Comunicación epistolar y colaboración científica entre especialistas alemanes en Sudamérica a fines del siglo XIX. Un estudio de la correspondencia entre Rodolfo Lenz y Robert Lehmann-Nitsche

Abstract

Abstract The following paper undertakes the presentation and subsequent analysis of the initial section of an extended, although only partially preserved letter exchange between two salient German scholars settled in Argentina and Chile from the end of the 19th century on, and during the first decades of the 20th century: Rudolf Lenz, trained in linguistics and Romance languages at the renowned Romanistik School of Bonn, who worked at the Instituto Pedagógico in Santiago de Chile, and Robert Lehmann-Nitsche, a Prussian physician and anthropologist who was in charge of the Anthropological Section of a brand new modern Museum in Argentina’s recently founded city of La Plata. The letter exchange between them lasted from 1897 until 1928 and the analysis of its initial pieces (1897–1898) allows us to see how personal and scientific networks were constructed, and how German science and sociability managed to settle down in such distant locations and still remain connected with its system of origin.