Richard Thurnwald

Richard Thurnwald (born September 18, 1869 in Vienna , † January 19, 1954 in Berlin ) was a German ethnologist of Austrian origin.

Life

Richard Thurnwald studied law and specialized in constitutional law .

In 1896 he entered the civil service and was transferred to the provincial government of Bosnia , which had been under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878 after the occupation campaign in Bosnia . From his next position at the Chamber of Commerce in Graz , the capital of the Austrian state of Styria , he traveled to Italy and Egypt . 1901 Thurnwald moved to Berlin and was there until 1906 as a research assistant at the Museum of Ethnology operates. In 1905 he and Alfred Ploetz founded the German Society for Racial Hygiene (the first of its kind worldwide). On behalf of the museum, he undertook a research trip from 1906 to 1909, an ethnological field research work on Melanesia , Palau , Yap , Ponape , the Bismarck Archipelago , on the Solomon Islands and in southern Bougainville . The islands were all German colonies in the Pacific Ocean from 1885 to 1918 . In 1912 Thurnwald was commissioned by the Reich Colonial Office to research the Sepik area. When he was surprised by the beginning of the First World War on this research trip in 1914 , the Australian troops who took over the colony of German New Guinea allowed him to travel to the USA .

From 1915 to 1917, Thurnwald worked in Berkeley . When the United States entered the First World War , he had to return to Germany in 1917. He completed his habilitation in Halle and in 1924 took a teaching position in Berlin . In 1925 he founded the "Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Soziologie" (today: " Sociologus " ). In 1930 he interrupted his teaching activities for a research trip by his wife, Hilde Thurnwald , who was commissioned by the International Institute of African Languages ​​and Cultures to research cultural change in the former German colonial areas in the Tanganyika region . The International African Institute was founded in London in 1926 . a. his role in missionary work. From there, Yale University invited him to a guest lecture and as a result Thurnwald received a visiting professorship at Harvard . In 1932 he was commissioned by the Australian National Research Council to record the cultural change in Bougainville .

In 1937 at the latest he had returned to Germany, where he received an extraordinary professorship for ethnology, national psychology and sociology at the University of Berlin . In 1943 he was a reviewer for Eva Justin's dissertation, the fate of life of alien raised gypsy children and their descendants , a contribution to the National Socialist " gypsy research ".

After the Second World War, he led the "Institute for Sociology and Ethnic Psychology" in Berlin from 1945 to 1948 on behalf of the American military government. Although the institute was financed by the Americans, it did not have its own institute rooms, which is why Thurnwald ran the institute in his private apartment. Its main projects were "on the one hand the demographic recording of urban families with special consideration of their living conditions and on the other hand the support of the problems of adolescents as a result of new living conditions".

The American support for the institute ended in 1948. It was then the only institute that had not previously belonged to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society to be accepted into the German Research University and further financed within this framework. As early as the 1950/51 budget year, however, the institute left “the research university and was affiliated with the Free University . According to the Board of Trustees, this would be more appropriate, as Thurnwald received his salary from there and the research topics he dealt with also fell within the remit of the university ”.

Thurnwald's estate is now in the university library of Yale University . His private library forms the basis of the ethnological inventory of the Library for Social Sciences and Eastern European Studies at the Free University of Berlin .

Research approach and results

Richard Thurnwald's research approach is basically oriented towards social Darwinism , with a focus on supposed racial differences , especially in his depictions of social relationships in “primitive” societies. This predisposition made it easier for him to support the National Socialists in clearing the ethnological chairs of “non-Aryan elements” and to put his analyzes at the service of colonial endeavors.

A classic finding by Richard Thurnwald was the observation that population groups suffering from constant shortages probably save - not, however, in order to later use ( invest ) the saved savings to systematically improve their situation , but to spend (to consume ) it on extensive celebrations . Thurnwald referred to this behavior as a “valve custom”, a term that goes back to the German sociologist Alfred Vierkandt (1867–1953) and generally refers to festivals that are officially approved or organized to resolve pent-up social tensions.

Honors

In 1932 he became a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . Since 1951 he was a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . At the upper reaches of the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea , a mountain range, the Thurnwald Mountains , commemorates the explorer Richard Thurnwald.

Publications (selection)

• Contribution to Alfred Ploetz u. a. (Ed.): Archives for racial and social biology including racial and social hygiene. Journal for research into the nature of race and society and their mutual relationship, for the biological conditions of their maintenance and development, and for the fundamental problems of evolutionary theory. Volume 1, 1904.
• Ethnographic collection of questions to research the social life of peoples outside the modern European-American culture. Published by the International Association for Comparative Law and Economics in Berlin and designed by Dr. SR Steinmetz. Edited and expanded by R. Thurnwald . Berlin: R. v. Decker 1906.
• Human society in its ethno-sociological foundations. 5 volumes. De Gruyter, Berlin / Leipzig 1931–1934:
  • Volume 1: Representative life images of indigenous peoples . 1931;
  • Volume 2: Becoming, changing and shaping families, relatives and associations in the light of ethnology. 1932;
  • Volume 3: Becoming, changing and shaping the economy in the light of human research. 1932;
  • Volume 4: Becoming, changing and shaping the state and culture in the light of international research. 1935;
  • Volume 5: Becoming, changing and shaping the law in the light of international research. 1934.
• as editor: Textbook of Ethnology. 2nd, partially changed edition. Enke, Stuttgart 1939 (first edition published by Konrad Theodor Preuss; with the participation of experts).
• with Hermann Baumann and Diedrich Westermann : Ethnology of Africa. With special consideration of the colonial task. Essen Publishing House, Essen 1940.
• Structure and meaning of ethnology . Treatises of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin . Philosophical-historical class. Born in 1947 No. 3. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1948.

literature

• Inga Meiser: Die Deutsche Forschungshochschule (1947-1953) , publications from the archive of the Max Planck Society, Volume 23, Berlin, 2013, ISBN 978-3-927579-27-9 . The study is the revised version of a dissertation submitted in 2010; it is available online at Inga Meiser: Die Deutsche Forschungshochschule .
• Marion Melk-Koch: In search of human society: Richard Thurnwald. Reimer, Berlin 1989.
• Klaus Timm: Richard Thurnwald: "Koloniale Gestaltung" - an "apartheid project" for the colonial expansion of German fascism in Africa ", in: Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift Vol. 18 (1977), pp. 617–649.
• Hermann Trimborn: Richard Thurnwald. In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 79, 1954, pp. 254-260.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Thurnwald in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd, updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 625.
2. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , p. 26.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Heinzpeter Znoj: History of social and cultural anthropology. 5th lecture: German ethnology and racial studies during the Nazi regime. (PDF; 226 kB) (No longer available online.) Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern, p. 1 , archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; accessed on July 4, 2014 (4 pages; documents for the lecture).  
4. ^ Notation according to Otthein Rammstedt : Deutsche Soziologie 1933-1945. The normality of an adjustment. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-518-28181-X , p. 101.
5. ^ Inga Meiser: Die Deutsche Forschungshochschule (1947-1953) , p. 104
6. ^ Inga Meiser: Die Deutsche Forschungshochschule (1947-1953) , p. 105. Thurnwald was a professor at the Free University of Berlin.
7. ↑ Lexicon entry: valve custom. In: Universal Lexicon. Academic, Russia, 2012, accessed on July 4, 2014 : “Valve custom: Name for social rules that serve to neutralize social or group-internal tensions and aggression by directing them into institutionalized and thus controlled channels (e.g. fighting games, prostitution , today also sports events and talk shows); the name goes back to A [lfred] Vierkandt . Literature: A. Vierkandt: Sittlichkeit, in: Hwb. Der Soziologie, ed. v. A. Vierkandt: (1931, reprint 1959) “  .
8. ↑ Karin Claessens, Dieter Claessens: valve manners. In: Society. Lexicon of basic terms. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, July 5, 1999, accessed on July 4, 2014 : “Officially approved or organized festivals serve as valve customs to resolve pent-up social tensions that could disrupt social order. By "letting the reins shoot the reins" for certain times, one should divert attention from problematic states of rule. So here the carnival around 150 years ago also had the latent character of a political protest event. " 
9. ↑ Compare also Justin Stagl: valve custom. In: Walter Hirschberg (ed.): New dictionary of ethnology. Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-496-00875-X , p. 230.
10. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Richard Thurnwald
11. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Richard Thurnwald. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on June 10, 2016 .