Wilhelm Schmidt (linguist)

Wilhelm Schmidt, SVD ( born February 16, 1868 in Horde (now Dortmund), † February 10, 1954 in Fribourg ) was a Roman Catholic priest, linguist and ethnologist. He was founder of the " Vienna School" of culture teaching, which tried to create a universal history of culture, and at the same time the most important global comparative linguists of the first half of the 20th century.

Life

Wilhelm Schmidt was born on 16 February 1868 in Hoerde the son of a hut worker. At 15 he joined the Missionary Society of the Divine Word missionaries in Steyl (Netherlands). The ordination took place in 1892 in Mission St. Gabriel in Austria. Language studies and correspondence with missionaries in New Guinea and Togo aroused his interest in language and culture of primitive people. From 1895 he taught ethnology and linguistics at the Mission Seminary of St. Gabriel. He traveled to Tierra del Fuego, Farther India, East Africa and the Philippines, where he attended ancient peoples. In 1906, he called on Mission St. Gabriel Anthropos into life, an international journal of international law and linguistics. During the First World War he was chaplain. , Emperor Charles I. Since 1921 he was a lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Vienna by Otto Reche. After his move to Leipzig ethnography and physical anthropology in Vienna were again more clearly separated in 1929 founded Schmidt Institute of Ethnology and established together with Wilhelm Koppers, the Vienna School of Kulturkreislehre. In 1925 he was entrusted with the establishment of the Papal Missionary - Ethnological Museum in the Vatican City, which he directed until 1939 as a director. Wilhelm Schmidt was with Ernst Karl Winter, Alfred Missong, Hans Karl, but common to members of the country team Maximiliana Vienna were of Zessner - top mountain and August Maria Knoll, all of which were korporiert in various Catholic associations, Austrian in the 1930s, the founder of "Action " that dealt with the pan-European theories. After the Anschluss Schmidt was arrested shortly by the Nazis and placed under house arrest. He came through the intervention of the Vatican released and then emigrated to the Vatican. In 1941, he received a professorship at the University of Fribourg ( Switzerland ). On February 10, 1954 Wilhelm Schmidt died in Fribourg at the age of 85 years.

Politics

Schmidt has published among others in the Catholic magazine " More beautiful future" and supported the later mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger and the Christian Social Party. Schmidt was an outspoken opponent of the French religious historian Salomon Reinach coupler (1858-1932), of materialism and communism. In his writings, he represented also racist and anti-Semitic views.

After connection, he cooperated initially with the Nazis, but was then placed under house arrest shortly and emigrated. After the war, he distanced himself from fascist ideology and neo-paganism. He now called for a united Christian Europe.

Research interests

Schmidt was like Leo Frobenius, a representative of diffusionism and the culture concept. Convinced of the existence of a "primitive monotheism ", he went in search of the " origin of the idea of ​​God ." So he instructed his monks during their mission trips heranzuschaffen empirical material to support the theory of an ideal original state of mankind, is said to have prevailed in earlier time.

Schmidt's thesis of an original monotheism was not shared by all scientists because it contradicts the paradigm of a higher development. The He founded the "Vienna School " conducted an ethnographic research program in the way that was done by Martin Gusinde and other Fathers, among others, in Tierra del Fuego and Africa. She plays today in the research no longer matters.

Also, as linguist Schmidt has made Major. He presented the first scientific classification of Australian languages ​​, and was his work on language typology, particularly for word order typology, an important pioneer Joseph Greenberg's (Schmidt 1926).

Awards

  • Honorary Doctor of the Rheinische Friedrich -Wilhelms -Universität Bonn
  • Honorary Doctor of the University of Milan
  • Honorary Doctor of Peking University
  • Honorary Doctor of the University of Uppsala
  • Honorary Doctor of the University of Vienna

Works

  • Wilhelm Schmidt: The origin of the idea of ​​God. A historical-critical and positive study. 1-12, Aschendorff, Münster from 1912 to 1955.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt: The language families and language groups of the world. Winter, Heidelberg 1926, ISBN 3-87118-276-1.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt: Handbook of comparative religious history, for the use of university lectures, seminars, etc. and for self-study. Aschendorff, Münster 1930.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt, Wilhelm Koppers: Handbook of cultural-historical method of ethnology. Aschendorff, Münster 1937.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt: The property at the earliest stages of humankind. 1-3, Aschendorff, Münster from 1937 to 1942.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt: races and peoples in prehistory and history of the West. 1-3, Stocker, Lucerne 1946.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt: Matriarchy. Publisher of the mission printing St. Gabriel, Vienna -Mödling 1955.
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