Gerd Koch

Dr. Gerd Koch
Born(1922-07-11)11 July 1922
Hanover, Germany
Died19 April 2005(2005-04-19) (aged 82)
Off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada
EducationBachelor's degree, Göttingen University (1948)
PhD, Göttingen University (1949)
OccupationAnthropologist
SpouseMarion Melk-Koch

Gerd Koch (11 July 1922 – 19 April 2005) was a German cultural anthropologist best known for his studies on the material culture of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific. He was associated with the Ethnological Museum of Berlin (German: Ethnologisches Museum; until 1999 Museum für Völkerkunde). His field work was directed to researching and recording the use of artefacts in their indigenous context, to begin to understand these societies.

His work in cultural and social anthropology extended to researching and recording the music and dance of the Pacific Islands. He collaborated with Dieter Christensen, a music-ethnologist, on The Music of the Ellice Islands (German: Die Musik der Ellice-Inseln) (1964) and Koch also published the Songs of Tuvalu (translated by Guy Slatter) (2000). In Tuvalu he was also known as 'Keti'.[1]

  1. ^ Corlew, Laura (2012). "The cultural impacts of climate change: sense of place and sense of community in Tuvalu, a country threatened by sea level rise" (PDF). Ph D dissertation, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Retrieved 11 September 2016.