Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Poesche (23 March 1825 – 27 December 1899) was a

German American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

anthropologist and author, specializing in historical anthropology.

Life

Born in 1825 in Zoeschen (now part of

Leuna Leuna is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, south of Merseburg and Halle, on the river Saale. The town is known for the ''Leunawerke'', at 13 km2 one of the biggest chemical industrial complexes in Germany, where a very wide range of ...

) in the Province of Saxony of the

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 ...

, Poesche became a student of

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

at the

University of Halle Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university in ...

and later a revolutionary. After the counterrevolution in 1850, he emigrated to the United States. In 1853, he published ''The New Rome, or The United States of the World'', a book in which he compares the United States to the Roman Empire. In 1878, he published ''The Aryans: A contribution to historical anthropology''. Based on the physical characteristics attributed to Indo-Europeans (fair hair, blue or light eyes, tallness, slim hips, fine lips, a prominent chin) by the philologist

Ludwig Geiger Ludwig Geiger (born ''Lazarus Abraham Geiger'', also called ''Ludwig Moritz Philipp Geiger''; 5 June 1848 – 9 February 1919) was a German author and historian. Life Ludwig Geiger was born at Breslau, Silesia, a son of Abraham Geiger. After st ...

, Poesche placed the origin of the Aryans in the vast Rokitno Marshes, then in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, now covering much of the southern part of

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...

and the north-west of the

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

, where

albinism Albinism is the congenital absence of melanin in an animal or plant resulting in white hair, feathers, scales and skin and pink or blue eyes. Individuals with the condition are referred to as albino. Varied use and interpretation of the term ...

was common. Similarly, he argued that the

Lithuanian language Lithuanian ( ) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Lithuania and one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.8 millio ...

is as near to the

parent language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...

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, Dutc ...

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

. Adding linguistic and archaeological arguments,

Karl Penka Karl Penka (26 October 1847, Mohelnice – 10 February 1912, Vienna) was an Austrian philologist and anthropologist. Known for his now-outdated theories locating the Proto-Indo-European homeland in Northern Europe, Penka has been described as "a tr ...

later expanded the area of origin to include northern Germany and Scandinavia. Poesche died in Washington on 27 December 1899.

Works

*''The New Rome, or The United States of the World'' (with Charles Goepp), New York, 1853 *''Die Arier, ein Beitrag zur historischen Anthropologie'', Jena, 1878

References

*Anton Bettelheim, ''Biographisches Jahrbuch und deutscher Nekrolog'' (G. Reimer, 1900, p. 206) *Frank Spencer, ''History of Physical Anthropology'', 1997, p. 110 () *Bruce Lincoln, ''Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship'', University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 253, note 18 () *Edwin Bryant, ''The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate'', Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 32 () 1825 births 1899 deaths People from Leuna People from the Province of Saxony German anthropologists Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni {{Germany-anthropologist-stub