Wilhelm Schmidt was born in Hoerde, Germany in 1868. After being ordained a Catholic priest in 1892, he studied Linguistics in the Universities of Berlin and Vienna. He joined the Society of the Divine Word in 1890, a Catholic organization primarily devoted to missionary work. Most of his research and accomplishments were in the field of linguistics, and one of his most well-known studies was that of the Mon-Kmher languages, a series of interconnected tongues spoken in south/southeast Asia previous to the colonization of the region.
Aside from the Mon-Kmher study mentioned earlier, Schmidt also devised a phonetic alphabet, known as the “Anthropos Alphabet,” which in theory, allows the speakers to better relate to the sound of a foreign language. In 1926, Schmidt compiled and organized all of the languages of the world.
His religious faith also contributed to his research. From 1912 to his death in 1954, Schmidt published a series of 12 books: Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, or “The Origin of the Idea of God,” in which he proposed a theory that many indigenous primitive peoples currently or had at some point worshipped a god-like omniscient figure, who bears a remarkable resemblance to the Christian concept of God. With this study, Schmidt attempted to prove that the primitive societies studied were, in fact, monotheists, therefore making monotheism the oldest religion on the planet. Monotheism is derived from a single primitive culture which witnessed some kind of divine event and passed the idea down. This theory is not generally accepted by modern scholars.
Schmidt's contributions to linguistics are numerous, but he did crucial research in other fields of anthropology. Schmidt extensively studied ethnography particularly “culture circles,” the 4 main stages that the base cultures of this world went through: Primitive (hunter-gatherer), Primary (horticulturists), Secondary (pastoralists) and Tertiary (modern society). While Schmidt was not the first to propose such a theory, he was instrumental in making it a well-known and generally accepted one.
In 1931, Schmidt founded the anthropology newsletter Anthropos, which is still in circulation today.
Schmidt died of natural causes in 1954, leaving behind a legacy that still influences modern anthropology. Several of his books are available in English, but sadly, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee is not. The available books are: The Origin and Growth of Religion (1931), High Gods in North America (1933), The Culture Historical Method of Ethnology (1939), and Primitive Revelation (1939).
REFERENCES
1upinfo.com http://www.1upinfo.com/encyclopedia/S/SchmidtW.html 10 October, 2003
“History.” The Anthropos Institute http://www.anthropos-journal.de/ October 14, 2003
“Diffusionism and Acculturation.” (under the “Leading Figures section) Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/diffusion.htm 12 October, 2003
“An Introduction to Christian Philosophy.” (under “The Thought and Religion of Earliest Mankind” section) Global Catholic Network, Eternal Word Television Network http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/PHIL631.htm 15 October, 2003
“Wilhelm Schmidt, S.V.D, 1868-1954.” American Anthropologist 1954, Vol 56. http://www.publicanthropology.org/Archive/AA1954.htm 15 October, 2003
Written by Chris Farmer-Lies, 2003