Paul Rivet

Paul Rivet (1938)

Paul Rivet (born May 7, 1876 in Wasigny in the Ardennes , † March 21, 1958 in Paris ) was a French ethnologist and doctor . He was a co-founder of the Musée de l'Homme , an ethnological museum located in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.

Professional activities

Paul Rivet graduated from the Lyon National Military Medical School and received his doctorate in medicine in 1897 . In 1901 he received the offer to accompany the French geodetic mission as a doctor , which went to Ecuador in order to resume the work carried out by de la Condamine , Louis Godin and Pierre Bouguer between 1735 and 1745 with more precise methods and more precise instruments . The aim was to measure the length of a meridian arc in a certain proximity to the equator . After completing this mission, he stayed in South America for six years and observed the inhabitants of the valleys between the Andes . Back in Paris, he became a research assistant at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and worked on his South American studies. His notes were published in two parts under the title Ethnographie ancienne de l'Equateur (ancient ethnography of Ecuador) between 1912 and 1922, along with work by René Verneau , then director of the museum .

In 1926, Paul Rivet helped found the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Paris , which he led with Marcel Mauss and where he was one of the first professors. In 1928 he succeeded René Verneau and became director of the Museum of Ethnography of the Trocadéro (MET), which was part of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. In 1937 the MET became the Musée de l'Homme , which was housed in the Palais de Chaillot, which was built for the Paris World's Fair .

In 1942 Rivet went from German-occupied France to Colombia , where he founded the Institute for Anthropology and the Museum for Anthropology.

In his theoretical work, Rivet asserts not only that the cradle of the American people is Asia , but also that migration originated from Australia 6000 years earlier , and a short time later from Melanesia . His major work Origin of the American Man , published in 1943, contains linguistic and anthropological arguments aimed at proving his migration thesis.

In 1945 he returned to Paris and resumed teaching at the Musée de l'Homme, where he also continued his research on South America. His linguistic work provided new insights into Aymara and Quechua . Paul Rivet also had family ties with Ecuador. In 1923 he married Mercedes Andrade Chiriboga (1877–1973), who was the mother of three children and came from the upper class of society. Rivet had met her in Cuenca , and in 1906 he went with her to Paris. His ties to the South American continent led him to found institutions such as la Maison de l'Amérique latine and, together with Paul Duarte, l'Institut français des Hautes études brésilienne . Finally, with his help, the Institut des Hautes Études de l'Amérique latine was opened at the Sorbonne , where he organized numerous conferences.

Civil engagement

In his life, Paul Rivet also showed moral courage . On March 5, 1934, together with the philosopher Alain and the physicist Paul Langevin, he founded the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes . On May 12, 1935, he was elected as the only left candidate for the City Council of Paris.

In June 1940 Paul Rivet hung a poster with the poem "If–" by Rudyard Kipling , which the latter had published in 1910, at the entrance of the Musée de l'Homme as a sign of protest against the armistice with the German Reich . André Maurois translated this poem in 1918 under the title “Tu seras un homme mon fils” (“You will be a man, my son”). On July 14, 1940, Rivet addressed an open letter to Philippe Pétain in which he wrote: "Dear Mr. Marshal, the country is not with you, France is no longer with you." In October 1940 he was elected by the Vichy government removed from office and joined the Musée de l'Homme resistance group.

Persecuted by the Gestapo , he escaped at the last minute and in February 1941 he managed to reach Colombia, which was friendly to him, and whose President Eduardo Santos received him with open arms. He participated in the establishment of the Colombian Institute of Ethnology and the creation of a museum in Bogotá . In 1943 he became Cultural Attaché of Free France for Latin America in Mexico . There he managed to write the book Origin of the American Man , which he had long thought about and which was published in Montreal .

Political tasks

After the liberation he was elected as a socialist member of parliament. In 1948 he resigned from the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO) and joined the Union progressiste. He advocated negotiations with Ho Chi Minh to keep French Indochina in the French Union . In July 1946, he left the conference of Fontainebleau , which ended with a failure of the Franco-Vietnamese negotiations. As an independent candidate , he lost in the parliamentary elections in June 1951 and then withdrew from active politics. In June 1954, Paul Rivet resigned from the Union progressist because it voted against the candidacy of the radical socialist Pierre Mendès France as head of government. The President René Coty named Pierre Mendès-France Prime Minister on June 17, 1954 .

Paul Rivet then dealt with the future of Algeria . On April 21, 1956, he signed in the newspaper Le Monde "l'Appel pour le salut et le renouveau de L'Algérie française" ("Call for salvation and renewal of French Algeria"). He was of the opinion that the inevitable Algerian independence could not come about immediately, but only progressively . At Guy Mollet's request , he defended the French positions on Algeria before the UN and in the countries of South America.

Paul Rivet was also a member of the French League for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights , President of the Conseil supérieur de la radiodiffusion and President of the French Commission for UNESCO .

bibliography

• Christine Laurière: Paul Rivet: le savant et le politique . Publications scientifiques du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-85653-615-5 . (collection Archives 12)