Martin Gusinde

Martin Gusinde SVD ( born October 29, 1886 in Breslau, † October 18, 1969 in Mission St. Gabriel, Vienna) was a priest and anthropologist, teacher and university professor.

Life

Martin Gusinde joined in 1900 the missionary order of the Divine Word missionaries. He began his higher studies in 1905 in St. Gabriel, Maria Grossenzersdorf ( District Mödling near Vienna ). After his ordination in 1911 Gusinde went to Chile. Besides his work as a teacher from 1912 to the end of 1922 he worked from 1913 at the Ethnographic Museum in Santiago de Chile, Max Uhle. In 1918 he became head of department there. He took from late 1918 to 1924 four research trips to Tierra del Fuego. The aim was to explore the different groups of Tierra del Fuego Indians, who were displaced by diseases and immigrants and already were nearly extinct (see also: Land of Fire - The genocide of the indigenous population ). In total he spent 22 months in Tierra del Fuego, and could participate in the initiation rites he investigated populations there. In addition, he was commissioned by the Berlin Phonogram Archive in songs and chants of the indigenous population. These recordings are the only surviving sound recordings of Tierra del Fuego Indians.

1926 doctorate Gusinde at the University of Vienna in ethnology. Mid-1930s, he explored the Pygmies in the Congo.

From 1949 to 1957 he was professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He undertook in 1956 an expedition to the Ayom Pygmies in New Guinea. From 1959 to 1960 he taught at the Nanzan University of the Divine Word Missionaries in Nagoya, Japan. He spent his life with research, lecturing and teaching at Mission St. Gabriel in Maria Grossenzersdorf. In Puerto Williams, Chile, his own museum was built in honor of testifying to his work at the Tierra del Fuego Indians.

Awards and Tributes

Street names

  • Gusindegasse in 2361 Laxenburg
  • Gusindegasse in Vienna Hietzing (1975 )
  • Martin- Gusindegasse in 2344 Maria Grossenzersdorf

Works

  • The Tierra del Fuego Indians. 3 volumes, Mödling 1931 - '39. The fourth band was only in 1974 that were published posthumously. The sub- volumes present the Selk'nam, 1931, the Yamana, 1937, the physical anthropology of all the three fire country groups, 1939 and the Halakwulup, 1974.
Wrocław Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv Maria Enzersdorf Karl Renner Prize Integrated Authority File
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