Robert Beirer (1866 - 1961)

Robert Beirer was born 7 June 1866 in Sipplingen by Lake Constance was a farmer’s son. At the age of eighteen, he trained in Kiel to become a sailor. Between 1886 and 1898, Beirer served on numerous voyages with the German Imperial Navy and was stationed for a long period in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, German New Guinea (a part of present-day Papua New Guinea). He used this stay to collect ethnographic and ethnological artefacts, estimated by an expert at the time to have been of notable value. According to documents concerning the collection there are a number of indications as to how Beyer came upon these artefacts. He clearly acquired a number of these as trade against European ironmongery. Beirer sold the collection to the Museum für Natur- und Völkerkunde in 1898, which was negotiated by his friend Rudolf Schellinger who lived in Stauffen, near Freiburg.

From 1898 onwards, Beirer served as a marine diver during the expansion of the port at Swakopmund in what was the then ‘Protectorate’ of German South West Africa (GSWA, present-day Namibia). Here he subsequently trained as a lighthouse keeper. He was active in this role between 1903 and 1913 in Swakopmund as well as briefly in Angra-Pequena. Whilst visiting home in Sipplingen, the First World War broke out and Beirer did not return to GSWA. Instead, he settled with his family in Constance where he died 10 October 1961.