Konrad Theodor Preuss

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Konrad Theodor Preuss (born June 2, 1869 in Preussisch-Eylau , today Bagrationowsk, Russia , † June 8, 1938 in Berlin ) was a German ethnologist who traveled through Latin America a . a. three months with the indigenous people of Uitoto in Colombia lived.

Career

Konrad Theodor Preuss was the son of the Protestant district secretary Theodor Preuss († 1869) and his wife Johanna, geb. Krupinski. So it was up to the mother to take care of the upbringing and education of the son. As he mentions in the curriculum vitae for his dissertation , Preuss was brought up in the Protestant religion. He received his first lessons at a private school (preacher's school) in his hometown, from where he then moved to the high school at the castle in Königsberg . There he passed the school leaving examination at Easter 1887 (March 2nd) and initially worked as a businessman, but gave up after a year. On September 24th, he passed the supplementary exams in Latin and Greek at the Altstädtisches Gymnasium in order to be able to dedicate himself to studying geography and history at the Albertus University in Königsberg . He is particularly grateful to the Baroness von Hoverbeck , who supported his decision to study. On September 24, 1894 , he received his doctorate with a thesis on "The types of burial of the Americans and Northeast Asians". Here you can already see his preference for American studies , but also for comparative religion . He sees the various types of burial as particularly suitable for viewing the Americans and Northeast Asians as representatives of all of humanity. The thesis of magic theory appears of particular interest when he postulates: “The treatment of the dead as living can mostly be explained by the belief in an interaction between soul and body and the opinion that there is still life in the dead; it does not need the theory of animism for this . ”Ten years later he would write:“ Indeed - the tangled threads of primitive religious thought are in no way loosened by animism. ”After that he moved to the Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität , in order to continue to deepen geography and ethnology .

On March 16, 1895, he passed the examination for teaching at secondary schools and joined the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin as a volunteer at the end of the month . His first areas of responsibility were the departments for Africa and Oceania , and later America . Already at this time the interest in “American” languages ​​was awakened in him, because he saw them as the key to the consciousness and the psyche (soul) of the indigenous peoples. The other stages of his career were his appointment as assistant director at the museum in 1900, custodian as successor to Eduard Seler in 1908 and the official title of professor in 1912. During his stay at the museum he witnessed a large part of the development of the ethnological collection in Berlin. After completing his habilitation at the University of Berlin , he gave ethnographic and archaeological lectures covering all of America. Together with Professor Diedrich Westermann , he organized an interdisciplinary, religious studies colloquium , at which researchers from all related fields gave lectures. The events took place once or twice a month, first in the castle and later in the Oriental seminary . He also made great contributions to the religious studies society in Berlin, was an honorary member of several academies and received the Duke of Loubat Prize in 1916. On November 15, 1920 he was entrusted with the management of the North and Central American department, in the same year (December 23) he was given the title of director. Nevertheless, he did not want to give up his teaching activity and in 1921 became a lecturer at Berlin University. He took his official retirement in 1934, but that did not mean the end of his scientific activity. Konrad Theodor Preuss died on June 8, 1938 as a result of a heart attack in Berlin. On this: “Preuss then received a letter from Baumann about the Göttingen meeting and the board election meeting of the Anthropological Society, and after reading this letter he succumbed to a heartbeat. Ms. Preuss herself told me that repeatedly. "

1905 to 1907 he undertook research trips to Mexico to the Cora and Huicholes of the Sierra Madre Occidental . 1912 habilitation he professor of ethnology. He gave lectures on ethnography and archeology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität , Berlin. During a research stay in Colombia from 1913 to 1919, he directed archaeological excavations near San Agustín in 1913/15 , and conducted field research among the Uitoto in the Colombian Amazon (1914) and the Kággaba (Kogi) of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (1915) ).

The book “The spiritual culture of primitive peoples” (Aus Natur und Geisteswelt 452), published in 1914, gave a new perspective on non-European cultures as a whole and questioned the fundamental difference between primitive and cultured peoples: “In fact, however, those seemingly poor progress already contain the Applying almost all of the thinking and feeling skills that our culture has produced. "

From 1920 Preuss headed the North and Central America department of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. He was a member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory , which he was to chair. In 1938, he died of a heart attack the morning after he was accepted.

Awards

  • 1918: Order of Stanislaus IV class
  • 1928: Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences
  • 1928: Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences , Helsinki
  • 1928: Member of the Academia Nacional de Historia, Quito
  • 1929: Honorary member of the Anthropological Society of Washington
  • 1930: Honorary member of the Societée des Américanistes de Paris
  • 1933: Honorary Professor of the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historía y Etnografía, Mexico
  • 1934: Honorary member of the Florence Anthropological Society
  • 1936: Commander of the Order of Boyacá, Colombia

Fonts

  • The burial styles of Americans and Northeast Asians . Dissertation, Königsberg 1894
  • The Hieroglyph of War in Mexican Illuminated Manuscripts. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. 1900, pp. 109-145
  • The origin of religion and art . Globe; Vol. 86/87, 1904/1905
  • The Nayarit Expedition. Text recordings and Observations among Mexican Indians. Undertaken u. ed. on behalf u. with funds d. Royal Preuss. Ministry of Culture from the Duke of Loubat Professorship Foundation. Vol. 1: The religion of the Cora Indians in texts and a dictionary. Leipzig Teubner, 1912 digitized
  • Unpublished diary with field notes . Columbia I Handwritten, IAI Berlin, ca.1913
  • Travel letter from Colombia. In: Journal of Ethnology, Issue 11, 1914, pp. 106–113
  • The spiritual culture of primitive peoples . Leipzig and Berlin 1914. From Nature and Spiritual World 452 ( digitized version), 2nd edition 1923, pp. 161–208.
  • Religion and Mythology of the Uitoto. ( Sources of the history of religion , Vol. 10 and 11). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1921 a. 1923 (2 volumes)
  • The highest deity among the poor in culture . Journal of Psychology and its Frontier Sciences. Special print from Volume II, Issue 3/4, 1922
  • Research trip to the Kágaba. Observations, text recordings and linguistic studies with an Indian tribe in Colombia, South America. 2 volumes, St-Gabriel-Mödling, Anthropos, 1926–1927
  • Death and immortality in the faith of primitive peoples . (Collection of generally understandable lectures and writings from the field of theology and the history of religion, 146) Tübingen, 1930
  • The religious content of myths. Mohr Siebeck / Tübingen 1933 ( collection of generally understandable lectures and writings from the field of theology and religious history , issue 162)

literature

  • Hans Jungbluth: Konrad Theodor Preuss and his fundamental beliefs in the history of religion , dissertation Bonn, 1933.
  • Fritz Rudolf Lehmann: Konrad Theodor Preuß (1869–1938) . In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 71, 1938 ?, pp. 145-150.
  • Emil Snethlage: Konrad Theodor Preuss . In Ethnologischer Anzeiger Volume 4, pp. 261–267. Stuttgart 1944 (obituary and literature list).
  • Berthold Riese : Konrad Theodor Preuss. In: Christian F. Feest , Karl-Heinz Kohl (Hrsg.): Hauptwerke der Ethnologie (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 380). Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-38001-3 , pp. 366-371.
  • Berthold Riese:  Preuss, Konrad Theodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 710 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Fischer, Manuela / Preuss K.Th .: Mitos Kogi , Coleccion 500 anos, No. 20, 1989.
  • Fischer, Manuela: Principles of Order in the Myths of the Kagaba of the Sierra Nevada from Santa Marta , Mundus Series Ethnology Volume 34, Holos, Bonn 1990.
  • Müller, Leopold Markus: The work of Konrad Theodor Preuss on Colombia in a theory-historical analysis , diploma thesis Vienna 2003.
  • Petersen de Pineiros, Gabriele: La lengua uitota en le obra de K.Th.Preuss: aspectos fonologicos y morfosintacticos. Bogota 1994.
  • Jauregui, Jesus / Neurath Johannes: Fiesta, literatura y magia en el Nayarit: ensayos sobre coras, huicholes y mexicanero de K. Th. Preuss. Mexico 1998.
  • Videos: ZDF 1994: The ghosts from the river of graves: Indian magic in Colombia. Terra X series.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ (Globus 1904, Volume LXXXVI, Nr20, p. 321)
  2. ^ In: Nevermann an Generalverwaltung, May 15, 1947 (SBB PK HA: Dep. 38, 644), in: Diaz de Arce, Norbert, "The Berlin and Brandenburger Latin America Research in Past and Present, Gregor Wolff (Ed.), Berlin 2001
  3. ↑ The spiritual culture of primitive peoples , 1915, p. 3
  4. ↑ Norbert Díaz de Arce: Plagiarism allegation and denunciation. Studies on the history of ancient American studies in Berlin (1900-1945) , dissertation, Berlin 2005, chapter 5. Diaz de Arce, Norbert: “Basically, I am an apolitical person who only pursues his scientific work. The Krickeberg Case ”(pp. 163–196). In Wolff (Hrsg.) “The Berlin and Brandenburg Latin American Studies in Past and Present”. WVB Berlin.
personal data
SURNAME Preuss, Konrad Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Prussian Eylau , today Bagrationowsk, Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1938
Place of death Berlin