Robert Hertz

Robert Hertz ( * 1881 in Saint-Cloud, † April 13, 1915 ) was a French anthropologist and student of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. He was staff founded by Durkheim magazine " L' Année sociologique " and specializes in sociology of religions and folklore.

He is best known for his study of the collective representation of death, the predominance of the right hand, and his unfinished doctoral dissertation on sin and atonement. His last work is a study on the alpine cult of San Besso. Some researchers, such as the historian of ideas François Dosse, Hertz regarded as the true father of structuralism of Claude Lévi- Strauss. His thinking influenced the members of the Collège de Sociologie, including Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris and Roger Caillois, in particular the adoption of a bipolar, right and left sacred.

Literature and sources

• Hertz, Robert:

- Contribution à une étude sur la représentation collective de la mort ( contribution to the study of the collective representation of death ), the text was in Issue 10 of the Année sociologique in 1907 published

- La de la main droite preeminence ( The predominance of the right hand ), published in 1909 in the Revue Philosophique

- Le péché et l' expiation dans les sociétés primitives ( Sin and Punishment in primitive societies ), published in 1922 after the death of Hertz in the Revue de l' Histoire des Religions.

• Parkin, Robert: The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996.
• Moebius, Stephan: The sorcerer's apprentices. Sociology history of the Collège de Sociologie 1937-1939. Constance: UGC 2006.
• Hertz, Robert / Moebius, Stephan / Papilloud, Christian: From the sacred, sin and death - Robert Hertz's religion, cultural and sociological research. Foreword by Robert Parkin, Spring 2007, UGC -Verlag Konstanz.