2023-12-14 21:00:00
Heavenly birds, icons of beauty and wealth – birds of paradise appeal to the imagination, worldwide and for centuries. But the ‘birds of God’ are also simply traded as a product.
The fact that an exhibition regarding birds of paradise is on display in the Mission Museum in Steyl, Limburg, is less remarkable than it seems. Firstly, birds of paradise have been known for centuries as ‘birds of god’. Secondly, the museum has built up an enormous natural history collection over time.
The Mission Museum is part of the Mission House, founded in 1875 by the German Catholic priest Arnold Janssen. Steyl grew into a monastic village with three congregations (brother missionaries, missionary sisters and adoration sisters), its own printing house, dentist, bakery, cemetery and even a replica Lourdes grotto. Janssen himself is buried in Steyl and has now been canonized. The mission still exists, with missionaries of dozens of nationalities sent to as many countries.
The missionaries who brought the word of God to those distant lands in the past often brought animals back with them. Stuffed animals, skins, pinned insects. “The idea was to introduce the brothers and sisters who had yet to be deployed to the country of destination,” says Paul Voogt, curator of the Mission Museum. “In addition to animals, masks, clothing and carvings were also returned from New Guinea, China, Ghana, Togo, Paraguay and more.”
In 1931, the Mission Museum was founded to organize and display that collection. Brother Berchmans was the driving force behind it. “I suspect that he did not have any scientific intentions with it, but mainly wanted to show the beauty of Creation,” says Voogt. Just as brother Berchmans staged the ungulates, bears, cats, butterflies, spiders, countless birds and many more animals in the display cases, they can still be seen today.
The carnivores preferably in violent poses: a tiger pouncing on a calf, a constrictor snake squeezing a deer. The prey animals look scared, with wide open eyes and the tongue hanging out of the mouth. In the ethnological collection, the large number of spears and daggers is particularly striking. Voogt: “The emphasis was clearly on how wild and dangerous those countries were. The idea was that the mission would bring civilization.”
Horror fashion
In 2019, ecologist and natural historian Marc Argeloo was asked to take a look at the objects that were still in the attic. “I opened some drawers and came across birds of paradise. Lots of birds of paradise. But nothing was labeled. No information regarding species, sex, location. Then I found a cash book: 50 Deutsch Mark, for a twelve-wire paradise hop, from Berlinhafen, which was a German colony on New Guinea at the end of the nineteenth century. I understood that I was not looking at a scientific, but a commercial collection.”
The trade in feathers and skins of birds of paradise existed long before colonial times. From New Guinea the birds went to India, China, Nepal, Turkey. The first skins arrived in Spain in 1522, and Europe also became inspired by these wonderful birds with their extravagant feathers and colors.
Because Papuan hunters the animals bolon diuata (birds of god), and because they had the habit of removing the legs from the skins, people in Europe thought they were heavenly birds that never touched the ground. They would drink from the clouds and descend to earth only following death. Argeloo: “The Latin name of the large bird of paradise became nickname Paradisaea. Apoda means legless.”
In the nineteenth century it became fashionable to use bird of paradise feathers in expensive hats and the trade intensified. “The cash book I found dates from that time. Steyl was in the middle of the bird of paradise trade, which helped finance the mission activities. It involved hundreds of thousands of guilders.” The craze was over at the beginning of the twentieth century, also due to the resistance of early animal rights activists.
In the Netherlands, it was the sisters Cécile and Elisabeth de Jong van Beek and Donk who founded the Association for Combating Gruwelmode, a predecessor of the Bird Protection Society. “The nobility and the upper class were the major buyers of feathers, but resistance to them also arose in those circles. The Netherlands banned the trade a lot later than other countries.”
Dagger from thigh
Argeloo has been coming to New Guinea for thirty years for his work in nature conservation and collects everything related to birds of paradise. At home he had the books of the writer Rudolf Voorhoeve, who lived on the island among the bird of paradise hunters from 1929 to 1931. “I traced his daughter and grandchildren to Amsterdam. It turned out that they still had a whole archive of objects and texts from their grandfather.”
The contours of an exhibition began to emerge. “The only thing missing was the voice of the Papuan people themselves. We went looking for the descendants of the hunters, in collaboration with the Universitas Cenderawasih in Jayapura in Papua, the western part of the island of New Guinea that belongs to Indonesia. Very appropriate: paradise is Indonesian for bird of paradise.”
It was decided that the exhibition Birds of god should have three perspectives: that of the missionary Brother Berchmans, the colonial position of Rudolf Voorhoeve, and that of the Papuan hunter Tiliauw de Sawia, with whom Voorhoeve was friends and who plays a leading role in his books. “We recovered a dagger from Tiliauw, made from the thigh bone of a cassowary,” says Marieke Meijer, the exhibition maker who designed the exhibition. “That is now a showpiece at the exhibition.”
Meijer simulated the rainforest in the entrance to the exhibition. It is dark and green and you hear the thin, metallic calls of birds of paradise. “After that, the bird of paradise as a product takes center stage. It is like walking through a warehouse with bellows and stuffed birds in the crates, a feather headdress for the king of Nepal, magazines with advertisements from the fashion world.”
Was the bird of paradise so hunted and traded despite, or precisely because of, its status as a divine bird? Meijer: “That is very ambivalent. The Papuans had – and still have – great respect for the bird; he was their king, or an ancestor. But they still wanted to ‘have’ the beauty of the bird, to get their hands on it. Just like the people in all those countries where the birds ended up. The bird of paradise enchants everyone.”
Elusive bird
The exhibition concludes with the present, in which the bird of paradise trade still exists. “In recent years you have seen more and more illegal street sales of feathers and headdresses,” says Marc Argeloo. “That is a growing threat, just like the advancement of oil palm plantations in New Guinea. But it is not the case that birds of paradise across the entire width are now threatened with extinction. They are generally still quite numerous; You can find them within an hour’s drive from Jayapura. We have to ensure that this remains the case.”
Is the bird of paradise still that ethereal, heavenly, elusive bird today? “He continues to have a special status in Papuan culture. You see his image everywhere, from wall decorations and cartons of coffee to face masks and tattoos. We have a rotating display case, in which the Papuan community in the Netherlands can exhibit their own objects featuring the bird of paradise.”
The bird of paradise is still a well-known symbol and powerful image in Western popular culture. The exhibition contains a copy of Suske en Wiske number 256, The birds of the gods. We know the term ‘bird of paradise’ as a term for extravagantly dressed eccentrics. The bird of paradise continues to have connotations of beauty and wealth.
And who doesn’t know the song Bird of Paradise from Snowy White, a big hit in 1984:
Wish that I might fly
I’d be beside you now
But I can only sigh
And watch you circle round
My bird of paradise
That still sounds quite heavenly and elusive.
The exhibition ‘Birds of God’ can be seen in the Mission Museum in Steyl until September 1, 2024.
Also read:
The male Birds of Paradise lead a loose and promiscuous life
The birds of paradise is a family of medium-sized birds related to crows that occur exclusively in New Guinea, some Moluccas and in northeastern Australia.
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