browse tags

Robert Heine-Geldern

Portrait of Robert   Heine-Geldern

Robert Heine-Geldern [Robert Freiherr von Heine-Geldern before 1919] (16 July 1885, Grub, Wienerwald — 25 May 1968, Vienna, Austria) was an Austrian anthropologist, ethnologist, archaeologist and prehistorian specializing in Southeast Asia, a professor of ethnology and archaeology of India and Southeast Asia at the University of Vienna and in the USA when he had to flee his country from 1938 to 1949. 

A young relative of famous German poet Heinrich Heine, Geldern studied art history and philosophy at Munich University and the University of Vienna, still the capital city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. After a field trip to the India – Burma border in 1910, he majored in in anthropology and prehistory with a 1914 doctoral thesis on the Mountain Tribes of Northern and Northeastern Burma.

Immediately after WWI, Heine-Geldern joined the ethnographic department of the Natural History Museum (later Museum of Ethnology) in Vienna (from 1917 to 1927), starting with other researchers an ongoing effort to combine ethnology and prehistory aiming at a ​“universal historiography” and pioneering the field of Southeast Asian anthropology. A lecturer in ethnology applied to Southeast Asia and India at Vienna University since 1927, he was appointed associate professor for Ethnology and Archaeology of India, Southeast Asia and Oceania in 1931.

Fleeing the Nazi persecutions, he decided not to return to Austria from a lecture tour in the United States in March 1938, a refugee in New York Cit who started to work at the anthropological department of the American Museum of Natural History and teach at New York University and Columbia University. Co-founder of the anti-fascist Austrian-American League with Irene Harand in 1939, he launchedd in 1941 the East Indies Institute of America (later Southeast Asia Institute) together with anthropologists Margaret Mead, Ralph Linton, Adriaan J. Barnouw and Claire Holt. 

From 1943 to 1949, he was a professor at New York Asia Institute in New York, before returning to Vienna and being reinstated as associate professor of Asian prehistory, art history and ethnology in 1950. He led Vienna University’s Institute of Ethnology until his retirement in 1958, and continued to work as Emeritus Professor until his death. 

Respected both by prehistorians such as Madeleine Colani and ethnologists, Heine-Geldern contributed to develop multidisciplinary Southeast Asian studies, for instance with his reference essay on the ​“Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia” (1942). He was a member of several learned societies: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Royal Asiatic Society, Royal Anthropological Institute, and École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO).

Heine-Geldren also tackled the hypothesis of pre-Columbian transpacific contacts between the American and Southeast Asian continents. As Erika Kaneko noted in 1970, ​“hen he firstbroached the subject it was anathema, but thanks to the vast bulk of evidence brought forth in favor of such contacts by him and scholars encouraged by his work, the prejudices have decreased (op. cit, p 6). His contributions on that subject have been criticized, even he never ventured to the extremity shown by some authors who argued that early American tribes should be considered as ​“Asiomericans”. However, in his preface to L.P. Briggs’ The Ancient Khmer Empire (1951), he wrote

The exhibition shown by the American Museum of Natural History on the occasion of the International Congress of Americanists in 1949, opened a completely new chapter by demonstrating the existence of cultural links, surprisingly close in some instances, between the Maya and Mexican area and ancient Cambodia. These contacts seem to have been established at the time of the kingdom of Funan and to have ended only with the political collapse of the Khmer empire shortly after A.D. 1200. They imply the former existence of a powerful Khmer maritime activity, of which we had, so far, only a few vague indications in old Chinese reports.”

Selected Publications 

  1. “Gibt es eine austroasiatische Rasse?”, Archiv für Anthropologie (XLVI), 1921, pp. 79 – 99.
  2. “Südostasien,” in G. Buschan (ed.), Illustrierte Völkerkunde, (Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder, 1923), II, i, pp. 689 – 968.
  3. Altjavanische Bronzen aus dem Besitz der Ethnographischen Sammlung des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien, Wien, C. W.Stern, 1925, Artis Thesaurus I.
  4. “Eine Szene aus dem Sutasoma — Jataka auf hinterindischen und indonesischen Schwertgriffen,” IPEK, Jahrbuch für Prahistorische und Ethnographische Kunst (1), 1925, pp. 198 – 238.
  5. “Die Steinzeit Südostasiens,” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien (LVII), 1927, pp. 47 – 54.
  6. “Ein Beitrag zur Chronologic des Neolithikums in Südostasien,” in W. Koppers (ed.), Publication d’Hommage Offerte au P. W. Schmidt, Wien, Mechithaπsten-Congregations-Buchdruckerei, 1928, pp. 809 – 843.
  7. “Die Megalithen Südostasiens und ihre Bedeutung für die Klärung der Megalithenfrage in Europa und Polynesien,” Anthropos (XXIII), 1928, pp. 276 – 315.
  8. “Weltbild und Bauform in Südostasien,” Wiener Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur Asiens (IV), 1928 – 1929, pp. 28 – 78.
  9. “Urheimat und früheste Wanderungen der Austronesier,” Anthropos (XXVII), 1932, pp. 543 – 619.
  10. Die Megalithen SO-Asiens, 1928; Urheimat und frueheste Wanderung der Austronesier, 1932; repr. Gesammelte Schriften, 13 vols., 1976 – 1999.
  11. “Vorgeschichtliche Grundlagen der kolonialindischen Kunst,” Wiener Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte (VIII), 1934, pp. 5 – 4θ.
  12. “The Archeology and Art of Sumatra,” in E. M. Loeb (ed.), Sumatra: Its History and People, Vienna: University of Vienna, 1935, pp. 305 – 331.
  13. “L’art prébouddhique de la Chine et de l’Asie du Sud-Est et son influence en Océanie,” Revue des Arts Asiatiques (XI), 1937, pp. 177 – 206.
  14. “New light on the Aryan migration to India, Bulletin of the American Institute for Iranian Art and Archaeology V, 1937: 7 – 16.
  15. “Sur les traces des Aryens védiques; les migrations des Indo-Aryens à la lumière des dernières découvertes archéologiques”, Journal de Teheran, December 1937, pp. 16 – 30.
  16. “Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia,” Far Eastern Quarterly (II), 1942, pp. 15 – 30. Revised version: Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Data Paper #18, Cornell University, 1956; repr. 1963; repr. 1968.
  17. A Survey of Studies on Southeast Asia at American Universities and Colleges, New York: East Indies Institute of America, 1943.
  18. “Prehistoric Research in the Netherlands Indies,” in P. Honig and F. Verdoorn (eds.), Science and Scientists in the Netherlands Indies, New York: Board for the Netherlands Indies, Surinam and Curaçao, 1945 (repr. New York: Southeast Asia Institute, 1945), pp. 129 – 167.
  19. “Research on Southeast Asia: Problems and Suggestions,” American Anthropologist (XLVIII), 1946, pp. 149 – 174.
  20. “The Drum named Makalamau,” in India Antigua. A Volume of Oriental Studies Presented to J. P. Vogel, Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1947, pp. 167 – 179.
  21. “Indonesian Art,” United Asia (I), 1949, pp. 402 – 411.
  22. Significant parallels in the symbolic arts of Southern Asia and Middle America, 1951.
  23. [preface to] L.P. Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire, Philadelphia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, ns Vol. 41 – 1, 1951, p 1.
  24. “Bronzegeräte auf Flores,” Anthropos (XLIX), 1954, pp. 683 – 685.
  25. “Herkunft und Ausbreitung der Hochkulturen,” Almanach der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1955, p. 105.
  26. “The Coming of the Aryans and the End of the Harappa Civilization,” Man, Vol 56, pp136 – 140, October 1956.
    ​“Zwei alte Weltanschauungen und ihre kulturgeschichΐliche Bedeutung,” Anzeiger der phil.- hist. Klasse der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (No. 17), 1957, pp. 251 – 262.
  27. “Steinurnen- und Tonurnenbestattung in Südostasien,” Der Schlern (No. 32), 1958, pp. 135 – 138.
  28. “Le pays de P’i-k’ien, le Roi au Grand Cou et le Singa Mangaradja”, BEFEO 49 – 3, 1959: 361 – 404.

References

  • Claire Holt, ​“In Memoriam: Robert Heine-Geldern”, Indonesia 6 (October 1968), 188 – 192.
  • Vinigi L. Grottanelli, ​“Robert Heine-Geldern’s Contribution to Historical Ethnology”, Current Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Oct., 1969), pp. 374 – 376.
  • Erika Kaneko, ​“Robert von Heine-Geldern: 1885 – 1968”, Asian Perspectives 13, 1970: 1 – 10.
  • Gérald Gaillard, The Routledge Dictionary of Anthropologists, translated by Peter James Bowman and James Bowman, Routledge, 2004, p. 223. ISBN 0−415−22825−5.
  • Verena Neller: ​“Robert Heine-Gelderns Exilzeit in den USA 1938 – 1949” in: Andre Gingrich; Peter Rohrbacher (Hg.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938 – 1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (Phil.-hist. Kl., Sitzungsberichte 913; Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27⁄3). Wien: Verlag der ÖAW 2021.