László Vajda (ethnologist)

László Vajda (born February 3, 1923 in Budapest , † November 14, 2010 in Munich ) was a German ethnologist .

Life

László Vajda attended elementary school and high school in Budapest. After graduating from high school in 1941, he studied natural history , ethnography , geography , classical and Hungarian philology at the University of Budapest until 1947 . According to his memories, as a pianist, the son of a pianist and music student, he initially devoted himself to collecting and researching songs and music in the remote rural areas of Hungary and the Carpathian Mountains that were threatened with oblivion - in line with the interests of Béla Bartók, for example . This encounter with folk and customs led to the decision to pursue ethnology , a subject whose terminology (in contrast to the ethnography of the time) he subsequently decisively shaped.

In 1947 he received his doctorate in ethnography as the main subject, the subject of his dissertation was "The ethnological problem of obo heaps ".

In 1947 he became a university assistant in the subject of ethnography and ethnology and the following year he was employed as curator at the Hungarian Ethnographic Museum in Budapest. From 1949 to 1956 he headed the newly established overseas department of this museum and was at the same time a lecturer at the University of Budapest in the field of ethnology. After the Hungarian uprising , he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1956.

In Germany, Vajda was initially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Frobenius Institute , Frankfurt a. M. supports. From 1957 to 1962 he then worked as an assistant under Hermann Baumann in the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Vajda added a chapter to Baumann's “The Peoples of Africa and their Traditional Cultures”, but withdrew his name because of scientific and methodological concerns: Instead of Vajda's name, only three asterisks appear. Baumann had quoted the researcher Seligman several times, but not included in the bibliography because of his Jewish origin.

In 1962 he received his habilitation and in 1964 he was appointed university lecturer . In 1966 he received German citizenship. In 1968 he was appointed to the Scientific Council and in 1978 to a professor . In 1988 he retired.

László Vajda was the founder of the comparative ethnology in Hungary. He was an honorary member of the Association of Friends and Patrons of the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich and the Ethnographic Association in Budapest as well as an officer of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic . His life's work is an encyclopedic index of excerpts from all areas of ethnology and related sciences.

Publications (selection)

• Great Hungarian Travelers - 1951 - (Hungarian);
• The Types of Culture in Africa - Catalog of the Ethnographic Museum, Budapest - 1956 - (Hungarian);
• with Hermann Baumann: Bernhard Ankermanns ethnological records in the grasslands of Cameroon, 1907-1909 - in: Baessler-Archiv , NF vol. 7, pp. 217-318 - 1959
• On the phaseological position of shamanism - religious ethnology - ed. by Carl A. Schmitz: 265-295 - 1964
• Traditional conception and reality in ethnology - in: Festschrift for Ad. E. Jensen / ed. vE Haberland u. a., pp. 759-790 - Munich: Renner - 1964
• Studies on the history of pastoral cultures - Publication by the Eastern European Institute, Munich; 31. - Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz - 1968 - zugl .: München, Univ., Habil.-Schr.
• Leo Frobenius today - in: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 98 (1): 19-29 - 1973
• On the question of migrations - in: Paideuma, Vol. 19/20 pp. 5-53 - 1973/1974
• Directory of the writings of László Vajda - in: Münchner Contributions zur Völkerkunde - 1988 - ISBN 3-7774-4700-5
• Metamorphosis as a sacred act - in: Metamorphosen / ed. vW Engelmann u. BJ Richtsfeld, pp. 9-18 - State Museum for Ethnology, Munich - 1989 - ISBN 3-927270-01-6
• The Monosandalos-Formkreis - in: Baessler-Archiv, NF Bd. 37. P. 131–170 - 1989
• Ethnologica: selected essays - ed. by X. Götzfried - Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz - 1999 - ISBN 3-447-04209-5
• Reflections on Roger Sandall's book against romantic anthropology - in: Anthropos, Vol. 99, pp. 222–230 - 2004
• The Adonis gardens and the miracle of germination - in: Munich contributions to ethnology: Yearbook of the State Museum for Ethnology, Munich, Vol. 12, pp. 7–23 - 2008 - ISBN 978-3-927270-54-1

Web links

• Literature by and about László Vajda in the catalog of the German National Library
• Interview with Laszlo Vajda from 2008 (PDF; 485 kB)