Andre Gingrich, professor in Vienna, delivered a paper at the LSE's research seminar last week on German anthropologists under Hitler and their interaction with british colleagues. After the marginalization of several other schools of thought, like Materialism, Culture Morphology, and 'theological' culture circle theory, two schools remained in German anthropology, and were compatible with Nazi ideology, according to Gingrich: Functionalism (Thurnwald, Muehlmann, Fürer-Haimendort, Wagner) and 'secular' culture history (Krickeberg, Reche - and: Hermann Baumann. The founder of Munich's institute for ethnology did not figure prominently in the presentation, as Gingrich focused on the biographies of Fürer-Haimendort and Wagner, who are indeed very interesting figures. But it was for the first time I heard about the potential problems with Baumann's major work "Die Völker und Kulturen Afrikas". Gingrich's paper is going to be published in a book edited by him and Sydel Silverman. Here is an Interview with Gingrich on Anthropology and Colonialism, where he tells us that Talal Asad's father was a Wiener called Leo Weiss.

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