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The most extensive collection of Mongolian ethnographica in Europe goes back to the Austrian explorer Hans Leder (1848-1921). Entomological studies led him from southern Siberia to Northern Mongolia in 1892. During further stays in Mongolia between 1892 and 1905, Leder predominantly took to collecting and studying Mongolian-Buddhist ritual items. One part of his extensive collections is housed in the Museum of Ethnology Vienna, further parts are preserved in the major museums of ethnography in Germany, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
This book, based on a project report, releases previously unpublished archived data and depictions of museum artefacts, offers insight to the collector's biography and the intricate history of the collection as well as the iconography of the artefacts.
The collection is unique as it represents a snapshot of everyday religious culture in Northern Mongolia at the turn of the 19th century. This part of Mongolian culture was increasingly repressed and mostly destroyed in the late 1930s. Within this present publication the interaction with sacred artefacts and their meanings after the introduction of democracy in 1990 is discussed. German text.