Richard Thurnwald

Richard Thurnwald (18 September 1869 – 19 January 1954) was an Austrian anthropologist and sociologist, known for his comparative studies of social institutions.

Biography He studied law, economics and oriental languages in Berlin, earning a law degree in 1891. He then took a government post, and while being stationed in Bosnia (from 1896), he conducted research of the local social and economic climate. In 1898 he travelled to Egypt, and following his return to Berlin, he took classes in Egyptology and Assyriology (1901–05). In Berlin, he found employment as an assistant curator at the Museum für Völkerkunde.

In 1917 he completed his habilitation at the University of Halle, and several years later, began giving lectures in sociology and anthropology in Berlin (1924). From 1931 to 1936, he taught classes in the United States, giving lectures at Harvard, Yale and at the University of California. After World War II, as a professor at the Free University of Berlin, he established the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Later he traveled to East Africa (1930) to continue his studies. He departed from the influential views of Wilhelm Wundt and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, and believed that by analyzing social institutions comparatively, one could better explain their differences and how these differences determined the fundamental function of each institution. Thus, by comparing functional social structures, Thurnwald formed sequences of historical development.

Published works In 1925 he founded the journal, Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Soziologie, a publication that was later renamed Sociologus.