Moritz von Leonhardi

Wilhelm Georg Moritz Freiherr von Leonhardi (born March 9, 1856 in Frankfurt am Main , † October 27, 1910 in Groß-Karben , Hesse) was a German anthropologist .

Life

Leonhardi was a son of the authorized minister Ludwig (Louis) Freiherr von Leonhardi and Luise, geb. by Bennigsen. He grew up in Karben and Darmstadt . In Heidelberg he studied law , which he had to break off due to illness. Since then he has lived and worked as a private scholar in Groß Karben. Moritz von Leonhardi is a nephew of the liberal politician Rudolf von Bennigsen .

politics

From 1902 until his death in 1910 Leonhardi was a member of the first chamber of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, the then state parliament.

science

Inspired by the new publications by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James Gillen on Australian cultures, he made targeted contacts with missionaries in Australia and New Guinea, in particular with Carl Strehlow , head of mission in Hermannsburg in central Australia, since 1899 . From 1907 Leonhardi intervened in the then lively anthropological research debate with the publication of the first volume of the Aranda and Loritja tribes. Among other things, he was concerned with the recognition and positive assessment of the existence of a high god among the Aranda. Leonhardi set himself in open opposition to the then authoritative scientists Spencer and Gillen.

The contemporary debate around 1900 was marked by a considerable lack of recognition of the newly discovered cultures of the Aborigines from a European perspective . So Spencer and Gillen were based on the evolutionist cultural anthropology of Edward Tylor and James Frazer . Leonhardi, on the other hand, represented a humanistic concept of anthropology in the tradition of Adolf Bastian and Rudolf Virchow . Leonhardi was able to underpin the demand for recognition of Aboriginal cultures, especially in his collaboration with Carl Strehlow, through a more precise handling of sources than that of his scientific opponents. In the 21st century, the texts therefore represent a possible basis for political demands by the Aborigines. (Kenny, 65) The criticism that Strehlow and Leonhardi made of Gillen and Spencer, completely wrong translations and interpretations, such as the Aranda word “Alcheringa ”To have achieved with“ Dreamtime ”or“ Traumzeit ”, which has an impact even in today's popular literature, is taken up again in recent research. (Peoples, Nicholls)

Because of his poor health, Leonhardi himself was never in Australia. As an armchair researcher, he was dependent on close cooperation with local partners. He was in lively correspondence with Carl Strehlow. In it, he put on Strehlow extensive questionnaires on topics such as geography, language, social system , marriage rules , totemism , initiation rites , monotheism , soul performances , funeral rituals , clothing , jewelry or Zeremonialleben . Monotheistic ideas were of particular importance to him. Although Leonhardi only published on Australian topics throughout his life, he acted out of an overarching anthropological interest and also worked on cultures in Europe, North America and New Guinea.

Step by step Moritz von Leonhardi removed the boundaries between informant and scientist by familiarizing the missionaries with technical vocabulary and doctrinal opinions of other scientists and by sending them, among other things, current specialist literature commented on by himself. In doing so, he granted the missionaries their own scientific opinions. Leonhardi also published the missionaries' records on their behalf. This was an unusual method for armchair researchers at the time, only to appear as an editor and not as an author. In addition to content-related discussions, this provoked a debate about methodological questions of data acquisition, field research and the scientific handling of sources.

In the course of the exchange, Moritz von Leonhardi had ethnographic, zoological and botanical objects brought to Europe and given them to various museums, above all to the Völkerkunde-Museum in Frankfurt am Main (now the Museum of World Cultures ) and the Senckenberg Institute . In Groß Karben, numerous Australian plants were sown for the first time in Europe in a greenhouse built for this purpose and he then brought the fully grown plants to the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt for identification.

Aftermath and honors

Until his death, Leonhardi was unable to assert himself against the well-organized networks of Spencer and Gillen. With his early death, German-language anthropological research about Australia came to a standstill for a long time. His own network became unmanageable and disintegrated through his death. Strehlow in particular has not had access to scientific discourse since then. The magazine with the writings of Strehlow, initiated and edited by Leonhardi, was received by, among others, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (La Mythologie Primitive), Émile Durkheim ( Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse ) and Elias Canetti ( Mass and Power ). More recently, a new reception has started.

He was honored for his research by using various animals, including a. the fold wasp Belonogaster leonhardii , the lizard Ctenotus leonhardii or the Australian Jewel Spider Austracantha minax leonhardii were named after him. The Museum of Ethnology in Frankfurt am Main declared him a perpetual member.

Publications

• About some religious and totemic ideas of the Aranda and Loritja in Central Australia. In: Globus. Volume 91, 1907, pp. 285-290
• Some sagas of the Aranda tribe in Central Australia. collected by missionary C. Strehlow, Hermannsburg, South Australia, In: Globus. Volume 92, 1907, pp. 123-126
• About some dog figurines of the Diristammes in Central Australia. In: Globus. Volume 94, 1908, pp. 378-380
• The Mura and the Maramura of the Dieri. In: Anthropos. Volume 4, 1909, pp. 1065-1068
• Gender totemism. In: Globus. Volume 97, 1910, p. 339
• Carl Strehlow: The Aranda and Loritja tribes in Central Australia. Ed. Städtisches Völkerkunde-Museum Frankfurt am Main, 5 volumes, volumes 1–4 edited by Moritz Freiherr von Leonhardi, Frankfurt 1907–1920

literature

• Diane Austin-Broos: Translating Christianity: Some keywords, events and sites in Western Arrernte conversion. In: The Australian Journal of Anthropology. Volume 21, 2010, pp. 14-32.
• Andrea Bandhauer, Maria Veber (eds.): Migration and Cultural Contact: Germany and Australia. Sydney 2009
• Les Dollin: The lost Percincta Bees of Baron von Leonhardi in Central Australia. In: Aussie Bee Bulletin. Volume 18, November 2001.
• Hannelore Götz and Klaus-Dieter Rack: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Supplementary volume, Darmstadt 1995 (= Darmstädter Archivschriften, Volume 10)
• Anna Kenny: A sketch portrait: Carl Strehlow's editor Baron Moritz von Leonhardi. In: Anna Kenny and Scott Mitchell (eds.): Strehlow Research Center Occasional Paper 4: Collaboration and Language. Alice Springs 2005, pp. 54-69.
• Henrika Kuklick: 'Humanity in the chrysalis Stage': indigenous Australians in the anthropological imagination, 1899-1926. In: The British Journal for the History of Science. Volume 39, No. 4, 2006, pp. 535-568.
• Jochen Lengemann : MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 241.
• Angus Nicholls: Anglo-German mythologics: the Australian Aborigines and modern theories of myth in the work of Baldwin Spencer and Carl Strehlow. In: History of the Human Sciences. Volume 20, February 2007, pp. 83-114.
• Klaus-Dieter Rack, Bernd Vielsmeier: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Biographical evidence for the first and second chambers of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse 1820–1918 and the state parliament of the People's State of Hesse 1919–1933 (= Political and parliamentary history of the State of Hesse. Vol. 19 = Work of the Hessian Historical Commission. NF Vol. 29) . Hessian Historical Commission, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-88443-052-1 , No. 531.
• Harriet Völker: Missionaries as Ethnologists. Moritz Freiherr v. Leonhardi, Australian Mission and European Science. In: Reinhard Wendt (ed.): Collecting, networking, evaluating, missionaries and their contribution to the change in the European worldview. Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-8233-5433-7 , pp. 173-210

Web links

• Strehlow Research Center in Alice Springs
• Literature by and about Moritz von Leonhardi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Leonhardi, Wilhelm Georg Moritz Freiherr von. Hessian biography. (As of March 9, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).