(1) Overview
Repository location
The dataset is available from ZENODO (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17451140).
Context
This dataset stems from the research conducted by the first author, Rodrigo Campos Castello Branco, for his master’s thesis Film und Fang am Amazonas. Rekonstruktion der Tierfilmexpedition Urwelt im Urwald (1925). The work was completed in September 2025 at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, in the Master’s Programme Film Heritage Studies (Filmkulturerbe). The master’s thesis will be published online by the end of the year as Volume 5 (Band 5) of the master’s thesis series Gegen-Kanon, edited by Prof. Dr. Chris Wahl (Campos Castello Branco, forthcoming, 2025). The thesis focuses on the reconstruction of one film, Urwelt im Urwald (Figure 1), following the guidelines of Bohn (2013a, 2013b).
Figure 1
Poster of the film Urwelt im Urwald. Der Film, no. 42, 18 October 1925 (Public Domain).
Central to the dataset are two scientific film expeditions to the Brazilian Amazon led by the German filmmaker Adolf Freiherr von Dungern (Figure 2) and the films resulting from them. Dungern is a figure largely absent from film historiography; thus, the research recovers previously overlooked sources in both film and natural history archives, in order to shed light on his life and work.
Figure 2
Three agents from the dataset: Adolf von Dungern (center), with Otto Bertram (left) and Rudolf Rangnow (right), holding a three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus Schinz, 1825) during the Dungern Amazon Expedition (Ufa), 1924–1925.
Rangnow, R. (1938). Tropenpracht und Urwaldnacht: Auf Tierfang am Amazonas (p. 96). Leipzig: Gustav Wenzel & Sohn (Photo: Public Domain).
The resulting dataset compiles structured data about the expeditions; the nine film titles produced during the expeditions; the individuals (agents) involved; the resulting publications about the films and expeditions; and the natural history specimens collected by Dungern and preserved at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Donation list of specimens presented by Adolf von Dungern from the Brazilian Amazon to the Zoologisches Museum Berlin, 2 October 1925. Archiv Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, S-02-01-03-01, 1933, Bl. 16, Korrespondenz mit Adolf Freiherr von Dungern.
The temporal scope of the dataset covers the years 1924 to 1931, corresponding to Dungern’s first Amazon Expedition financed by film company Ufa (1924–1925), his second expedition financed by Terra Film (1929), and the release of the expedition films between 1925 and 1931.
By documenting and linking various archival and museological materials, the dataset contributes to the reconstruction of transnational film relations between Germany and Brazil and provides a model for integrating provenance research into film heritage studies.
(2) Method
The open knowledge base Wikidata is increasingly used within the context of Open Science. Research projects are using the tool to increase transparency, discoverability and accessibility of research and collection data (e.g. von Mering et al., 2024a, 2024b; von Mering et al., 2025). For this data paper, Wikidata is used to document and connect data about different entities related to Adolf Freiherr von Dungern’s Amazon film expeditions.
Steps
For the creation of the dataset, we searched Wikidata for existing items related to our subject. The identified items were then enriched and new Wikidata items were created for missing entities, using the research results from the first author’s master thesis. Wikidata items were created and enriched for the following entities: film expeditions, agents, films, publications, (film) archives and film companies. For each item, label and description are given in the three languages English, German and Portuguese. Various statements were added and referenced, depending on the different entity types.
For agents, i.e. people related to the film expeditions, biographical information was added, their occupations checked and updated, links to archives added.
Different identifiers were added for all entities when available, including links to Bionomia1 for collector of biological specimens, to Filmportal2 for films, and to DOIs or other identifiers/links for publications (Figure 4). The film expeditions connect all available information – the items are linked to film expedition participants (agents), films created during the expeditions, (film) archives holding relevant records and publications reporting about the films or film expeditions. The resulting, interlinked dataset provides multilingual linked open data that can be queried using SPARQL queries and also visualised as a knowledge graph.
Figure 4
Skull of a pink river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis), donated by Adolf von Dungern to the Zoologisches Museum Berlin in 1930. From Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Mammal Collection, ZMB_Mam_41500. Photo: Rodrigo Campos Castello Branco.
Sampling strategy
The dataset includes all identifiable entities related to Adolf von Dungern’s two Amazon film expeditions. The selection was based on research of primary sources in film archives, libraries, museum collections, and contemporary press coverage in both Germany and Brazil.
(3) Dataset Description
Repository name
Object name
Entities linked to the Amazon film expeditions led by Adolf Freiherr von Dungern
Format names and versions
CSV
Creation dates
2025-07-24 until 2025-10-26
Dataset creators
Rodrigo Campos Castello Branco & Sabine von Mering
Language
Languages used in the dataset are English
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Publication date
2025-10-26
(4) Reuse Potential
As an interdisciplinary project, this work connects film heritage studies and history of science. From the perspective of film heritage studies, it is a reconstruction of two lost films and stories not yet researched. From the perspective of the history of science, it serves as provenance research for the collected objects, shedding light on their colonial contexts.
Therefore, the dataset offers significant potential for reuse across multiple disciplines. Within film heritage and film history, it can serve as a model for data collection to reconstruct lost or fragmentary films, to trace production networks of film expeditions, and to explore decolonial approaches to archival and historiographical practices.
Scholars in natural history and museum studies may employ the data to investigate provenance, object circulation, and the intersections between film history and historical scientific documentation. Beyond these fields, the dataset may support comparative analyses in digital humanities, colonial and postcolonial studies, cultural history, and science and media studies. Possible applications include aggregation with other open datasets on scientific expeditions or colonial-era filmmaking, network analysis of transnational collaborations, as well as visualisation and pedagogical presentation of historical archival data related to film heritage.
Reuse is limited by the fragmentary nature of the surviving documentation – due to the film’s partial loss, the director’s early death in 1939, and the century-old historical distance – which restricts the completeness and precision of certain records. However, future updates may include newly discovered archival or museological evidence, particularly from Brazilian institutions not yet examined, and cross-referencing with other German film expeditions to South America and Africa. Further study of the preserved natural specimens may also shed light on historical practices of animal collection and representation in early documentary filmmaking.
The authors welcome collaborative contributions that expand the dataset and strengthen the emerging research network on early German scientific and ethnographic cinema.
Notes
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Wolfgang Fuhrmann (Colombia), Elena Welper (Brazil) and Christina Rose (Germany) for their support during the first author’s research.
Competing Interests
The second author is one of the co-guest editors of the special collection to which this data paper belongs.
Author Contributions
Rodrigo Campos Castello Branco: Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing
Sabine von Mering: Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing – review & editing