Hugo Obermaier
Encyclopedia
) was a distinguished prehistorian and anthropologist who taught at various European centres of learning. He is particularly associated with his work on the diffusion of mankind in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
during the Ice Age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
, and in connection with north Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
cave art, and resisted placing his science at the disposal of nationalistic and racialist interests in the Germany of the 1930s.
Career
Hugo Obermaier spent his childhood and the early part of his student years in RegensburgRegensburg
Regensburg is a city in Bavaria, Germany, located at the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers, at the northernmost bend in the Danube. To the east lies the Bavarian Forest. Regensburg is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate...
. In 1900 he was ordained as a lay priest and between 1901 and 1904 he studied in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
the subjects of Prehistoric archaeology
Prehistoric archaeology
History is the study of the past using written records. Archaeology can also be used to study the past alongside history. Prehistoric archaeology is the study of the past before historical records began....
, physical geography
Physical geography
Physical geography is one of the two major subfields of geography. Physical geography is that branch of natural science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere, as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the...
, geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
, palaeontology, ethnology
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
, German philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and human anatomy. Among his teachers at this time the most important were Albrecht Penck
Albrecht Penck
Albrecht Penck , was a German geographer and geologist and the father of Walther Penck.Born in Reudnitz near Leipzig, Penck became a university professor in Vienna from 1885 to 1906, and in Berlin from 1906 to 1927. There he was also the director of the Institute and Museum for Oceanography by 1918...
, Josef Szombathy
Josef Szombathy
Josef Szombathy , was an Austrian archaeologist, who found the Venus of Willendorf in 1908.The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1 cm high statuette of a female figure, discovered at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems...
and Moritz Hoernes. In 1904 he gained a doctorate with a dissertation on The Diffusion of Humankind during the Ice Age in Middle Europe. Only four years later he qualified as a lecturer and in 1909, despite opposition from Albrecht Penck, his former teacher, he became an unsalaried university lecturer in Vienna. In 1911 he took up a professorial post at the newly-founded Institute of Human Palaeontology in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, which he held until the outbreak of the First World War. In that period he was working with Wernert and Henri Breuil
Henri Breuil
Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil , often referred to as Abbé Breuil, was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist...
at the caves of El Castillo
El Castillo
El Castillo may refer to:in Guatemala*El Castillo , a pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Cotzumalhuapa region of the Guatemalan Pacific plainin Mexico...
and the Cueva de La Pasiega
Cueva de La Pasiega
Cueva de La Pasiega, or Cave of La Pasiega, situated in the Spanish municipality of Puente Viesgo, is one of the most important monuments of Paleolithic art in Cantabria...
in Cantabria. While in Spain (1914) he next decided to work at the National Museum of Natural Sciences
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
The Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales is the National Museum of Natural History of Spain. It is situated in the center of Madrid, by the Paseo de la Castellana. It is managed by the Spanish National Research Council....
in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, but changing again in 1922 to a professorship at the Complutense University in Madrid. He dug at the cave of Altamira
Altamira
-Places:*Cave of Altamira, a cave in Cantabria, Spain famous for its paintings and carving*Altamira, Brazil, a city in the state of Pará*Altamira, Huila, a town and municipality in Colombia*Altamira, Puerto Plata, a town in the Dominican Republic...
in 1924-5, and collaborated with Breuil in their publication in 1935. His work with Frobenius
Frobenius
Frobenius can be* Ferdinand Georg Frobenius , mathematician** Frobenius algebra** Frobenius endomorphism** Frobenius inner product** Frobenius norm** Frobenius method** Frobenius group** Frobenius theorem...
included the study of the Neolithic rock engravings of south Oran
Rock art of south Oran (Algeria)
The rock art of south Oran, are prehistoric engravings of Neolithic age in the south of Oran Province, Algeria, in the Saharan Atlas Mountains, in the regions of Figuig, Ain Sefra, El-Bayadh, Aflou and Tiaret. Comparable engravings have been described, even further east, around Djelfa and in the...
in 1925.
Scientific, personal and (certainly) political considerations were the cause for his refusal to go back to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
when, in 1933, he declined the invitation to take up the Max Ebert Chair in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. After the outbreak of the civil war, in 1939 he left there to take up a Professorship in Fribourg in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. Hugo Obermaier died after a long illness in the Theological hostel in Fribourg.
Hugo Obermaier Society
The scientific contributions of H. Obermaier lay primarily in research into the Old Stone Age, which he was one of the first to recognise as being a field for serious scientific research. In order to pay respect to his memory and equally to advance scientific investigations into the Palaeolithic, on 23 June 1951 archaeologists, geologists, palaeontologists and anthropologists formed a society led by Lothar Zotz. In 1956 the name "Hugo Obermaier Society for Research into the Ice Age and the Stone Age" was adopted.Selected publications
- (with Franz Xaver Kießling) 'Das Plateaulehm-Paläolithikum des nordöstlichen Waldviertels von Niederösterreich' Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 41, 1911, p. 51ff.
- Der Mensch der Vorzeit. (Allgemeine Verlags-GmbH Berlin, München & Wien) (no year - about 1912).
- (with Henri Breuil & H. Alcalde Del Río) La Pasiega à Puente Viesgo, Ed. A. Chêne (Mónaco, 1913).
- (with Leo FrobeniusLeo FrobeniusLeo Viktor Frobenius was an ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography.-Life:He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo, Lago Maggiore, Piedmont, Italy...
) Hadschra Maktuba. Urzeitliche Felsbilder Kleinafrikas. Part 1 (of 6). (Kurt Wolff Pantheon-Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft Florenz, Pantheon und München, 1925). - (with Carl Walter Heiss) Iberische Prunk-Keramik vom Elche-Archena-Typus. (1929)
- (with Herbert Kühn), Buschmannkunst. Felsmalereien aus Südafrika. Edited from the researches of Reinhard Maak. (Kurt Wolff Pantheon-Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft Florenz, Pantheon und München, 1930).
- (with Joseph Bernhart) Sinn der Geschichte. Eine Geschichtstheologie. (Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1931).
- (with Henri BreuilHenri BreuilHenri Édouard Prosper Breuil , often referred to as Abbé Breuil, was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist...
) The Cave of Altamira at Santillana del Mar, Spain (Madrid, 1935). - El Hombre fosil. (New Edition) (Colegio Universitario de Ediciones Istmo Madrid, 1985).
External links
- Larger biography (Principal source for this article) (in German) http://www.uf.uni-erlangen.de/obermaier/whoishugo.html
- The Hugo Obermaier Society, Home Page (in English) http://www.uf.uni-erlangen.de/obermaier/index_e.html
- Literature of and about Hugo Obermaier in the Catalogue of the National Library of Germany.http://dispatch.opac.d-nb.de/DB=4.1/REL?PPN=117077240