In 1934, Hissink moved to Frankfurt, where she took positions at the Institute for Cultural Morphology (renamed the
Frobenius Institute in 1938) and the Ethnological Museum (now the
Museum of World Cultures). Over the next two years, she took part in the last of the twelve research expeditions to Africa led by German archaeologist
Leo Frobenius that collected ethnographic data and objects and documented rock art. During World War II, Hissink effectively ran the Frobenius Institute as many of its male staff members were away on military service, and she was the wartime director of the Ethnological Museum (1940–1945). The institute was destroyed by bombing, but most of its holdings were saved, and for a time it was housed in Hissink's own apartment. After the war, from 1947 to 1972, Hissink was a curator at the Ethnological Museum. In the early 1950s, she spent two years doing field research in the then little-studied eastern lowlands of Bolivia, and this work is considered an important contribution to cultural anthropology. She focused on the mythology of the
Chama,
Chimane, and
Tacana peoples . Her compilation of nearly 400 Tacana myths is the largest collection of myths that has been published about any South American ethnic group. She also brought back some 300 objects from these trips that are still in the collection of the World Cultures Museum. She did further research in the central American countries of Mexico, Honduras, and Costa Rica. She died in 1981 in
Kronberg im Taunus, a town near Frankfurt. Her papers are housed at the Frobenius Institute. ==Publications==