THE autumn rains blanketed a graveyard in Berlin, Germany, in early October. The smell of mildew and decay tickled the nose. One blackish, thigh-high stone tombstone looked like it had grown on the well-trimmed grass.

This is the burial place of Adolf Bastian—doctor, anthropologist and professor of ethnology at the University of Berlin. He had already used the name of Indonesia in 1884, when it was better known as Nederlandsch-Indie or the Du