Famous German Anthropologists

Rudolf Virchow was a German physician, pathologist, anthropologist, biologist, prehistorian, editor, writer, and politician. Nicknamed the Pope of medicine by his colleagues, Virchow is credited with founding the field of social medicine. He is also widely regarded as the father of modern pathology.  Rudolf Virchow was the first person to name diseases, such as thrombosis, leukemia, ochronosis, embolism, and chordoma.

A pioneer of physical anthropology, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach laid down one of the first racial classification systems for humans after studying human skulls, dividing mankind into five racial groups. Born into a family of academics, he was a prodigy. He was against scientific racism, though his theory promoted the degenerative hypothesis.

Ludwig Feuerbach was a German philosopher and anthropologist. He is best remembered for his work, The Essence of Christianity, which strongly influenced generations of future thinkers like Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Engels, and Sigmund Freud among others. Ludwig Feuerbach advocated atheism and his thought was influential in the progression of historical materialism.

Wilhelm Grimm was a German anthropologist and author. He is best remembered as one half of the popular literary duo, the Brothers Grimm. Along with his elder brother Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm published a collection of fairy tales in 1812. It was later translated into English and came to be known as Grimms' Fairy Tales.

Eva Justin was a German anthropologist who specialised in scientific racism. Justin, who was active during the Nazi era, contributed to the crimes of the Nazis against the Roma and Sinti peoples. Eva Justin was tasked with studying children, who were then sent to concentration camps. At least 35 children studied by Eva Justin were killed in the gas chamber.

Adolf Bastian was a German polymath best known for his contributions to the progression of ethnography. He is also credited with making immense contributions to the progression of anthropology as a discipline. Bastian's theory of the Elementargedanke led to Carl Jung's theory of archetypes. Adolf Bastian's work also had a great impact on Franz Boas and Joseph Campbell.

Theodor Nöldeke was a German scholar and orientalist. Apart from being an important orientalist, Nöldeke also translated the works of other prominent orientalists. He also wrote numerous studies and contributed immensely to the Encyclopædia Britannica. Theodor Nöldeke is also credited with teaching many future scholars like Louis Ginzberg and Charles Cutler Torrey.

Arnold Gehlen was a German sociologist, philosopher, and anthropologist. He is credited with influencing numerous contemporary German thinkers like Peter L. Berger, Niklas Luhmann, and Hans Blumenberg. Arnold Gehlen also served as a teacher in prestigious institutions like the University of Vienna and the University of Königsberg.

Franz Weidenreich was a German physical anthropologist and anatomist. Weidenreich, who studied evolution, is credited with pioneering the multiregional hypothesis which provides a different explanation to the standardized recent African origin model (RAO) of monogenesis. The Weidenreich Theory was supported by several anthropologists, including Carleton S. Coon.

Helmuth Plessner was a German sociologist and philosopher. He was an ardent supporter of philosophical anthropology, which deals with questions of phenomenology and metaphysics of humans. From 1953 to 1959, Helmuth Plessner served as the chairman of The German Sociological Association.

Ulli Beier was a German writer, editor, and scholar. He played an important role in the development of literature, poetry, and drama in Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. Ulli Beier is also credited with founding a magazine called Black Orpheus. Beier also translated many traditional Nigerian literary works, such as poems and plays, into English.

German anthropologist and historical-geographer Berthold Laufer who virtually remained the only sinologist working in the US for over three-decades, made significant contributions in shedding light on the attributes of the Chinese and Tibetan culture. He served as the curator of Asiatic Ethnology and Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, and made major contributions to its collections.

Aparna Rao was a German anthropologist best remembered for conducting studies on social groups in France, Afghanistan, and some regions of India. While Rao's research focused on agrarian populations in Jammu, Kashmir, France, and Afghanistan, her doctorate studies focused on ethnology, anthropogeography, and Islamic studies. Aparna Rao also taught anthropology at Germany's University of Cologne.

German-born-American scholar, anthropologist and historian George W. Stocking Jr. is best-known for his scholarship on history of anthropology. He held several academic positions including at the University of Chicago where he eventually became professor emeritus in Department of Anthropology. He served as editor-in-chief of the book series History of Anthropology, co-founded History of Anthropology Newsletter, and produced several scholarly works.  

German anthropologist Gustav Klemm, noted for developing concept of culture and dividing humanity into active and passive races, elucidated his works in General Cultural History of Mankind and General Science of Culture. He served as Director of the Royal Library in Dresden during most-part of his career. His huge collection of central European prehistoric-antiquities was purchased by the British Museum.

German archaeologist Konrad Spindler is best-known as the first examiner and researcher of the glacier-mummy Ötzi. He held several academic-positions including as full-professor at the Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval and Modern Archaeology at the University of Innsbruck. While serving at University of Innsbruck, he examined Ötzi and became the first to date and classify it almost-correctly.

Catholic priest and cultural-anthropologist, Wilhelm Koppers is most-noted for his investigations of hunting and food-gathering tribes which led to several discoveries on origin and development of human-society. He advocated for a historical methodology for understanding cultural-phenomena. He served as professor of ethnology at the University of Vienna and headed its Institute of Ethnology. He edited Wilhelm Schmidt’s influential journal Anthropos.