Paul Kirchhoff

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Paul Kirchhoff (born August 17, 1900 in Hörste , † December 9, 1972 in Mexico City ), pseudonym Eiffel, was a German philosopher, anthropologist and communist activist.

Life

Paul Kirchhoff studied Protestant theology and religion at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin and at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg . He studied psychology in Leipzig, where he specialized in Mexican ethnology , where he received his doctorate with distinction in 1927. Kirchhoff was one of the founding members of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) in 1920 . He was active in this and in the company organization AAUD , which is closely related to it, until 1931. In the same year he emigrated to the United States of America after he was refused a visa for a research stay in South Africa for political reasons . There he was involved in an exile group of the Trotskyist International Communists of Germany (IKD) until 1934 and then because of his rejection of the policy of entryism propagated by Leon Trotsky in the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL) around Hugo Oehler . Kirchhoff was a member of the management in both organizations. At the end of 1936 Kirchhoff was expelled from the USA and fled to Mexico, where in 1937 he helped found the left-communist Grupo de Trabajadores Marxistas (GTM) and their magazine Comunismo , which only existed for a few years. For political reasons Kirchhoff lost his German citizenship and received Mexican citizenship in 1941.

In 1938 he co-founded the National School of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. He conducted research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, where he produced significant research on Mexican cultures.

In 1943 Kirchhoff introduced the term Mesoamerica for the classification of ethnographic phenomena in the Mexican-Central American area and thus unified a diverse and dynamic cultural area according to the "cultural area" concept of US American cultural anthropology.

As an advocate of diffusionism , Kirchhoff - like Robert von Heine-Geldern and Gordon F. Ekholm - endeavored, by comparing Asian and American cultural phenomena such as art styles, art motifs, calendars and polytheistic systems of ideas, to provide indirect evidence that the cultures of America are subordinate Influence and in contact with the advanced cultures of the Old World.

literature

  • Gérald Gaillard (ed.), Peter James Bowman (translation): Kirchhoff, Paul (1900–1972) , In: The Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists , Routledge , London / New York, 2004, ISBN 0-415-22825-5 , p . 224 (English, PDF online at univpgri-palembang.ac.id); Dictionnaire des ethnologues et des anthropologues , Armand Colin, Paris 1997 (French)
  • David Carrasco (Ed.): Kirchhoff, Paul (1900–1972) anthropologist. In: The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-19510815-6 (limited online access)
  • Frauke Johanna Reisse: Paul Kirchhoff (1900–1972). In: Christopher Winters (Ed.): International Dictionary of Anthropologists. Garland , New York 1991, pp. 348-349, ISBN 0-8240-5094-0 , OCLC 23462648

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Work of Paul Kirchhoff  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . English, accessed May 4, 2010@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.keepmedia.com  
  2. ↑ a b Berthold Riese: Short Portrait: Paul Kirchhoff , In: Video Portal for the History of German Anthropology post 1945 , on germananthropology.com, website of Dieter Haller , Chair for Social Anthropology of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (English)
  3. ↑ Gerd Kutscher: Paul Kirchhoff (1900–1972) , portrait on the website of the Ibero-American Institute , Berlin (PDF, 6.4MB; Spanish)
  4. ^ Leon Trotsky: Lettre à L. Sedov , January 25, 1932 , Marxists Internet Archive
  5. ↑ Philippe Bourrinet: The Italian Communist Left (1926-1950) , pp. 209-213, 217-218, 221 (PDF; 15.3 MB).
  6. ↑ Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH)
  7. ↑ Cornelia Giesing, The pre-Columbian America in a circumpacific view (PDF; 4.88 MB, accessed: November 22, 2012), from: Wolfgang Stein (Hrsg.): State Museum for Ethnology - Munich, "COLUMBUS or who discovered America?" , Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7774-6060-5 , pp. 38-68.
personal data
SURNAME Kirchhoff, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eiffel (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and anthropologist, communist activist
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Listen (hall)
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1972
Place of death Mexico city