Wilhelm SCHMIDT (1868–1954)

a priest, linguist, ethnologist, historian of religions, born on February 16, 1868, in Dortmund-Hörde, died on February 10, 1954 in Fribourg, Switzerland, and buried at St. Gabriel in Mödling near Vienna.

Schmidt entered the school run by the Divine Word Missionaries (Societas Verbi Divini – SVD) at Steyl in the Netherlands in 1883 and after completing it, joined the order, studied for the priesthood there and was ordained a priest in 1892. After teaching one year at a secondary school of the SVD at Neisse (today Nysa) in Silesia, he studied linguistics at the University of Berlin from 1893 to 1895, with the study of Semitic languages as his main focus. Subsequently, he taught a variety of theological subjects, as well as ancient and modern languages at the SVD Major Seminary St. Gabriel in Mödling near Vienna.
His first research project dealt with the study of the languages of Oceania and Southeast Asia. The results of his comparative linguistic studies caught the attention of the scientific circles of Vienna – the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the Anthropological Society of Vienna – quite early on. As time went on, he refocused his attention to ethnology and the history of religion, which were new fields of research at the time. He was prompted in this direction by his contacts with prominent Viennese orientalists and ethnologists, as well as by the availability of a variety of data (research material). He was also motivated by the different questions and problems concerning cultural contacts, which the Divine Word Missionaries, especially those working in the German-controlled part of New Guinea, sent to him.
Schmidt’s earliest ethnological interests were directed to the study of hunters and gatherers. His book “Die Stellung der Pygmäenvölker in der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Menschen” (The Place of Pygmies in the Developmental History of Mankind) was published in 1910. This ushered in a new era in the study of pygmies. His primary focus was dedicated to the concept of a High God or Supreme Being as held by hunters and gatherers. He specified this in a series of articles in the Anthropos (“L’origine de l’idée de Dieu,” 1908-1910). He expanded this into a twelve-volume work “Der Ursprung der Gottesidee” (The Origin of the Idea of God, 1912-1955).
In 1906, he founded Anthropos, an international review of ethnology and linguistics, which quickly gained wide recognition. Schmidt intended the journal to become a platform, where the missionaries could make available their first-hand knowledge and experience of foreign cultures to a wider scholarly audience. He also hoped that the contents of the journal would be of help to the missionaries themselves in their coming to terms with the cultures they were encountering (no “mission strategies” but building blocks for developing better mutual understanding). The journal Anthropos was to maintain the highest scholarly standards.
Schmidt lectured at the University of Vienna from 1921 until 1937 as an assistant professor. During this time, he finished the work “Völker und Kulturen” (Peoples and Cultures), which he had begun in 1914. He laid out there his theory of culture circles (Kulturkreislehre), which he saw as a basis for the entire culture history of humankind. He also tried to establish a relationship and synthesis of all the languages of the earth on the premises of this theory (1926).
In 1931 Schmidt established the Anthropos Institute, a working group of the SVD scholars dedicated to publishing the journal, lecturing and conducting field research on cultures. Schmidt himself was the director of this institute until 1950. After the incorporation of Austria into the German State governed by the Nazis in March 1938, Schmidt and Wilhelm Koppers were dismissed from their teaching positions at the University of Vienna on ideological grounds. Schmidt was allowed to leave for the Vatican, from where he moved to Switzerland. The Anthropos Institute was relocated from St. Gabriel to Chateaux de Froideville, a house in the commune of Posieux near Fribourg in Switzerland. It remained there until 1962, when it was transferred to St. Augustin near Bonn.
In the fall of 1939 Schmidt was offered a teaching position at the University of Fribourg and he taught ethnology there until 1948, contributing also to the expansion of the university itself.
Pope Pius XI asked Schmidt to organize the ethnological section of the Mission Exhibit of 1925 in 1923, which later developed into the Museo Missionario-Ethnologico at Lateran. Schmidt held the position of the director of this museum from 1926 to 1938. In 1937, he became a member of the recently founded Pontifical Academy of Sciences. His achievements earned him honorary doctorates from six universities.
Schmidt’s contributions to the culture historical method in ethnology, which became known as the culture circle method, on which he also built his theory of the very early monotheism of the representatives of the earliest people, are noteworthy but became outdated. As one of the originators of this theory and as a prominent figure in the area of ethnology and the study of religion in the first half of the 20th century, he became the founder of what is often referred to as “the Vienna School of Ethnology.” He was not only one of the best-known but also one of the most controversial representatives of that school.

(May 2026)