Robert von Heine-Geldern

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Robert von Heine-Geldern (born July 16, 1885 in Grub , † May 25, 1968 in Vienna ) was an Austrian ethnologist and archaeologist.

Robert Heine-Geldern is considered the founder of Southeast Asian Studies . He taught ethnology and archeology of India and Southeast Asia in Vienna and from 1938 to 1949 as a Jewish emigrant in the USA . He advocated a theory of global cultural relations ( diffusionism ).

Life

Robert von Heine-Geldern was a descendant of the publicist Gustav Heine , who was raised to the hereditary Austrian baron status by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1870. The suffix "von Geldern" was the family name of Gustav Heine's mother.

Robert von Heine-Geldern studied at the University of Munich , then art history and ethnography with Father Wilhelm Schmidt SVD at the University of Vienna . In 1910 he traveled to the border between India and Burma to study . Here he researched the local population and wrote his dissertation in 1914 on the mountain tribes in north-eastern Burma.

Robert von Heine-Geldern did his military service during the First World War, after which he worked at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. In his research he combined ethnological, prehistoric and archaeological concepts. 1919 the Barons Heine of funds with which it was Adel repeal Act , the ennoblement revoked.

From 1927 Heine-Geldern taught anthropology of Southeast Asia at the University of Vienna, where he was appointed professor in 1931.

Fled from National Socialism, he lived as a Jewish refugee in New York City from 1938, where he worked at the American Museum of Natural History . Together with Margaret Mead , Ralph Linton , Adriaan J. Barnouw and Claire Holt, he founded the East Indies Institute of America (later the Southeast Asia Institute ) at the end of July 1941 . In 1950 he returned to Vienna, where he rebuilt the Institute for Ethnology.

With his contribution "Southeast Asia" in G. Buschan's Illustrierte Völkerkunde (1923) Robert Heine-Geldern opened the field of Southeast Asian studies. His works "The Megaliths of Southeast Asia" (1928) and the essay "Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia" (1942) are classics today. Heine-Geldern was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , the Royal Asiatic Society , the Royal Anthropological Institute and the École française d'Extrême-Orient .

He was awarded various medals by the University of Vienna. He was a recipient of the Viking Fund medal of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research .

At the age of 83 he died on May 25, 1968 in Vienna of complications from a stroke.

Selected publications

  • Is there an Austro-Asian breed? Archive for Anthropology (XLVI), 1921, pp. 79–99
  • Southeast Asia . In G. Buschan (ed.): Illustrierte Völkerkunde Strecker and Schröder, Stuttgart 1923, II, i, pp. 689–968
  • The megaliths of Southeast Asia and their significance for the clarification of the megalithic question in Europe and Polynesia. Anthropos (XXIII), 1928, pp. 276-315
  • Original home and earliest migrations of the Austronesians. Anthropos (XXVII), 1932, pp. 543-619
  • Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia. Far Eastern Quarterly (II), 1942, pp. 15-30 Revised version: Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Data Paper # 18, Cornell University, 1956
  • The megalithic problem. In: Contributions of Austria to the study of the past and the cultural history of mankind - Symposium 1958. Wenner-Gren Foundation, New York 1959, pp. 162-182

See also

literature

  • Karl Jettmar : Robert von Heine-Geldern . In: Paideuma. Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, 15, 1969, pp. 8-11
  • Erika Kaneko: Robert von Heine-Geldern: 1885–1968. (PDF; 1.7 MB) In: Asian Perspectives , 13, 1970, pp. 1–10
  • Hermann Mückler : Robert Heine-Geldern and its significance for the ethno-archeology of Southeast Asia and Oceania . In: Christine Pellech (ed.): Kulturdiffusionismus, Further Theories. Acta Ethnologica et Linguistica (AEL) No. 72, Series Generalis - Symposia 1. Vienna 2000, pp. 129-154
  • Christine Pellech (Ed.): Conference reports R. Freiherr von Heine-Geldern. Conference on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of death, April 30 - May 3, 1988. Elisabeth Stiglmayr, Föhrenau 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susanne Blume Berger, Michael Doppelhofer and Gabriele Mauthe: Manual Austrian authors of Jewish origin. 18th to 20th century . de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-094900-1 , p. 520 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Claire Holt: In Memoriam: Robert Heine-Geldern . Indonesia, Volume 6, October 1968, pp. 188-192.
personal data
SURNAME Heine-Geldern, Robert von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heine-Geldern, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian ethnologist and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Grub
DATE OF DEATH May 25, 1968
Place of death Vienna