Bachofen, J. J.
BACHOFEN, J. J. (1815–1887) was a Swiss scholar of mythology and Roman law and history. Through his most famous books, Gräbersymbolik (1859) and Mutterrecht (Mother right, 1861), Bachofen had a great influence on twentieth-century culture, even in fields not closely related to the history of religions.
Life
Johann Jakob Bachofen was born to a patrician family in Basel, Switzerland, on December 22, 1815. His father, Johann Jacob Bachofen, owned a highly successful silk ribbon business that had belonged to the family since 1720. The wealth accumulated by the Bachofens was visible in their immense real-estate holdings, as well as in their rich art collection. Bachofen's mother, Valeria Merian, came from one of Basel's most distinguished families of important businessmen, politicians, and university professors.
Bachofen was brought up to be a pious churchgoing member of the French reformed Christian community. In 1831 he became a student at the Pädagogium, the preparatory college of Basel University, which he entered in 1834. Here his most important teacher was Franz Dorotheus Gerlach in Latin, and the two became lifelong friends. From 1835 to 1837 Bachofen studied at Berlin University, attending lectures of the outstanding representative of the historical school of law, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (who influenced him deeply); the romantic geographer Karl Ritter, whose lessons on ancient geography were to be of great importance for Bachofen's conception of matriarchy; the philologists August Böckh and Karl Wilhelm Lachmann; and the historian Leopold von Ranke.
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