Ernst Grosse (ethnologist)
Ernst Carl Gustav Grosse[1] (29 July 1862 – 26 January 1927) was a German ethnologist.
Biography
Ernst Grosse was born in Stendal. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Halle in 1887, Grosse habilitated at the University of Freiburg in 1888. In 1889 he became a private lecturer in ethnology there and gave his first lecture on the art of primitive peoples. In the same year he became curator of the Augustiner Museum and held this post until 1902.
From 1892, he lived in a joint household in Freiburg with the patron Marie Meyer (1834–1915), widow of the factory owner Heinrich Adolph Meyer, who was a maternal friend to him and even wanted to adopt him (for legal reasons in vain). With her, he built up a considerable collection of East Asian art over the years. Through his book The Beginnings of Art, published in 1894, he became a pioneer of modern ethnology. In 1895, he became an associate professor at the University of Freiburg, but took a leave of absence and developed an extensive travel schedule in Europe. In 1898, Marie Meyer gave him art objects of considerable value, including many East Asian objects.
His great interest in Japan first became apparent in a lecture on Japanese art, and his first publication on the subject came in 1903 with the book Japanische Kunst in Europa ("Japanese Art in Europe"). In 1907 and 1908, he was in Japan and assisted, among others, Wilhelm von Bode with purchases for the Berlin museums. On November 1908, and due to Bode's recommendation, he traveled there again as an art expert for the German embassies in Tokyo and Peking. In 1913, he married a Japanese woman and returned to Freiburg, where he resumed his lectures in 1914.
After Marie Meyer had bequeathed her collections to the Berlin museums in her will in 1913, there were disputes about the inheritance after her death in 1915, which Grosse ended by also leaving his donations from Meyer to the Berlin museums in 1916.
The Grosse Collection is still one of the museum's most important holdings today. In gratitude, it was inscribed on the honorary plaque. This first donation included musical instruments, vessels, paintings and prints. A second valuable donation of 18 Japanese and Chinese prints followed soon aftwerards.
In 1919, he became friends with Julius Bissier, on whose later work he was to have a great influence due to his knowledge of East Asia. In 1926, Grosse was appointed as a scheduled associate professor at the University of Freiburg after he had donated a house he had inherited from Marie Meyer in the Black Forest to the university, but died barely four months later in Freiburg.
See also
Works
- Die Literaturwissenschaft, ihr Ziel und ihr Weg (1887)
- Über Naturanschauung der alten griechischen und römischen Dichter (1890)
- Der erste Baustein zu einer ethnologischen Aesthetik (1891)
- Die Anfänge der Kunst (1894)
- Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirtschaft (1896)
- Die ostasiatische Plastik (1922)
- Die ostasiatische Tuschmalerei (1923)
- "Völker und Kulturen." In: Anthropos, Vol. XXII (1925)
- "Ostasiatisches Gerät". In: Kunst und Künstler: illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerbe (1927)
- Ostasiatische Erinnerungen eines Kolonial- und Auslandsdeutschen (1938)
Notes
- ↑ Sometimes spelled Große.
References
- Damme, Wilfried van (2012). "Ernst Grosse and the Birth of the Anthropology of Aesthetics," Anthropos: International Review of Anthropology and Linguistics, Vol. CVII, No. 2, pp. 497–509.
- Ganslmayr, Herbert (1996). "Grosse, Ernst Carl Gustav". In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). 7. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 148.
