ISA Online Lecture: Andre Gingrich, Peter Rohrbacher
During the Nazi period, South East Asian research among socio-cultural anthropologists in Vienna and in exile played a fairly significant role.
Among his new doctoral dissertations at the University institute, the recently (1939) appointed Full Professor Hermann Baumann also supervised a thesis by the Nazi Party protegé Ria Horsky on religious wood sculptures in Nias. Eventually, she became an academic staff member at Vienna's Völkerkunde museum. There she engaged in a bitter, mutual rivalry with the museum's curator Frederic M. Schnitger, a Dutch-Javanese expert in archaeology and regional historical studies with some wider reputation. As a result of their conflict and of Schnitger's claims about political conspiracies, he faced trial and perished in a concentration camp just a few weeks before the war ended. Horsky in 1944 was still contacted by the SS-“Ahnenerbe” for her possible participation in a planned exhibit on the Japanese Empire. She lost her job after Austria's liberation in 1945 and committed suicide in 1948.
Already a few weeks before the “Anschluss”, Robert Heine-Geldern had managed to emigrate to the United States where he spent the decade until his return to Vienna in 1949. In the USA, Heine-Geldern took part in the Austrian monarchist resistance circles around the Habsburg Crown Prince and after Pearl Harbour, in the US anti-Japanese war efforts' cultural dimensions. Already before the war, Heine-Geldern had elaborated the concept of “South East Asia” (originally developed by the Vienna museum curator Franz Heger early in the 20th century). Heine-Geldern then decisively contributed to the introduction of this non-colonial term as academic and media standard during his US service time. In addition, several of his most important academic papers on South East Asia were published during his years in exile.
Andre Gingrich is a Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow at The World Academy for the Advancement of Sciences. He is co-editor (together with Peter Rohrbacher) of “Völkerkunde (Ethnology) from Vienna during the Nazi Period (1938-1945)” (three volumes, in press). His current research projects include the analyses of selected aspects in the historical anthropology of South West Arabia, and in the history of anthropology.
Peter Rohrbacher is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Deputy Speaker of the History Section of the German Society for Social and Cultural Anthropology. He is co-editor (together with Andre Gingrich) of “Völkerkunde (Ethnology) from Vienna during the Nazi Period (1938-1945)” (three volumes, in press). His current research project examines the ecclesiastical and political networks of “Völkerkunde” (Ethnology) from Austria during the interwar period (FWF P33427).
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