Adolf Bastian

Philipp Wilhelm Adolf Bastian ( born June 26, 1826 in Bremen, † February 2nd 1905 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago today ) was a German anthropologist and founding director of the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin.

Biography

In Bremen and traveling

Bastian came from a respected merchant family in Bremen. He studied law at the University of Heidelberg, medicine and natural sciences at the University of Berlin, the University of Jena and the University of Würzburg. He received his doctorate in 1850 for Dr. med He was a member of the Corps Vandalia Heidelberg and honorary member of the Corps Saxonia Jena.

After graduation he traveled in 1850 as a ship's doctor to Australia, Peru, the Caribbean, Mexico, India and Africa. In 1858 he returned to Bremen and described his travel experiences. 1860 The man appeared to the three -volume work on the history, its reputation as the first German ethnologist, who ran systematic studies in the field reasoned. In 1861 he traveled to South and East Asia.

In 1863, he deciphered the first to the mythological roots of Angkor. Bastian discovered the longest relief in the world, illustrating an Indian creation myth, the so-called " churning of the milk ocean ", as well as a decorated with symbols of Indian gods riverbed. He concluded that Hindus, Buddhists do not, the foundations of these buildings laid.

In Berlin

1866 Bastian lecturer in Berlin. He was here co-founder of the Journal of Ethnology. In 1869 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. 1873 by him and others the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin founded (now Ethnological Museum in Berlin- Dahlem ) and he became the first director. He founded the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, together with Rudolf Virchow and Carl Vogt.

Bastian wrote more than 80 books and over 300 articles, a total he spent over 25 years traveling. In addition, he found the meantime opportunity to establish some ( until now existing ) scientific institutions.

His tomb is located on the southwest Stahnsdorf near Berlin (block Trinity ).

Honors

Work

Bastian said in his theoretical work, the idea of " elementary ideas " that have only a small variance among all peoples ( " folk ideas " ), the unity of the people and the human spirit. By he attributed the diversity of human cultures " elementary ideas ", he distanced himself from diffusion theories assume that migrations of cultural characteristics as an explanation for similarities in different cultures. He was an avowed enemy of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin and followed rather the model of " social Darwinism " evolutionists Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Tylor and Herbert Spencer, which is why you Bastian - often brings with evolutionism in combination - especially in the English -speaking world.

He has been seen in a line with enlightened and romantic thinkers such as Giambattista Vico, Johann Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although Bastian himself insisted to take a scientific approach, it has subsequently been classified him in the humanities- inspired sense of history and tradition of ethnology.

Overall, his complex body of work and the sometimes volatile appearing formulations him a reasonable reception seems to have been until now in the way. Carl Gustav Jung developed Bastian's idea of ​​" elementary ideas " on to the " archetypes ".

Writings

  • A visit to San Salvador, the capital of the Kingdom of Kongo. Bremen 1859 ( digitized )
  • The man in the story. 3 volumes, Leipzig 1860 ( digitized )
  • The peoples of eastern Asia. 6 volumes, Jena 1866-1871
  • The resistant to the races of man and the game length of their variability. Berlin 1868
  • Contributions to comparative psychology. Berlin 1868
  • Language, comparative studies. Leipzig 1870
  • Ethnological researches. 2 volumes, Jena 1871-1873
  • Geographical and ethnological images. Jena 1873
  • The German expedition to the Loango coast. 2 volumes, Jena 1874-1875
  • Creation or development. Jena 1875
  • The civilized countries of ancient America. 3 vols, Berlin 1878-1889
  • The Holy Sage of the Polynesians: Cosmogony and Theogony. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1881. ( Online).
  • The League of thought in the development of a science of man. Berlin 1881. ( Digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
  • The history of anthropology. Berlin 1881
  • Stone sculptures from Guatemala. Berlin 1882
  • Buddhism in his psychology. Berlin 1882
  • America's northwest coast. Berlin 1883
  • Archipelagos in Oceania. Berlin 1883
  • Tribes on the Brahmaputra. Berlin 1883
  • Two words about colonial wisdom. Berlin 1883
  • Indonesia. 5 deliveries, Berlin 1884-1894
  • General Principles of Ethnology. Berlin 1884
  • Religion Philosophical problems in the research field of Buddhist psychology and comparative mythology. Berlin 1884
  • The fetish on the coast of Guinea. Berlin 1884
  • The Papua dark island empire. Berlin 1885
  • In terms of spiritualism. Berlin 1886
  • On the Doctrine of the geographical provinces. Berlin 1886
  • The soul of Indian and Hellenistic philosophy in the modern spirit- ghosts. Berlin 1886
  • The world in their reflections below the conversion of international thought. Berlin 1887
  • Some of Samoa and other islands of the South Seas. Berlin 1889
  • About climate and acclimatization. Berlin 1889
  • How did the people think. Berlin 1892
  • Ideal worlds. 3 vols, Berlin 1893
  • Prehistoric creation songs. Berlin 1893
  • The remaining places of departed souls. Berlin 1893
  • Controversies in anthropology. Berlin 1893-1894
  • For the mythology and psychology of Nigritier in Guinea. Berlin 1894
  • The Samoan creation saga and Subsequent from the South Seas. Weimar 1895
  • Ethnic elementary ideas in the doctrine of man. 2 Dept. Berlin 1895
  • For the doctrine of man in ethnic anthropology. 2 Dept. Berlin 1895
  • The thought of creation surrounding world from cosmogonic ideas. Berlin 1896
  • Loose sheets from India. I-VII, Berlin 1897-1899
  • The Micronesian colonies from an ethnological point of view. Berlin 1899
  • The ethnography of the peoples and traffic. Berlin 1900
  • The League of traffic and its means of communication with regard to China. Berlin 1900
  • The changing phases in the historical viewing circle. I-IV, Berlin 1900
  • Cultural-historical studies appended to Buddhism. Berlin 1900
  • The problems of humanistic questions and their answers to way under the sign of the times. Berlin 1901
  • The idea of ​​humanity through space and time. 2 volumes, Berlin 1901
  • The historical drama at the Cape from a bird's perspective. Berlin 1901 ( published anonymously )
  • The science of thought. 3 vols, Berlin 1902-1905
Ship's doctor Wedding (Berlin) Brahmaputra River Neue Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
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