Between 1902 and 1914, four German expeditions were sent to Chinese Central Asia (now Xinjiang). These expeditions brought objects of art and around 40,000 text fragments to Berlin in 423 crates. The majority of the latter are in the curatorial care of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin as a deposit of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). The expedition leaders, Albert Grünwedel (1856–1935) – for the first and third expeditions – and Albert von Le Coq (1860–1930) – for the second and fourth expeditions – reported very differently in their publications about their logistics, the routes, and the places visited. The expedition files held at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (AKu) in Berlin, publicly accessible via a thematic portal on CrossAsia (crossasia.org), offer deeper insights into the planning, processes and perspectives of those involved. This paper aims to take a closer look at some of these insights.
Cordula Gumbrecht (Thu,) studied this question.