Paul ARNDT (1886–1962)

an ethnologist and linguist, born on January 10, 1886, in Rasselwitz in the German province of Schlesien (today Racławiczki, Poland), died on November 20, 1962, in Todabelu, Flores.
After completing his secondary education in a school run by the Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) at Neisse (today Nysa) in Silesia, he joined the order in 1908, studied for the priesthood and was ordained a priest in 1912. His first mission assignment took him to Togo, where he served from 1913 to 1917. Expelled from there with the other German citizens in the course of the First World War, he worked as an educator and chaplain in Germany for several years. In 1923, he was assigned to the SVD mission on the island of Flores in Indonesia, where he worked until his death. As a student of Wilhelm Schmidt, he showed keen interest in the study of languages and cultures of the peoples on the Lesser Sunda Islands and was given an opportunity to devote his time and talents to that task. He dedicated himself especially to the study of the Ngadha people, which resulted in several substantial publications. He spoke well the languages of the peoples he researched and meticulously checked his sources. Encountering contradictory or not well with each other corresponding reports, he recorded them simultaneously, indicating the need for further research.
He spent the Second World War in detention camps in Indonesia but resumed his work once set free. He came to Europe only once in 1952-1953 and spent some time at the residence of the Anthropos Institute near Posieux in Switzerland, finishing his monograph “Gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse der Ngadha“ [Social Relations of the Ngadha] (published in 1954).
He continued searching for ways of helping his hosts to integrate the old ways of living with the new demands of life, also when after the Second World War the things of the past started increasingly been perceived as “outdated”.

(May 2026)