Afolf Bastian (1826-1905)

Abstract

Adolf Bastian played a key role in establishing ethnology in Germany. He is remembered because of his multifaceted organizational and scientific activities: as director of a renowned ethnological museum and as the founder and chairman of several scholarly and scientific societies. The scientific position and life history of Adolf Bastian are singular in many aspects. He introduced the concepts of “elementary ideas” and “folk ideas” in order to trace invariant regularities and universal thinking patterns found all over the world within the apparent complexity of cultural forms. Among Bastian's most significant contributions was his call for a multifactored approach in cooperation with other disciplines, thus participating in multidisciplinary research on humankind's collective thought. Bastian's essential reflections have remained valid to this day and still contribute, above all, to the promotion of both the field and the tasks of ethnology in its comprehension as cultural and social anthropology.