On January 15 Gerd Baumann died at the age of 60. Although his death was not unexpected – in his own style he informed his colleagues – it was still a shock.
Gerd was born in 1953 in Aachen and began his academic training at the University of Cologne, where he studied Musicology, Linguistics and Ethnology. After his cand. phil. In 1975 he moved to The Queen’s University in Belfast to study Social Anthropology because of its strong ethnomusicology department. After finishing his BA Honours he went on an eighteen month’s period of field research in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, which resulted in 1980 in his PhD Thesis: Miri Society, Culture, and Music: An Ethnography with Special Reference to Social Change and Affective Culture. Between 1980 and 1986 Gerd worked at Oxford University (St Anthony’s College and Wolfson College) and taught Ethnomusicology at the University of London. In 1986 he joined the newly founded Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University. During his stay at Brunel he combined teaching with 5 years of intensive fieldwork in Southall among the South Asian and Caribbean migrants. In 1996 this resulted in Contesting Culture. Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London, an innovative and highly acclaimed study on the ways in which people affirm, rethink and negotiate identity, culture and community.
In 1993 Gerd joined the Research Group Religion and Society at the department of Sociology and Anthropology of the UvA where he would stay for twenty years. Although he was quite critical about the bureaucratic organization of the university he felt completely at home in the department and became a central figure in research and in teaching. As a researcher he further developed his ideas on multi-cultural societies and identity(f.i. The Multicultural Riddle [1999];Grammars of Identity/Alterity [2004, edited with Andre Gingrich], but published also articles on religion, ritual, politics, fieldwork and, more recently, together with his dear friend Marie Gillespie, on the BBC World Service. In total he wrote and (co-)edited more than 20 books and published more than 100 articles, making him an internationally well known and highly respected scholar.
His international reputation became evident when in 1997 he was elected member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, on which he served for four years, the last two years as chairman. In that capacity he surprised and impressed the 800 members attending the closing session of the bi-annual conference in the concert hall of Cracow by ending his speech with playing Chopin on the piano that happened to be on stage, bringing the two great loves of his life – anthropology and music – together.
Gerd loved teaching and loved to interact with students who in return loved him for his original and stimulating approach to lectures and seminars. His sense of humor, enthusiasm, vast knowledge and the fact that he took them seriously, made him ‘popular’ (a qualification he hated, but nevertheless it was true) with all students, first year students as well as PhD’s. Gerd taught several courses in the twenty years in Amsterdam but two of them were special to him: The Multi-Cultural Riddle and The Methodological Clinic for PhD’s. He referred to them as ‘my babies’ and was really sad when he had to drop the Multi-Cultural Riddle a few years ago.
Gerd’s ashes were buried in the family grave in Germany during a private ceremony on Monday February 3. At the end of that day students, friends, colleagues and Gerd’s younger brother and his wife came together in one of his favorite hang-outs to commemorate him and share stories about his life. These stories were testimonies to the fact that with Gerd we lose a very special, humane, obstinate and dear colleague and friend.