Leo Frobenius

Leo Frobenius

Infobox Scientist
name = Leo Frobenius
box_width =



image_width =150px
caption = Leo Frobenius
birth_date = 29 June 1873
birth_place = Berlin
death_date = 9 August 1938
death_place =
residence =
citizenship =
nationality = Germany
ethnicity =
field = ethnology
work_institutions =
alma_mater =
doctoral_advisor =
doctoral_students =
known_for =
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo =
influences =
influenced =
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 June 1873 - 9 August 1938) was an ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography. He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo, Lago Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy. He undertook his first expedition to Africa in 1904 to the Kasai district in Congo, formulating the African Atlantis theory during his travels. Until 1918 he travelled in the western and central Sudan, and in northern and northeastern Africa. In 1920 he founded the "Institute for Cultural Morphology" in Munich. In 1932 he became honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt, and in 1935 director of the municipal ethnographic museum.

In 1897/1898 Frobenius defined several "culture areas" ("Kulturkreise"), cultures showing similar traits that have been spread by diffusion or invasion. With his term "paideuma", Frobenius wanted to describe a "Gestalt", a manner of creating meaning ("Sinnstiftung"), that was typical of certain economic structures. Thus, the Frankfurt cultural morphologists tried to reconstruct "the" world-view of hunters, early planters, and megalith-builders or sacred kings. This concept of culture as a living organism was influenced by the theories of Oswald Spengler.

Frobenius taught at the University of Frankfurt. In 1925, the city acquired his collection of about 4700 prehistorical African stone paintings, which are currently at the University's institute of ethnology, which was named the Frobenius Institute in his honour in 1946.

His writings with Douglas Fox were a channel through which some African traditional storytelling and epic entered European literature. This applies in particular to "Gassire's lute", an epic from West Africa which Frobenius had encountered in Mali. Ezra Pound corresponded with Frobenius from the 1920s, initially on economic topics. The story made its way into Pound's "Cantos" through this connection.

In the 1930s, Frobenius claimed that he had found proof of the existence of the lost continent of Atlantis. ["Leo Frobenius", "Encyclopedia Britannica", 1960 edition]

In 1910, Frobenius arrived in Ife after hearing of the “ancient” city where supposedly “Atlantis” and the god or goddess of the sea resided. The Ife culture lies in the western part of Nigeria and had been the most important city of the Yorubas for centuries. According to some estimation, the Ife culture existed long before A.D. 800. There is no evidence on when the Ife art culture began. However, it had been estimated with the help of radiocarbon dating that fully developed artworks were being produced between the eleventh and fifteenth century. As Hays (1959) observes, Frobenius did not fit the regular image of an ethnologist and more often than not was obsessed and “near paranoia”. Usually Frobenius made no preliminary surveys of the sites or did not directly participate in the excavation. According to Frobenius, he "called upon the [local] people themselves to dig in those areas, where, according to tradition, an ancestor god had descended into the depths of the earth; they were to bring me everything that they found, since I would buy even such things as broken potsherds lying around which might seem meaningless to them. This suggestion brought success." Fact|date=July 2007

Frobenius views about the excavating process and its outcome set the stage for a determined deductionist maneuver Fact|date=July 2007 by assuming Africans non-commitment to artifacts, which “seem meaningless to them.” Thus for six pounds and a bottle of scotch, as Frobenius claimed, the bronze Ologun got into his possession because Africans were not aesthetically matured, and had no sense of commitment to their historical inheritance Fact|date=July 2007.

Due to his studies in African history, Frobenius is a figure of renown in many African countries even today. In particular, he influenced Léopold Sédar Senghor, one of the founders of Négritude, who once claimed that Frobenius had "given Africa back its dignity and identity." Aimé Césaire also quoted Frobenius as praising African people as being "civilized to the marrow of their bones", as opposed to the degrading vision encouraged by colonial propaganda Fact|date=July 2007.

Works

* "Die Geheimbünde Afrikas" (Hamburg 1894)
* "Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis. Petermanns Mitteilungen 43/44", 1897/98
* "Weltgeschichte des Krieges" (Hannover 1903)
* "Unter den unsträflichen Athiopen" (Berlin 1913)
* "Paideuma" (Münich 1921)
* "Dokumente zur Kulturphysiognomik. Vom Kulturreich des Festlandes" (Berlin 1923)
* "Erythräa. Länder und Zeiten des heiligen Königsmordes" (Berlin 1931)
* "Kulturgeschichte Afrikas" (Zürich 1933)

References

External links

* [http://www.frobenius-institut.de/ Homepage of the Frobenius Institute]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужна курсовая?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Leo Frobenius — Leo Frobenius, 1938 Leo Frobenius (* 29. Juni 1873 in Berlin; † 9. August 1938 in Biganzolo, Italien) war einer der bedeutendsten deutschen Ethnologen seiner Zeit. Inhaltsverz …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Leo Frobenius — Leo Frobenius. Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 de junio de 1873 9 de agosto de 1938) fue un etnólogo y arqueólogo alemán nacido en Berlín que se orientó al estudio de la cultura africana. En 1904 realizó su primera expedición a África, concretamente …   Wikipedia Español

  • Leo Frobenius — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Frobenius. Leo Frobenius Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 juin 1873 à …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Frobenius — ist der Familienname von Persönlichkeiten, die der fränkisch thüringischen und schweizerischen Verleger und Beamtenfamilie Frobenius angehören, die auch einige bekannte Gelehrte hervorbrachte. Am bekanntesten daraus sind der Mathematiker… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Frobenius — can be*Frobenius Orgelbyggeri, Danish organ building firm*Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849 1917), mathematician ** Frobenius algebra ** Frobenius endomorphism ** Frobenius inner product ** Frobenius norm ** Frobenius method ** Frobenius group… …   Wikipedia

  • Frobenius — puede referirse a: Johannes Frobenius, nombre latino de Johann Froben (c.1460 1527), impresor y pintor de Basilea. Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849 1917), matemático alemán, quien dio nombre a: el teorema de Frobenius (álgebra). el teorema de… …   Wikipedia Español

  • Frobenius-Institut — Das Frobenius Institut ist benannt nach seinem Gründer, dem Ethnologen Leo Frobenius. Es ist in Frankfurt am Main ansässig und der Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität assoziiert. Das älteste in Deutschland angesiedelte ethnologische Institut… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Frobenius — Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom. Frobenius peut désigner : Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849 1917), mathématicien allemand Leo Frobenius (1873 1938) , anthropologue allemand Nikolaj… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Frobenius — Frobenius,   1) Ferdinand Georg, Mathematiker, * Berlin 26. 10. 1849, ✝ Charlottenburg (heute zu Berlin) 3. 8. 1917; Professor in Zürich (1875 91) und Berlin. Durch seine Arbeiten zur Theorie der Gruppen und ihrer (später für die Quantenmechanik… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • FROBENIUS (L.) — FROBENIUS LEO (1873 1938) Très tôt passionné par la recherche ethnologique et préhistorique, Frobenius rassemble un important matériel ethnographique, avant de diriger entre 1904 et 1935 douze expéditions en Afrique noire. Il mène également des… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”