The German Ethnology of the 1920s and 30s is not very well known. Before World War I, the field was barely institutionalized, and after this war it was greatly upset, in Germany by the loss of overseas colonies and in Austria by the dissolution of the Empire, as this caused the loss of exclusive research opportunities. Furthermore, the economic crisis and the boycott of German science led to difficult working conditions and often prevented research from being published and meetings with colleagues from other countries from taking place. Finally, from a political point of view, the rise of Nazism and its seizure of power brought about a new political and scientific context. Certain ethnologists exploited career openings, as long as they gave their ideological approval to the regime and agreed to collaborate with it in various ways; others chose to emigrate. Any intermediary solution seemed rather hazardous.
Yet, many important schools of thought, issues and methodologies were created or developed during that period. One could mention in particular Fritz Gräbner and Bernard Ankermann’s Kulturkreislehre, or Leo Frobenius’s Kulturmorphologie, which he elaborated after distancing himself from this movement. Regarding Richard Thurnwald, who was probably the best-known anthropologist outside Germany between the two wars, he developed what came to be known as historical functionalism. He was very well integrated within international research networks and familiar with the Anglo-American schools and their research methodologies and played a large part in renewing German-language ethnological methods and inquiries. Nevertheless, in 1936, he chose to leave the United States and to return to Germany, adapting to the Nazi regime.
With Hilde Thurnwald, on the other hand, it is the issue of the role played by women in the German-language ethnology of that era that is raised. Even though they were officially recognized by their peers, few studies exist about German-speaking women ethnologists; they have, in fact, almost been forgotten. If they were introduced to the discipline and became professionals, it was often through the intervention of their husbands, whom they accompanied on their explorations before conducting their own research and finding ways to get published. This was the path followed by Hilde Thurnwald and Eva Lips, for instance. Sigrid Westphal- Hellbusch’s was less typical, because she obtained an academic degree in ethnology, under the mentorship of Richard Thurnwald; she even succeeded him as chair of the Ethnology Institute of the Berlin Freie Universität.
At the end of World War II, German ethnology was reorganized in Berlin under the tutelage of Hilde and Richard Thurnwald, whose concessions to the Third Reich did not seem to overtly alert the Occupation Authorities, be they Soviet or American. As a matter of fact, they had immediate and irreparable disagreements with the Soviets, mainly on ideological grounds, but they were able to cooperate with the Americans, perhaps in part because of the Thurnwalds’ many trips to the United States before the war, and because of their familiarity with the empirical methodologies used by American scientists. In the field of ethnology, the Americans’ denazification was neither very harsh nor very thorough. The page was quickly turned, even for the anthropologists who were most committed to the Nazi regime. One can thus state that, after 1945, the Thurnwalds were typical of the thematic and personal continuation of the previous era, and of the attempts at making a fresh start. This couple therefore seems to be a particularly good starting point from which to begin an analysis of the ambiguities, continuations and rifts in the history of German-language ethnology since 1900.
Taking Hilde and Richard Thurnwald as a starting point, we would like to investigate the following questions:
- Richard Thurnwald was born in Vienna and started his career in the Habsburg Empire, before moving to Berlin. What was the relationship between German and Austrian ethnologists, and how influential was this relationship in structuring German-language ethnology, whether in terms of unification, specialization or particularization?
- What role did functionalism and its variants (historical functionalism, structural functionalism) play in German-language ethnology? How did functionalism position itself in relation to the legacy of German-language ethnology, to the theories and practices that were involved with it then, and to the political context of the times?
- What was Richard Thurnwald’s involvement in the debates about the notion of reciprocity (Boas, Malinowski, Mauss...)?
- How were women able to work their way into German-language ethnology of that period? How relevant was a possible specialization in issues related to sexuality, the status of women and family?
- What was the relation between ethnology, psychology and sociology at that time? What should one make of certain German “idiosyncrasies”, such as Völkerpsychologie (with which Thurnwald never stopped claiming to agree, and whose name was part of the journal he founded), Gesellschaftslehre (Alfred Vierkant), and so on?
- What knowledge did German and Austrian ethnologists have of American cultural anthropology, and in particular of Franz Boas and his former disciples?
- What sources can help us to understand the evolution of German and Austrian ethnology under Nazism?
- How is the renewal of the discipline, in the immediate aftermath of the war and in the newly formed countries (FRG, GDR, Austria), to be approached?
Proposals should include: name and institutional affiliation; title of the paper and an abstract with 500 words maximum in English, French, or German; a short biography (2-3 lines)
including your research interests, recent publications, etc.
Answers will be given by the end of February 2021.