The Anti-Nazi Diffusionist Ethnology (and Ethnography) of Wilhelm Koppers, by Rohrbacher

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on Austrian diffusionist ethnologist Wilhelm Koppers.

Rohrbacher, Peter, 2024. “A Priest Ethnologist in South America and Central India: Life and work of Wilhelm Koppers,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Father Wilhelm Koppers (1886–1961), born in Rill, near Menzelen in Westphalia, was a student of Father Wilhelm Schmidt and an important representative of German-Austrian diffusionism, also known as Kulturkreislehre. He founded the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Vienna in 1929, which he headed—with the exception of the Nazi period (1938–45)— until 1957. Under Koppers’ aegis, the institute developed into one of the most important centers of sociocultural anthropology in Europe. In this article, published as part of the research theme “History of German and Austrian Anthropology and Ethnologies,” Peter Rohrbacher (Institut für Sozialanthropologie der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna) provides an overview of the life and work of Wilhelm Koppers, who was best known for his field research in South America and Central India. During his second field research among the Bhils in central India in 1938–39, Koppers was active as an ethnographic collector, photographer and documentary filmmaker, which is presented in this article with new archive material. A staunch opponent of the Nazi racial doctrine, Koppers was suspended from the University of Vienna after the Anschluss of Austria to Germany in April 1938. Throughout his life, Koppers stood in the shadow of his teacher Schmidt, which is why his outstanding position in the history of anthropology is usually underestimated. Koppers was one of the initiators of the first international congress for anthropology and ethnology in London in 1934, was a permanent member of the congress council and from 1934 to 1961 one of the vice presidents of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. After Schmidt’s death in 1954, Koppers rejected the Kulturkreislehre, but adhered to the cultural-historical method of anthropology.