Schmidt, Wilhelm

Schmidt, Wilhelm

SCHMIDT, WILHELM (1868–1954), German anthropologist and Roman Catholic priest, was born on February 16, 1868, in Hörde (now Dortmund-Hörde) Germany, the son of a factory worker. In 1883 he entered the missionary school in Steyl, Netherlands, that served as the motherhouse of the Societas Verbi Divini (the Society of the Divine Word), which was founded in 1875. There he completed his secondary philosophical and theological studies, and he was ordained a priest in 1892. He studied Semitic languages at the University of Berlin from 1893 to 1895. In 1895 Schmidt was appointed professor of several theological disciplines at the Society of the Divine Word Mission Seminary of Saint Gabriel in Mödling, Austria (established 1889).

Various questions and problems of missionaries (especially from New Guinea) prompted Schmidt to undertake studies in linguistics, ethnology, and comparative religion. In 1906 he founded Anthropos, as international review of ethnology and linguistics, and in 1931 he established the Anthropos Institute in Mödling, an organization affiliated to the Society of the Divine Word, and he served as the institute's director until 1950. (In 1962 the institute relocated to Sankt Augustin, near Bonn.) From 1921 until 1938 Schmidt was a professor at the University of Vienna.

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