Adolf Bastian Biography

Adolf Bastian

(Bremen, 1826-Port of Spain, 1905) German ethnologist.Descendant of a merchant family, he studied law, natural sciences and medicine.As a surgeon, he enlisted in the navy, which allowed him to travel the world for eight years.The acquired knowledge allowed him to write his work The man in history (1860), where he developed a political psychology (social and cultural) and proposed an ethnographic development based on data from all humanity, to achieve a Weltanschauung unitary, mediating between science and knowledge.He always stressed the urgency of constituting an empirical basis for the collection of testimonies (objects, original or derived cultural experiences, representations and conceptions of the world) of the "natural peoples" in the process of disappearing.

The work of Bastian became active in 1861, when the German physiologist Rudolf Wagner, a foreign member of the Paris Anthropological Society, tried to found another similar institution in Germany, but as the Germanic anthropologists were widely dispersed they had to meet not permanently, but through congresses..The first took place in September of that year, and the one in 1863 had to be postponed due to Wagner's illness, who died a year later.In 1865 the German Archives of Anthropology were founded, and in 1869 the Journal of Ethnology ( Zeitschrift fü Etnologie ) , directed by Bastian.

From 1861 until his death he was a tireless traveler, as well as an organizer of institutionalized ethnology in the Geographical Society, as well as organizer and curator of the ethnographic collections of the Royal Prussian Museum in 1868.Also organized in this same year, with Rudolf Virchow, the Berlin Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory.He was also president of the African Society and Director of the Royal Museum of Ethnography in Berlin, to which he contributed his own collections; He obtained both positions in 1873, and combined them with his work as a private professor of ethnology at the University of the latter city.

Follower of Darwin and of the theory of the evolution of species, in his opinion only valid for lower organisms, he refuted the views of the English naturalist on the descent of man in various controversies in the early years of the decade of the seventies of the XIX century.Likewise, he considered Haeckel's use of this theory excessive, and considered that the Darwinian explanation for the origin of language was a mythology.

According to Bastian, ethnology, the study of man, does not depend on the zoology; for him the "elementary ideas" were reproduced and tested the psychic unity of humanity, taking place under the action of external stimuli and especially the environment, and were manifested in a multitude of historically differentiated "ethnic ideas".His idealistic positivism of the cultural development of humanity served him to attack Darwinism.

In the almost twenty years that he spent traveling the world, he obtained a copious material, which he used to write a wide range of studies that ranged from the jurisprudence of the peoples to the importance of animals in the mythology.His numerous works include topics in comparative psychology, political psychology, history, and mythology.Among his works, the result of the study of Asia, are History of Indochina, Travel through Burma between the years 1861-1862, Travel to Siam in 1863, Travel to the Indian Archipelago, Travels through China from Beijing to the border Mongolian and return to Europe , and many more.He combined his expeditions with grassroots work and teaching in Berlin, where he directed publications, lectured, and delivered speeches on special occasions.

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