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  • The Anthropological Society in Vienna and the Academic Establishment of Anthropology in Austria, 1870-1930
  • Irene Ranzmaier (bio)

Introduction

In recent years, the history of European anthropology within specific national contexts has received much attention (Barth 2005; Penny and Bunzl 2003b; Kuklick 1993, 2003; Hoßfeld 2005; Zimmerman 2001). Nevertheless, until now the special case of Austria-Hungary, a multiethnic state that did not have colonies, has been little examined. Although issues related to the research and the methodological approach of anthropologists from Austria are treated in studies about the history of anthropology in the German-speaking world as a whole (for example, Gingrich 2005, 2007), these studies have failed to relate their findings specifically to questions related to the multiethnic state's political context. Questions concerning German nationality certainly had an influence on the German-speaking citizens of Austria-Hungary and on its anthropologists; nevertheless, this was only one aspect of the political context of the Habsburg Empire. In particular, the early period of anthropology being institutionalized in Austria coincided with a period of political alienation from the German states following the 1866 Battle of Königgrätz and the founding of Germany in 1871 as a national state without Austria-Hungary.

Most studies on the history of ethnography and ethnology in the multiethnic Habsburg Empire concern the effects of the state's specific political and social context on these fields (Rupp-Eisenreich and Stagl 1995; Wingfield 2003; Dostal 2002). But as a result of the rather sharp differentiation between various anthropological disciplines in German-speaking countries, these studies have disregarded ethnology's common roots with physical anthropology and prehistory in scholarly anthropology of the late nineteenth century, and have examined only the forerunners of today's cultural and social anthropology. Generally research on the history of anthropology in Austria has focused on the development of individual [End Page 1] disciplines during the twentieth century, especially in relation to the politics and ideology of National Socialism (Baader 2008; Pusman 2008). Hence the early institutionalization of anthropology in Austria during the late Habsburg Empire and the early years of the First Republic of Austria still needs to be examined, as does the field's differentiation into the disciplines of physical anthropology, ethnology, and prehistory.

This article will present the main results of an extensive study on the development of various anthropological disciplines in Austria in comparison to those in other Western European countries (above all Germany), especially with regard to the political context of the multiethnic monarchy and of the post-1918 First Republic of Austria, respectively.1 This study will add not only another more or less "national" puzzle piece to the general history of anthropology, but will also contribute to the history of several related fields in the natural sciences and humanities. As it deals with the early institutionalization of anthropology, it provides insight into the mechanisms involved in the establishment of a new scholarly field, as well as the later establishment of new disciplines (Stichweh 1994).

In Austria, as in other European states (Kuper 2003:355), the first institutionalization of anthropology was by means of a scholarly organization, the Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien (Anthropological Society in Vienna; hereafter ASV). Accordingly, this study also includes aspects of the side issue of the history of scholarly associations of the middle classes (Goschler 2000a, 2000b; Daum 2002). Of greater consequence was the influence of representatives from a number of disciplines, in both the natural sciences and the humanities, on the establishment of the field of anthropology and on its differentiation into a number of different disciplines, both in scholarly associations and at the university. The university, with its own traditions and hierarchies, also influenced the establishment process, albeit in quite a different way than did the scholarly society. A scholarly discipline, even if already established by an organization, is bound to change during the efforts to establish it academically. This is due to structures within universities, the interests of representatives of other, well-established disciplines, and the interests of government officials (Ash 1999, 2002). This applied especially to anthropology, because its separation into several subjects had already begun before it was established academically—and this process involved scientists and humanists...

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