Gerd Koch
| Dr. Gerd Koch | |
|---|---|
| Born |
11 July 1922 Hanover, Germany |
| Died | 19 April 2005 (aged 82) Off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada |
| Education | Bachelor's degree, Göttingen University (1948) PhD, Göttingen University (1949) |
| Occupation | Anthropologist |
| Spouse(s) | Marion Melk-Koch |
Gerd Koch (11 July 1922 – 19 April 2005) was a German cultural anthropologist best known for his studies on the material culture of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific. He was associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin (German: Ethnologisches Museum; until 1999 Museum für Völkerkunde) His field work was directed to researching and recording the use of artefacts in their indigenous context, to begin to understand these societies.
His work in cultural and social anthropology extended to researching and recording the music and dance of the Pacific Islands. He collaborated with Dieter Christensen, a music-ethnologist, on The Music of the Ellice Islands (German: Die Musik der Ellice-Inseln) (1964) and Koch also published the Songs of Tuvalu (translated by Guy Slatter) (2000). In Tuvalu he was also known as 'Keti'.
As a child Gerd Koch was fascinated by accounts of explorers including the Pacific voyages of James Cook. After he completed his secondary school leaving examination his family could not afford to send him to university so he became an apprentice salesman at the Pelikan fountain pen company in Hanover. He joined the German Navy in 1941 and was trained as a radio operator. His military service involved monitoring radio communications in the English Channel.
He was accepted at Göttingen University in the winter term of 1945 where he studied ethnology. He was interested in the subject of acculturation, the process of cultural change that results following meeting between cultures. In 1949 he wrote a dissertation that was titled Die frühen europäischen Einflüsse auf die Kultur der Bewohner der Tonga-Inseln 1616-1852 (The early European influences on the culture of the inhabitants of the Tonga Islands 1616-1852).
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