Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf or Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf FRAI (22 June 1909 – 11 June 1995) was an Austrian

ethnologist Ethnology (from the , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scien ...

and professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London. He spent forty years studying tribal cultures in

Northeast India Northeast India, officially the North Eastern Region (NER), is the easternmost region of India representing both a geographic and political Administrative divisions of India, administrative division of the country. It comprises eight States and ...

, in the central region of what is now the state of

Telangana Telangana is a States and union territories of India, state in India situated in the Southern India, south-central part of the Indian subcontinent on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, ele ...

and in

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

. He was married to British ethnologist of India and Nepal, Betty Barnardo.

Biography

Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf was born in an Austrian

aristocratic Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense economic, political, and social influence. In Western Christian co ...

family. Very early he developed an interest in

Indian culture Indian culture is the heritage of social norms and technologies that originated in or are associated with the ethno-linguistically diverse nation of India, pertaining to the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and the Republic of India post-1947. ...

, having read

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Thakur (; anglicised as Rabindranath Tagore ; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengalis, Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renai ...

as a young man. He studied

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

and

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

in Vienna and there he was most influenced by Robert von Heine-Geldern. He wrote his thesis on the tribal social organization of the peoples of

Assam Assam (, , ) is a state in Northeast India, northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra Valley, Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . It is the second largest state in Northeast India, nor ...

and northwestern

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

(''Staat und Gesellschaft bei den Völkern Assams und des nordwestlichen Birmas'') and in later years was inspired by John Henry Hutton, a fellow researcher of the tribal communities in that region. After his thesis, von Fürer-Haimendorf moved to London in order to establish contact with the main anthropologists of his time, such as Bronislaw Malinowski. By 1936 he traveled to India, where he worked among the

Naga people Nagas are various Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups native to northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar. The groups have similar cultures and traditions, and form the majority of population in the Indian state of Nagaland ...

and established good friendships among the local administrators of the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

. After five months and great effort, he succeeded in learning the local language and was able to do without an

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

. From then onwards, von Fürer-Haimendorf would insist that it was of the utmost importance for an ethnologist or ethnographer to learn well the language of the people who were the subject of the fieldwork in order to be competent in his or her studies. In 1938, von Fürer-Haimendorf married Betty Barnardo, a colleague. At the time he only made a brief visit to Europe and returned to India, so that at the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

he found himself in British territory holding a

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

passport. He was arrested by the colonial authorities, but with a great degree of politeness and sadness, for they were good friends of his. Thus he was confined to

Hyderabad State Hyderabad State () was a princely state in the Deccan region of south-central India with its capital at the city of Hyderabad. It is now divided into the present-day state of Telangana, the Kalyana-Karnataka region of Karnataka, and the ...

South India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

. As time went by von Fürer-Haimendorf earned the trust of the local authorities, who could see that he had no Nazi sympathies. He was then able to do some of his best fieldwork ever while living among the Chenchu,

Bhil Bhil or Bheel refer to the various Indigenous peoples, indigenous groups inhabiting western India, including parts of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and are also found in distant places such as Bengal and Tripura. Though they now speak the Bhili ...

Reddi Reddy (also transliterated as Reddi or Raddi; also known as Reddiar or Reddappa) is a Telugu Hindu caste predominantly found in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in South India. They are classified as a forward caste. The origin o ...

and the Raj Gond

Adivasi The Adivasi (also transliterated as Adibasi) are heterogeneous tribal groups across the Indian subcontinent. The term is a recent invention from the 20th century and is now widely used as a self-designation by groups classified as Scheduled Tr ...

of present-day interior Telangana. Thanks to friendly government officers, which included fellow ethnologist Verrier Elwin, von Fürer-Haimendorf was able to obtain a post as Special Officer and Assistant Political Officer to the North East Frontier Agency, so he could move back to Northeast India. He studied the Apatanis in 1944–45, when there were tensions in the area owing to the

Japanese conquest of Burma The Japanese invasion of Burma was a series of battles fought in the British colony of Burma (present-day Myanmar) as part of the Pacific Theater of World War II. The initial invasion in 1942 resulted in the capture of Rangoon and the retre ...

. When the war was over von Fürer-Haimendorf was named Advisor for Tribes and Backward Classes to the Nizam's Government of Hyderabad and returned to the South where he continued to do ethnographic fieldwork while he was engaged as government officer. In 1953, when the

Kingdom of Nepal The Kingdom of Nepal was a Hindu monarchy in South Asia, founded in 1768 through the unification of Nepal, expansion of the Gorkha Kingdom. The kingdom was also known as the Gorkha Empire and was sometimes called History of Asal Hindustan, ...

opened to the outside world, von Fürer-Haimendorf did not want to lose the opportunity to visit the then little-known country and became the first foreigner who was able to do research among the peoples of Nepal. Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf lived his old age in London, where he became professor of anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. In 1987, following the death of his wife, his health suffered a decline from which he did not recover. He died on 11 June 1995 and was buried in London.

Works

Von Fürer-Haimendorf published 3,650 pages of ethnographic notes and took more than 10,000 photographs. He also shot a total of over 100 hours of 16 mm

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

s, giving a glimpse on the way of life of certain little-known cultures that were poised to change irreversibly. *Published writings: **''The Naked Nagas'' (1939) **''The Chenchus'' (1943) **''The Reddis of the Bison Hills'' (1945) **''The Raj Gonds of Adilabad'' (1948) **''The Apatanis and their neighbours'' (1962) **''Morals and merit'' (1967) **''The Sherpas of Nepal'' (1964) **''The Bagoria Bhil'' (1964) **''The Konyak Nagas'' (1969) **''Himalayan Traders: Life in Highland Nepal'' (1975) **''Return to the naked Nagas: an anthropologist's view of Nagaland'' 1936–1970 (1976) **''Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival'' (1982)Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, ''Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival'', Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1982. *Films: **''The Men Who Hunted Heads'' (1970) **''The land of the Gurkhas'' (1957) **''The land of Dolpo'' (1962)

References

* Andre Gingrich: ''Konturen eines Frontwechsels: Christoph Fürer-Haimendorfs Wege vom NS-Sympathisanten zum britischen Regierungs'' in: Andre Gingrich; Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (Phil.-hist. Kl., Sitzungsberichte 913; Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/3). Wien: Verlag der ÖAW 2021, S. 1583–1610. doi:10.1553/978OEAW86700
Ralf Meßner, ''Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf: Die Stellung der Naturvölker in Indien und Südostasien.''
* Alban von Stockhausen: ''Imag(in)ing the Nagas: The Pictorial Ethnography of Hans-Eberhard Kauffmann and Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf''. Arnoldsche, Stuttgart 2014, .

External links

The Fürer-Haimendorf Archive

Fürer-Haimendorf Collection of Photography, Notebooks, etc.Fürer-Haimendorf Collection

Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 17 June 1983 (video)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph Von Northeast India Austrian anthropologists Travel photographers Visual anthropologists Austrian ethnographers Austrian ethnologists 1995 deaths 1909 births 20th-century anthropologists Fellows of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Presidents of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Himalayan studies Austrian Indologists Austrian expatriates in India

Biography

Works

Archives

See also

References

External links