Gustav Klemm

File:Gustav Klemm.jpg

Gustav Friedrich Klemm (Painting by Karl Gottlieb Rolle, ca. 1845)

Gustav Friedrich Klemm (12 November 1802 – 26 August 1867) was a German anthropologist, cultural historian and librarian. He spent much of his career as the Director of the Royal Library in Dresden. The British Museum purchased his large collection of central European prehistoric antiquities in 1868.

Biography

Gustav Klemm was born in Chemnitz, the son of the royal Saxon General Johann Heinrich Gottlob Klemm. He received his school education in Freiberg and Chemnitz. From 1821, he was enrolled at the University of Leipzig. Although law was actually intended for him, he devoted himself to historical studies and the study of cultural history. He submitted his dissertation on librarianship to the University of Jena in 1825. In 1825, he moved to Dresden were he wrote or finished some historical writings and also tried his hand as a poet. In 1830, he went to Nuremberg as editor of the newspaper Friedens- und Kriegs-Courier. After a year, he took a position as second secretary at the Dresden Royal Public Library (now the Saxon State Library). In 1833, he was given a position at the supervision staff of the royal porcelain collection. In 1834, he was appointed librarian. In Dresden he was a member of the Masonic lodge Zum goldenen Apfel.

In 1838, he traveled through Italy with the then Saxon Prince Johann. He made literary use of the trip. In 1852, he gave up the management of the Dresden Porcelain Collection and became head of the Royal Public Library. By then, his main work, 10 volumes of General Cultural History of Mankind, had also been published.

Gustav Klemm was one of the first scientists to recognize that the production of tools and the use of fire are the essential characteristics that separate humans from the animal kingdom. He also advocated a theory of the inequality of the human races, which he considered to be the essential driving force of world history. Völkisch circles later adopted his views in part.

One of Klemm's great passions was collecting ethnological and cultural-historical objects, for which he benefited from his numerous and far-reaching personal connections. Since he rarely traveled himself, he gained knowledge about foreign cultures and peoples in part through the objects he collected. His ethnological collection ultimately comprised about 15,000 exhibits, part of which he displayed in a museum set up privately in five rooms in a Dresden house.

After an eye disease struck him in 1861, which ended in total blindness, he resigned from his posts in 1864. He died in Dresden.

After his death, a group of Leipzig citizens called for a fundraising campaign to purchase Klemm's collection. Through this purchase, the collection could be preserved as a whole. The university, on the other hand, could not be persuaded to take over the collection, although an expert opinion by the professor of historical auxiliary sciences Heinrich Wuttke attested a very high scientific value to this collection. It formed the basis for the Leipzig Museum of Ethnography, which is now housed in the Grassi Museum.

Works

• Mein Leben und meine Ansichten über einige Theile des Bibliothekswesens (1825)
• Attila nach der Geschichte, Sage und Legende (1827)
• Herfest. Sechs Gesänge (1829)
• Chronik der Stadt Dresden und ihrer Bürger von den ältesten bis auf unsere Zeiten (1833)
• Die Königliche Porzellansammlung (1834)
• Handbuch der Germanischen Alterthumskunde (1836)
• Chronik der Königlich Sächsischen Residenzstadt Dresden (1837; 3 volumes)
• Geschichte der Sammlungen für Wissenschaft und Kunst in Deutschland (1837)
• Italica; Reise durch Italien (1839)
• Fantasie über ein Museum für die Culturgeschichte der Menschheit (1843)
• Allgemeine Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit (1843–52; 10 volumes)
• Die Verbreitung der activen Menschenrassen über den Erdball (1845)
• Allgemeine Kulturwissenschaft (1854-55; 2 volumes)
• Die Frauen: Culturgeschichtliche Schilderungen des Zustandes und Einflusses der Frauen in den verschiedenen Zonen und Zeitaltern (1859; 6 volumes)
• Vor 50 Jahren. Culturgeschichtliche Briefe (1865)

References

• Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1969).
• Harry Francis Mallgrave, "Gustav Klemm and Gottfried Semper: The Meeting of Ethnological and Architectural Theory," RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 9 (Spring, 1985), pp. 68–79.
• Peter N. Miller, "The Missing Link: ‘Antiquarianism,’ ‘Material Culture,’ and ‘Cultural Science’ in the Work of G. F. Klemm." In: Cultural Histories of the Material World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (2013), pp. 263–82.
• Peter N. Miller, "Gustav Klemm, Cultural History, and Kulturwissenschaft." In: History and Its Objects: Antiquarianism and Material Culture since 1500. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (2017), pp. 140–72.

External links

• Works by Gustav Klemm at Internet Archive