Adolf Bastian

Adolf Bastian (Bremen, Germany 26 June 1826 - Port of Spain, Tribindad, 2 February 1905) was a nineteenth century polymath best remembered for his contributions to the development of ethnography and the development of anthropology as a discipline.

Related Topics:
26 June - 1826 - 2 February - 1905 - Polymath - Ethnography - Anthropology

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Bastian was born into a prosperous bourgeois German family of merchants. His career at university was broad almost to the point of being eccentric. He studied law at Heidelberg, and biology at Berlin, Jena, and Wurzberg. It was at this last university that he attended lectures by Rudolf Virchow and developed an interest in what was then known as 'ethnology'. He finally settled on medicine and earned a degree from Prague in 1850.

Related Topics:
Bourgeois - Heidelberg - Biology - Berlin - Jena - Wurzberg - Rudolf Virchow - Prague - 1850

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Bastian became a ship's doctor and began an eight year voyage which took him around the world. This first of would be a quarter of a century of travels outside of Germany. He returned to Germany in 1859 and wrote a popular account of his travels along with an ambitious three volume work entitled Man in History, which became one of his most well-known works. In 1861 he undertook a four-year trip to Southeast Asia and his account of this trip, The People of East Asia ran to six volumes. For the next eight years Bastian remained in Germany, where be became involved in the creation of several key ethnological institutions in Berlin. He has always been an avid collector, and his contributions to Berlin's Royal museum was so copious that a second museum, the Museum of Folkart, was founded largely as a result of Bastian's contributions. Its collection of ethnographic artifacts one of the largest in the world for decades to come. He was also worked with Rudolf Virchow to organize the Ethnological Society of Berlin. During this period he was also the head of the Royal Geographical Society of Germany.

Related Topics:
1859 - 1861 - Southeast Asia - Germany - Museum of Folkart - Rudolf Virchow - Ethnological Society of Berlin - Royal Geographical Society of Germany

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In the 1870s Bastian began travelling extensively in Africa as well as the New World. He died during one these journeys in 1905.

Related Topics:
Africa - New World - 1905

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