Hugo Obermaier (29 January 1877, in

Regensburg Regensburg or is a city in eastern Bavaria, at the confluence of the Danube, Naab and Regen rivers. It is capital of the Upper Palatinate subregion of the state in the south of Germany. With more than 150,000 inhabitants, Regensburg is the f ...

– 12 November 1946, in

Fribourg , neighboring_municipalities= Düdingen, Givisiez, Granges-Paccot, Marly, Pierrafortscha, Sankt Ursen, Tafers, Villars-sur-Glâne , twintowns = Rueil-Malmaison (France) , website = www.ville-fribourg.ch , Location of , Location of () () o ...

) was a distinguished Spanish-German

prehistorian Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

and

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

who taught at various European centres of learning. Although he was born in Germany, he was later naturalized as a Spanish citizen in 1924. He is particularly associated with his work on the diffusion of mankind in Europe during the

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gree ...

, and in connection with north Spanish cave art, and resisted placing his science at the disposal of

nationalistic Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: T ...

and

racialist Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies can be more e ...

interests in the Germany of the 1930s.This article is translated from the German Wikipedia, August 2008. The principal source is the biography by the Hugo Obermaier Society for Palaolithic Research, indicated among the external links

Career

Hugo Obermaier spent his childhood and the early part of his student years in

. In 1900 he was ordained as a

diocesan priest In Christianity, the term secular clergy refers to deacons and priests who are not monastics or otherwise members of religious life. A secular priest (sometimes known as a diocesan priest) is a priest who commits themselves to a certain geogr ...

and between 1901 and 1904 he studied in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

the subjects of

Prehistoric archaeology Prehistoric archaeology is a subfield of archaeology, which deals specifically with artefacts, civilisations and other materials from societies that existed before any form of writing system or historical record. Often the field focuses on ages s ...

physical geography Physical geography (also known as physiography) is one of the three main branches of geography. Physical geography is the branch of natural science which deals with the processes and patterns in the natural environment such as the atmosphere, h ...

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

palaeontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

ethnology Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural anthropology, cultural, social anthropolo ...

, German

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

and human anatomy. Among his teachers at this time the most important were

Albrecht Penck Albrecht Penck (25 September 1858 – 7 March 1945) was a German geographer and geologist and the father of Walther Penck. Biography Born in Reudnitz near Leipzig, Penck became a university professor in Vienna, Austria, from 1885 to 1906, ...

, Josef Szombathy and Moritz Hoernes. In 1904, he gained a doctorate with a dissertation on ''The Diffusion of Humankind during the Ice Age in Middle Europe''. Four years later, he qualified as a lecturer and in 1909, despite opposition from Albrecht Penck, his former teacher, he became an unsalaried university lecturer in Vienna. In 1911 he took up a professorial post at the newly founded Institute of Human Palaeontology in Paris, which he held until the outbreak of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In that period he was working with Wernert and

Henri Breuil Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil (28 February 1877 – 14 August 1961), often referred to as Abbé Breuil, was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. He is noted for his studies of cave art in the Somme a ...

at the caves of El Castillo and the

Cueva de La Pasiega Cueva de La Pasiega, or Cave of La Pasiega, situated in the Spanish municipality of Puente Viesgo, is one of the most important monuments of Paleolithic art in Cantabria. It is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since July 2008, as part ...

in Cantabria. While in Spain (1914) he next decided to work at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, but changing again in 1922 to a professorship at the

Complutense University The Complutense University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; UCM, links=no, ''Universidad de Madrid'', ''Universidad Central de Madrid''; la, Universitas Complutensis Matritensis, links=no) is a public research university loca ...

in Madrid. He dug at the

Cave of Altamira The Cave of Altamira (; es, Cueva de Altamira ) is a cave complex, located near the historic town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. It is renowned for prehistoric cave art featuring charcoal drawings and polychrome paintings of contem ...

in 1924-5, and collaborated with Breuil in their publication in 1935. His work with Frobenius included the study of the Neolithic rock engravings of south Oran in 1925. Scientific, personal and political considerations were the cause for his refusal to go back to Germany when, in 1933, he declined the invitation to take up the Max Ebert Chair in Berlin. After the outbreak of the civil war, in 1939 he left there to take up a Professorship in Fribourg in Switzerland. Hugo Obermaier died after a long illness in the Theological hostel in Fribourg.

Hugo Obermaier Society

The scientific contributions of H. Obermaier lay primarily in research into the

Old Stone Age The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

, which he was one of the first to recognise as being a field for serious scientific research. In order to pay respect to his memory and equally to advance scientific investigations into the

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

, on 23 June 1951 archaeologists, geologists, palaeontologists and anthropologists formed a society led by

Lothar Zotz Lothar is a Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, and Swedish masculine given name, while Lotár is a Hungarian masculine given name. Both names are modern forms of the Germanic Chlothar (which is a blended form of ''Hlūdaz'', meaning "fame", an ...

. In 1956 the name "Hugo Obermaier Society for Research into the Ice Age and the Stone Age" was adopted.

Selected publications

* (with Franz Xaver Kießling) 'Das Plateaulehm-Paläolithikum des nordöstlichen Waldviertels von Niederösterreich' ''Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien'' 41, 1911, p. 51ff. * ''Der Mensch der Vorzeit.'' (Allgemeine Verlags-GmbH Berlin, München & Wien) (no year - about 1912). * (with Henri Breuil & H. Alcalde Del Río) ''La Pasiega à Puente Viesgo,'' Ed. A. Chêne (Mónaco, 1913). * (with

Leo Frobenius Leo Viktor Frobenius (29 June 1873 – 9 August 1938) was a German self-taught ethnologist and archaeologist and a major figure in German ethnography. Life He was born in Berlin as the son of a Prussian officer and died in Biganzolo, Lago Ma ...

) ''Hadschra Maktuba. Urzeitliche Felsbilder Kleinafrikas.'' Part 1 (of 6). (Kurt Wolff Pantheon-Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft Florenz, Pantheon und München, 1925). * (with Carl Walter Heiss) ''Iberische Prunk-Keramik vom Elche-Archena-Typus.'' (1929) * (with Herbert Kühn), ''Buschmannkunst. Felsmalereien aus Südafrika.'' Edited from the researches of Reinhard Maak. (Kurt Wolff Pantheon-Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft Florenz, Pantheon und München, 1930). * (with Joseph Bernhart) ''Sinn der Geschichte. Eine Geschichtstheologie.'' (Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1931). * (with

) ''The Cave of Altamira at Santillana del Mar, Spain'' (Madrid, 1935). * ''El Hombre fosil.'' (New Edition) (Colegio Universitario de Ediciones Istmo Madrid, 1985).

Notes

External links

* Larger biography (Principal source for this article)

* The Hugo Obermaier Society, Home Page (in English

* Literature of and about Hugo Obermaier in the Catalogue of the National Library of German

{{DEFAULTSORT:Obermaier, Hugo 1877 births 1946 deaths Writers from Regensburg 20th-century German historians Prehistorians German anthropologists Archaeologists from Bavaria German Hispanists Catholic clergy scientists German male non-fiction writers 20th-century German archaeologists

Career

Hugo Obermaier Society

Selected publications

See also

Notes

External links