The development of German ethnology between 1890 and 1930, despite interest in the history of anthropology, remains largely unknown and is frequently dismissed as unrelated to the larger course of modern thought. This dissertation focuses on the career of Leo Frobenius (1873-1938), the central ethnological innovator during that period. From his introduction of Darwinism into German ethnology through the development of his typologies of cultural psychology to the definition of his philosophy of world culture, he set the agenda for the reorientation of German ethnology. Although anti-modernism, cultural pessimism, and German particularism inform his ideas, they nonetheless led him to develop the same psychological, empathetic, and functionalist approach to culture that characterizes contemporary anthropological thinking. Thus the definitive traits of modern anthropology are not the products of its enlightened perspective, but are instead the results of the course of its development, of which Leo Frobenius's ethnology is simply an anti-modern variation.
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