Lajos Bíró and Kamunsanga, the First Christian Papuan in German New Guinea: Servant, Helper, or Friend?

Since the time anthropology took what is known as its ‘reflexive turn,’ it has become commonplace for professionals in the discipline—in order to situate themselves and their data within a web of possible contexts—to make explicit in their publications the variety of human relationships formed with hosts/friends/‘informants’ in the field. But what can be said about the situation during the 19th and early 20th centuries? What do we know about the field associations of our classic-period forefathers? Apart from a few frequently referenced examples (Ely Parker and Morgan, George Hunt and Boas, Tokulubakiki and Malinowski), little to nothing has come down to us about the methods, ethical principles, and – especially – the human relationships of our predecessors to their key (i.e., ‘favorite’) informants: their ‘best friends.’ In this paper, I try to fill this gap for the specific case of Lajos Bíró (1856–1931), a Hungarian naturalist-turned-ethnographer who spent six years (1896–1901) in northeast New Guinea, then a German protectorate and/or colony. His extant letters, photo captions, and popular writings offer a vivid description of his relationship to local Papuans, among them a young, long-term collaborator named Kamunsanga—the same Kamunsanga who, on August 20, 1899, became the first Papuan to convert to Lutheranism. The story of these two men is one that can provide a glimpse into the history of not only ethnography but also colonialism and colonial missionary activity. © 2025 The Author(s). Open Access statement. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited, a link to the CC License is provided, and changes – if any – are indicated. (SID_1)