Siegfried Frederick Nadel

Siegfried Frederick Nadel (24 April 1903 – 14 January 1956) was an Austrian-born British anthropologist, specialising in African ethnology.

Life and career

Siegfried Ferdinand Stephan Nadel was born on 24 April 1903 in Lemberg (Lvov), Galicia, part of the Habsburg monarchy. Both parents were born in Lemberg. His family, his father Moritz was a senior railway lawyer, moved to Vienna in 1912. After attending State Real Gymnasium (Vienna), 1913–1921, he enrolled at the Musik-academie in the University of Vienna; his early ambition was to be a conductor and composer. He was an extraordinarily talented polymath. Music led him to the psychology of music and general psychology was at that time affiliated with philosophy. He was awarded his dissertation (in musicology) in November 1925. That year he was also temporary assistant conductor at the Düsseldorf Opera House. The following year he married Lisbeth Braun (b. 1900), also a musicologist. In 1927 he established his own opera company, which toured Czechoslovakia. After spending a brief time in England at a summer school of music he returned to Vienna where he continued to work as a musicologist, developing an interest in African, Javanese and Caucasian music. At the Musikkonservatorium he sorted the ethno-musical papers of Rudolf Poch and later catalogued musical instruments for the Wiener Museum für Völkerkunde. He maintained an interest in psychology and was an active member of the psychological colloquiums of Karl Buehler. He worked also as an Assistant in the Psychological Institute.(Gray)

Nadel handed in his Habilitation - Der Duale Sinn der Music ('The Dual Nature of Music: A Musical Typlogy') - on 10 December 1930. The failure of Nadel to pass his Habilitation was a result of professional and disciplinary infighting, it was not directed at him personally; a close reading of the minutes of the meeting, however, reveals underlying antisemitism widely growing in Vienna at the time.(Gray)

Throughout this period Nadel served as an assistant at the Psychologisches Institut and grew more and more interested in ethnomusicology. He produced radio programs for Radio Vienna on music which included discussions of non-Western music, and in 1930 wrote a piece on the marimba. This transformed into an interest in the anthropology of Africa, which was encouraged by