DUISBURG

This article appears in Volume V08, Page 650 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: DRO-ECG

DUISBURG , a town of Germany in the kingdom of Prussia, 15 M. by rail N. from Dusseldorf, between the Rhine and the Ruhr, with which rivers it communicates by a canal. It is an important railway centre. Pop. (1885) 47,519; (1900) 92,729; (1905), including many outlying townships then recently incorporated, 191,551. It has six Roman Catholic and six

Protestant

PROTESTANT

churches, among the latter the fine

Gothic

GOTHIC

Salvatorkirche, of the 15th century. It is well furnished with schools, which include a school of machinery. Of modern erections, the concert

hall

, the law courts and a memorial fountain to the cartographer Gerhard Kremer (Mercator) are worthy of mention. There are important foundries, rolling mills for copper, steel and brass plates, chemical works, saw-milling, shipbuilding, tobacco,

cotton

, sugar, soap and other manufactures.
Duisburg was known to the Romans as Castrum Deutonis, and mentioned under the Frankish kings as Dispargum. In the 12th century it attained the rank of an imperial free town, but on being mortgaged in 1290 to Cleves it lost its privileges. At the beginning of the 17th century it was transferred to Brandenburg, and during the Thirty Years' War was alternately occupied by the Spaniards and the Dutch. In 1655 the elector Frederick' William of Brandenburg founded here a

Protestant

PROTESTANT

university, which flourished until 1802.
DUK-DUK, a

secret

SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed)

society of New Britain or New Pomerania, Bismarck Archipelago, in the South Pacific. The society has religious and political as well as social objects. It represents a rough sort of law and order through its presiding spirit Duk-Duk, a mysterious figure dressed in leaves to its waist, with a helmet like a gigantic candle-extinguisher made of network. Upon this figure women and children are forbidden to look. Women, who are entitled in New Britain to their own earnings and

work

WORK

harder than men, are the

special

SPECIAL

victims of Duk-Duk, who levies blackmail upon them if they are about during its visits. These are generally timed to coincide with the hours at which the women are out in the fields and therefore cannot help seeing the figure. Justice is executed, fines extorted, taboos, feasts, taxes and all tribal matters are arranged by the Duk-Duk members, who wear hideous masks or chalk their faces. In carrying out punishments they are allowed to burn houses and even kill people. Only males can belong to Duk-Duk, the entrance fees of which vary from 5o to 100 fathoms of dewarra (small cowrie shells strung on strips of cane). The society has its

secret

SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed)

signs and ritual, and festivals at which the presence of a stranger would mean his death. Duk-Duk only appears with the full moon. The society is now much discredited and is fast dying out.
See " Duk-Duk and other Customs or Forms of Expression of the Melanesian's Intellectual Life," by Graf von Pfeil (Journ. of Anthrop. Instit. vol. 27, p. 181).

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