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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 (; 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). == Biography == 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'' (The early European influences on the culture of the inhabitants of the Tonga Islands) between 1616 and 1852.〔 After he received his PhD, he worked at sorting and cataloguing exhibits of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin (Museum für Völkerkunde), which were in storage at Celle. In 1951 Koch carried out field studies in Tonga and also visited Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia. On his return he found temporary work cataloguing the ethnological collection of the state museum in Hanover. In 1957 he was offered a position as the custodian of the Pacific (Südsee) Department at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. He also lectured at the Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin).〔 In 1960 and 1961 he undertook field studies in the Ellice Islands (now known as Tuvalu). He returned to the Ellice Islands in 1964 then he carried out research in the Gilbert Islands (now known as Kiribati). At this time these islands were administered by the British as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony. In 1966 he undertook field studies in the Pacific, visiting the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain, Papua New Guinea; followed by the Santa Cruz Islands and the Reef Islands in the Solomon Islands. In the 1970s he carried out field work in the Papua Province of New Guinea belonging to Indonesia, near the border with Papua New Guinea.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gerd Koch」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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