Herbert Baldus was born in Wiesbaden, Germany on March 14,1899. During his teen years he had joined the Cadet Corps in Postdam. In the last year of the First World War he made a career change from being an officer in the military to being a poet.
In 1927, he visited the Guarani on the Paulistian Coast and then in 1928 he visited the Chac-tribes. Once he returned home he went to college in Berlin to study ethnology under Richard Thurnwald. As a student, Herbert loved classes such as Literature and Spanish. He loved to write many books and soon he published his first. In 1932 he received his Ph.D. writing his dissertation on the Samuko language. Herbert returned to Brazil in 1933 and did fieldwork among the Indians of Southern and Central Brazil. In 1939 Herbert became a Professor of Ethnology at the School of Sociology and Politics, and then in 1946 he was appointed Ethnologist at the Museum Paulista, http://www.mp.usp.br/.
Herbert was always known for his teaching. His students loved to hear the interesting things that came out of his mouth. Herbert was a very enthusiastic man, and there wasn't a person who loved to do what he did more than Herbert. Herbert's focus was on the acquisition of consistent empirical data. As a professor, he taught the fundamentals of ethnographic investigation and proper fieldwork technique to a first generation of Social Scientists. His approach to science was from a social-psychological format. He was the first to introduce the concepts of American Applied Anthropology to Brazil and he worked hard to keep up with everything.
Bohannan, Laura, American Anthropologists, Vol 74, Pgs 1307-1309, Chicago, Illinois,1972
Winters, Christopher International Dictionary of Anthropologists, Library-Anthropology Resource Group, Pgs 20-21, New York and London
Written By: John Tousignant, 2001