Gustaf Kossinna (28 September 1858 – 20 December 1931) was a German philologist and archaeologist who was Professor of German Archaeology at the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
.
Along with
Carl Schuchhardt
Carl Schuchhardt (August 6, 1859 – December 7, 1943) was a German archaeologist and museum director. For many years, he was the director of the pre-historic department of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. He was involved in numerous excavations ...
he was the most influential German prehistorian of his day, and was creator of the techniques of
settlement archaeology
Settlement archaeology (German:''Siedlungsarchäologie'') is a branch of modern archaeology. It investigates former settlements and deserted areas, forms of housing and settlements, and the prehistoric settlement of entire regions. For this purpose ...
(german: Siedlungsarchaeologie). His nationalistic theories about the origins of the
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and ear ...
and
Indo-Europeans influenced aspects of
National Socialist
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
ideology. Though politically discredited after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Kossinna's methodological approach has greatly influenced archaeology up to the present day.
In the years following World War II, Kossinna's theories of settlement archaeology were widely dismissed as
pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
. Recent discoveries in
archaeogenetics have prompted a renewed discussion of Kossinna's legacy and the significance of migration in prehistory.
Life
Kossinna was a
Germanized
Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In ling ...
MazurTilsit
Sovetsk (russian: Сове́тск; german: Tilsit; Old Prussian: ''Tilzi''; lt, Tilžė; pl, Tylża) is a town in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the south bank of the Neman River which forms the border with Lithuania.
Geography
Sov ...
is a very long way from the Masurian part of East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
. In any case the original Masurians were ancient Prussians and not Slavs. He was born in
Tilsit
Sovetsk (russian: Сове́тск; german: Tilsit; Old Prussian: ''Tilzi''; lt, Tilžė; pl, Tylża) is a town in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the south bank of the Neman River which forms the border with Lithuania.
Geography
Sov ...
,
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
,
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia (german: Königreich Preußen, ) was a German kingdom that constituted the state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. Re ...
. His father was a teacher at the secondary-school level. Kossinna attended the
Königliche Litthauische Provinzialschule in Tilsit. As a child he learned
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
.
As a university student he matriculated at a number of universities, studying classical and then
Germanic philology in the universities of
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
,
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
,
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
and
Strasbourg
Strasbourg (, , ; german: Straßburg ; gsw, label=Bas Rhin Alsatian, Strossburi , gsw, label=Haut Rhin Alsatian, Strossburig ) is the prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est region of eastern France and the official seat of the Eu ...
. He also studied German history, local history and art history. Kossinna was influenced greatly by
Karl Müllenhoff
Karl Viktor Müllenhoff (born September 8, 1818, in Marne, Duchy of Holstein; died February 19, 1884, in Berlin) was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
Biography
He was born in Marne, Holstein as the second son of merchan ...
, who encouraged him to research the origins of
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
and
Germanic culture. He also came under the influence of
Otto Tischler and
Friedrich Ratzel.
Kossinna obtained his doctorate at Strasbourg in 1887 in the subject of the early records of the high-
Frankish language
Frankish ( reconstructed endonym: *), also known as Old Franconian or Old Frankish, was the West Germanic language spoken by the Franks from the 5th to 9th century.
After the Salian Franks settled in Roman Gaul, its speakers in Picardy and ...
. From 1888 to 1892 he worked as a librarian. During this time Kossinna read widely and published a number of scientific papers on the ancient history of Germany. In 1896 his ideas were expressed in his lecture "The Pre-Historical Origins of the Teutons in Germany".
In 1902, Kossinna was appointed Professor of German Archaeology at the University of Berlin. This position was exclusively created for him. While in this capacity, Kossinna began the work of systematically building up the university institute in view of improving its study and teaching of prehistoric archaeology.
Throughout his career, Kossinna published many books on the origins of the
Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples were historical groups of people that once occupied Central Europe and Scandinavia during antiquity and into the early Middle Ages. Since the 19th century, they have traditionally been defined by the use of ancient and ear ...
, founding the "German Prehistory Society" to promote interest and research in the subject. He became the most famous archaeologist in the German-speaking world, and was notable for his use of archaeology to promote claims for an expanded
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
nation. Notably, Kossinna only conducted one excavation during his career, in 1915. The bulk of his work relied on evidence from the reports of colleagues and museum artifacts.
Ideas
![Gustaf Kossinna by Bruno-Dietrich Sassnick](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Gustaf_Kossinna_by_Bruno-Dietrich_Sassnick.jpg)
By 1895, Kossinna had developed theory that a regionally delimited ethnicity can be defined by the material culture excavated from a site (culture-historical archaeology or simply
culture history
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture.
It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural ...
theory). He wrote, "Sharply defined archaeological cultural areas correspond unquestionably with the areas of particular people or tribes". The statement is known as "Kossinna's law" and forms the basis of his "settlement-archaeology" method. Unlike modern settlement archaeology, which refers only to individual settlements or patterns of settlement, Kossinna meant to emphasise, in Arvidsson's words, that "a unified set of archaeological artifacts, a 'culture', was the sign of a unified ethnicity."
Kossinna's ideas have been connected to the claim that Germanic peoples constitute a national identity with a historic right to the lands they once occupied, providing an excuse for later Nazi annexations of lands in Poland and Czechoslovakia. For example, in his article "The German ''
Ostmark'', Home Territory of the Germans", Kossinna argued that Poland should be a part of the German empire. According to him, lands where artifacts had been found that he considered to be Germanic were part of ancient Germanic territory.
In 1902, Kossinna identified the
Proto-Indo-Europeans
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric population of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction.
Knowledge of them comes chiefly from t ...
with the
Corded Ware culture, an argument that gained in currency over the following two decades. According to
Stefan Arvidsson
Stefan Arvidsson (born 1968) is a Swedish historian who is Professor of the History of Religions at Stockholm University and Professor in the Study of Religions at Linnaeus University.
Biography
Stefan Arvidsson was born in Tranås, Sweden in 196 ...
, Kossinna placed the
Proto-Indo-European homeland
The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities o ...
in
Schleswig-Holstein
Schleswig-Holstein (; da, Slesvig-Holsten; nds, Sleswig-Holsteen; frr, Slaswik-Holstiinj) is the northernmost of the 16 states of Germany, comprising most of the historical duchy of Holstein and the southern part of the former Duchy of Sch ...
. In studying the prehistory of the Germanic peoples and ancient
Indo-Europeans, Kossinna saw the key to the unwritten prehistory of Europe.
Kossinna emphasised a
diffusionist
In cultural anthropology and cultural geography, cultural diffusion, as conceptualized by Leo Frobenius in his 1897/98 publication ''Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis'', is the spread of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, religions, technologi ...
model of culture, according to which cultural evolution occurred by a "process whereby influences, ideas and models were passed on by more advanced peoples to the less advanced with which they came into contact." He emphasised that such superiority was racial in character. Kossinna’s theories aimed to present a history of the Germanic peoples superior to that of the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
. He considered the Romans and the
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
as destroyers of culture as compared to the Germanic peoples. One of his best-known books was ''Die Deutsche Vorgeschichte - Eine Hervorragend Nationale Wissenschaft'' (German Prehistory: A Pre-Eminently National Discipline). It was dedicated "To the German people, as a building block in the reconstruction of the externally as well as internally disintegrated fatherland."
Legacy
![Gustaf Kossinna - Friedhof Lichterfelde](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Gustaf_Kossinna_-_Friedhof_Lichterfelde.JPG)
Following his death, his followers held high-profile positions under the Nazi regime, including
Hans Reinerth
Hans Reinerth (13 May 1900, in Bistritz, Austria-Hungary – 13 April 1990, in Unteruhldingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was a German archaeologist. He was a pioneer of Palynology (pollen analysis) and modern settlement archaeology, but is co ...
, who held Kossinna's former chair at the University of Berlin between 1934 and 1945, and his views were incorporated into the curriculum in German schools.
Kossinna's ideas have been heavily criticised partly because of the political use to which they were put, but also because of inherent ambiguities in the method. Problems with Kossinna's theories have been summarized by
Hans Jürgen Eggers.
Despite justified criticism of the method and its application by Kossinna, the central technique was not unique to him, but it has also developed elsewhere in Europe and the US. Kossinna occupies a key role in the emergence of prehistory as an academic discipline. His methods influenced those of
V. Gordon Childe
Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 189219 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and th ...
, whose associates dominated the field of archaeology for decades after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
In the years following World War II, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a counterreaction against Kossinna's theories of settlement archaeology, and the migration was generally considered not to have been a major factor in prehistoric culture change. More recently, studies of prehistoric migration through
archaeogenetics have been described as marking a return of Kossinna's cultural-historical thinking, drawing criticism from archaeologists.
Selected works
*
Über Die Ältesten Hochfränkischen Sprachdenkmäler: Ein Beitrag zur Grammatik des Althochdeutschen', 1888
*
Die Indagermanische Frage', 1902
*
Mannus', 1909
*
Die Herkunft der Germanen: Zur Methode der Siedlungsarchäologie', 1911
*
Der Goldfund von Messingwerk bei Eberswalde und Die Goldenen Kultgefäze Der Germanen', 1913
*
', 1913
*
Die Deutsche Vorgeschichte: Eine Hervorragend Nationale Wissenschaft', 1914
*
Das Weichselland: Ein Uralter Heimatboden Der Germanen', 1919
*
Die Indogermanen, Ein Abriss', 1921
*
', 1926
* ''
ttps://books.google.com/books/about/Germanische_Kultur_im_1_Jahrtausend_nach.html?id=9cQPAAAAQAAJ Germanische Kultur Im 1. Jahrtausend Nach Christus', 1932
*
Altgermanische Kulturhöhe: Eine Einführung in Die Deutsche Vor- und Frühgeschichte', 1937
See also
*
Culture history
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture.
It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural ...
*
Madison Grant
Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, and as an advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted f ...
*
Lothrop Stoddard
*
Joseph Widney
Joseph Pomeroy Widney, M.D. D.D. LL.D (December 26, 1841 – July 4, 1938), was an American doctor, educator, historian, and religious leader.
After the American Civil War led him to medicine, he followed his brothers to California where ...
*
Alfred Rosenberg
*
Hans F. K. Günther
Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (16 February 1891 – 25 September 1968) was a German writer, an advocate of scientific racism and a eugenicist in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He was also known as "''Rassengünther''" ("Race Günther") ...
*
William Z. Ripley
William Zebina Ripley (October 13, 1867 – August 16, 1941) was an American economist, lecturer at Columbia University, professor of economics at MIT, professor of political economy at Harvard University, and racial anthropologist. Ripley was fa ...
*
Carleton S. Coon
Carleton Stevens Coon (June 23, 1904 – June 3, 1981) was an American anthropologist. A professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard University, he was president of the American Association of ...
*
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
*
Harry H. Laughlin
Harry Hamilton Laughlin (March 11, 1880 – January 26, 1943) was an American educator and eugenicist. He served as the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closure in 1939, and was among the most a ...
Notes
References
Sources
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Further reading
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*
Heyd, V. (2017). Kossinna's smile. Antiquity, 91(356), 348-359. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.2
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kossinna, Gustaf
1858 births
1931 deaths
Alldeutscher Verband members
Aryanism
German archaeologists
German people of Slavic descent
German philologists
Germanic studies scholars
Germanists
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin faculty
Leipzig University alumni
Militant League for German Culture members
Nordicism
People from Tilsit
People from the Province of Prussia
Prehistorians
University of Göttingen alumni
University of Strasbourg alumni