the
study of material culture and social life), another the relation to
anthropology, a third the delimitation of the field (Europe or the whole
world), a fourth the designation of the discipline(s).
SIEF replaces CIAP (1964 – present)
The battle of CIAP, which lasted from 1961 to 1964, engaged hundreds of
folklorists and ethnologists throughout Europe and in the United States,
where the socalled ‘literary folklorists’ (contrary to the
‘anthropological folklorists’) participated actively. The final trial of
strength between those who wanted one unified discipline (European
ethnology) and those who wanted to keep folklore as a separate
discipline, between those who considered general ethnology/anthropology
to be the mother discipline and those who saw the disciplines as clearly
separate, and between those who wanted the organization to cover the
whole world and those who saw Europe only as the field, took place
during a folklorist congress in Athens in September 1964.
The ‘folklorists’ won the final trial in Athens and took most if not all
places on the board, and they changed the name to SIEF – a name that
insisted upon the duality of the discipline: ethnology and folklore. The
grey eminence and the person who had orchestrated the victory was Kurt
Ranke. The loosing part was Sigurd Erixon and his fellow partisans J.
Dias, B. Brataniç (Zagreb), P. J. Meertens (Amsterdam), W. Steinitz
(East Berlin), and G. de Rohan-Csermak (Paris). Ranke’s close associate,
Karel C. Peeters (Belgium), took over the presidency (1964 – 1971). Once
more history repeated itself. The strong optimism after the mobilization
in Athens was soon replaced by a new lethargy, and the new SIEF began
once more a process of withering. During the next seven years hardly
anything happened in SIEF, whereas the Erixon fraction started a new
journal, Ethnologia Europaea, and launched a series of conferences on
’European ethnology’. However, the momentum of the Erixon camp was
strongly reduced through his death in 1968.
SIEF lingered on. The scholarly activities took place in the
commissions, which tended to end up as independent satelites in relation
to the mother organization. The heaviest loss was the cartography group,
first established in Namur in 1953, which decided in 1965 to break with
SIEF and become independent – as die Ständige Internationale
Atlaskommission (SIA). One of its aims was a stronger collaboration with
Eastern Europe than SIEF had been able to offer. For most purposes, SIEF
reverted to a congress organization between 1964 and ca 2000, with long
periods of inertia in between the congresses: Paris 1971, Susdal 1982,
Zürich 1987, Bergen 1990, Vienna 1994, Amsterdam 1998, and Budapest 2001
(followed by Marseille in 2004 and Derry in 2008).
From around 2001, however, under the presidency of Regina Bendix
(Göttingen, 2001-2008), can be observed a pronounced will to fill SIEF
again with activities and make it more relevant to the scholarly
community, by the organizing of thematic seminars in the wake of
contemporary political events, by following more closely political
processes concerning heritage policy, by the establishment of networks
and the strengthening of communication internally (with the membership)
and externally, by a new membership policy and – not least – by bringing
the scholarly satelites (the ‘commissions’ or working groups) into
orbits closer to the mother organization. As an octogenarian, SIEF seems
to be more vital than it has been for decades.
Bjarne Rogan, University of Oslo
6 October 2008
Links
Visit the collection of publications about the history of SIEF here.
