Loose translation affixed to the above photo:
April 1931
Lip of the tribe of negroes Sara-Kaba in Berlin!
The arrival of the negro lip on the Anhalt station in Berlin. In the middle of the director of the Berlin Zoo Prof. Heck. The cup-lips have obscured the black women with scarves.
My question to more knowledgeable folks then I is this: The Sara Kapa Tribe supposedly premiered with Ringling in 1930 where they became the forever known "Ubangi Tribe" and with Al G. Barnes Circus in 1932. Were they also sent on a German tour in 1931, because they were photograped above, "hidden" like Michael Jackson with Prof. Dr. Ludwig Heck at the Anhalt station in Berlin in 1931. I wonder if the pair of little people were part of the tribe or added later, as they appear to have on "modern clothes", unlike the Sara Kapa.
Ubangis | WorthPoint
Silent documentary of the Sara Kaba Tribe above in 1924, and a documentary below, from 1934 suggesting their demise in which they are referred to as Ubangi, a "term" Roland Butler, Ringling press agent, the Emperor of BS is credited with.
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The Sara Kaba people shown in the Berlin photo came from what is now Chad, formerly a part of French Equatorial Africa. They lived in an area near the town of Sarh, formerly Ft. Archambault.
The name “Ubangis” was assigned to them by RBBB press man Roland Butler - -a name that stuck. He looked on a map of Africa, noted the Ubangi River, thought it had the right “ring,” and so named them. They lived no closer to the Ubangi River than I do to the Mississippi River as I write this here in Atlanta GA.
Geographically, the Sara Kaba come from the Sahel, a semi-arid band of land stretching across Sub-Saharan Africa. Roland Butler’s artwork erroneously painted them in a tropical rainforest setting.
As best I can determine there were two groups of them brought out for ethnological exhibition to Westerners.
The first one involved a Dr. Eugene Bergonier, a dentist, who became their manager. I have never been able to pinpoint just where Bergonier got hold of them but he seems to have had them in a 1929 ethnological show in Paris, perhaps in the Jardin d' Acclimatation.
He had first encountered them in 1924-25 when he traveled with an expedition through west and central Africa. It was sponsored by auto maker Citroen-Peugeot to prove that it was possible to cross Africa by motorized vehicles.
Bergonier brought the saucer lipped women to the USA (for RBBB) from Montevideo, Uruguay where he had them on exhibition in the winter of 1929-30 (summertime there). They were with RBBB in 1930.
At the end of the 1930 season the Ubangis were sent back. Bergonier had died mysteriously in Sarasota in October, 1930, allegedly from a curse put on him by the Ubangi witch doctor.
Another group of Saras (Ubangis) were imported to the USA in January 1932.They seem to have been among those shown at the huge Colonial Exposition in Paris in 1931.
They were brought over by carnival men Terry Turner and Lou Dufour. That duo showed them in several theaters and then sent them to RBBB for the 1932 circus tours. RBBB kept part of the group and sent the others to its subsidiary show Al. G. Barnes.
Owing to the great depression, the Barnes show closed early. Its Ubangis were then sent to the 1932 Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. They as well as the ones with RBBB then seem to have returned to Africa.
Those shown in the Berlin photo with Prof Heck were the ones exhibited in the zoo from April 22 to June 3, 1931. [See: Ursula Kloes in "Bongo" (2000)]. There is a photo of them in the 1969 book celebrating the 125 anniversary of the Berlin zoo. Most likely, they went from the Berlin zoo to the Paris Exposition and then to USA for 1932.
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