Robert Freiherr von Heine-Geldern (16 July 1885 - 25 May 1968), known after 1919 as Robert Heine-Geldern, was an Austrian anthropologist, ethnologist, archaeologist and prehistorian who studied in particular the cultures and civilisations of Southeast Asia. He taught as a professor of ethnology and archaeology of India and Southeast Asia at the University of Vienna and, during his emigration from 1938 to 1949, in the United States. Heine-Geldern is considered a pioneer in the field of Southeast Asian Studies.
Heine-Geldern was a grandson of the journalist and author Gustav Heine von Geldern who had been elevated to the hereditary rank of Freiherr (baron) by the Austrian emperor (all noble ranks and titles were abolished in Austria in 1919). The German poet Heinrich Heine was his great-uncle. Robert von Heine Geldern was born in Grub (Wienerwald) and attended school in Vienna which was then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After his Matura diploma in 1903, he studied philosophy and art history at the University of Munich first, then transferred to the University of Vienna. In 1910 he traveled to the India–Burma border region to study local cultures. Upon his return to Vienna, he switched to ethnology (under Father Wilhelm Schmidt), anthropology and prehistory, completing his doctoral thesis in 1914 on The Mountain Tribes of Northern and Northeastern Burma.
Heine-Geldern performed military service during World War I, then worked at the ethnographic department of the Natural History Museum in Vienna (which later became the Museum of Ethnology) from 1917 to 1927. His research combined ethnological, pre-historical and archaeological concepts, and in 1923 pioneered the field of Southeast Asian anthropology with his chapter "Sϋdostasien" in G. Buschan's Illustrierte Völkerkunde. In 1925 he completed his habilitation thesis and was awarded the venia legendi (licence to teach at universities) in the field of "ethnology with special consideration of Southeast Asia and India". He began teaching at the University of Vienna in 1927, where he was appointed associate professor for Ethnology and Archaeology of India, Southeast Asia and Oceania in 1931.
After the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in March 1938, his licence to teach was revoked for antisemitic motives. Therefore, he did not return from a lecture tour to the United States on which he had embarked two months earlier. Through World War II, he lived as a refugee in New York City, where he worked at the anthropological department of the American Museum of Natural History and lectured at New York University and Columbia University. Heine-Geldern was active in anti-fascist Austrian emigrants' organisations, creating the Austrian-American League together with Irene Harand in 1939 and later joining the Free Austrian Movement. Together with Margaret Mead, Ralph Linton, Adriaan J. Barnouw and Claire Holt he founded the East Indies Institute of America in 1941 which later became the Southeast Asia Institute. In 1943 Heine-Geldern was appointed professor at the Asia Institute in New York.
He returned to Vienna in 1949 where he was reinstated as associate professor of Asian prehistory, art history and ethnology a year later. Heine-Geldern was instrumental in rebuilding the Vienna University's Institute of Ethnology, but was only awarded a full professorship in 1955, three years before his retirement. As Emeritus he continued to work at the institute until his death in Vienna in 1968.
Heine-Geldern was active in starting Southeast Asian studies as an academic field, and his essay on "Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia," (1942) is now classic. He was awarded a medal by the Viking Fund, and was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Royal Asiatic Society, Royal Anthropological Institute, and the École française d'Extrême-Orient.
Baron Carl von Rokitansky was an Austrian physician, pathologist, humanist philosopher and liberal politician, founder of the Viennese School of Medicine of the 19th century. He was the founder of science-based diagnostics.
Wilhelm Schmidt SVD was a German-Austrian Catholic priest, linguist and ethnologist. He presided over the Fourth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences that was held at Vienna in 1952.
Felix Ritter von Luschan was a medical doctor, anthropologist, explorer, archaeologist and ethnographer born in the Austrian Empire.
Gustav Heine, after 1870 Gustav Freiherr Heine von Geldern, was a German-Austrian journalist and press publisher.
Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt was a German physical anthropologist who classified humanity into races. His study in the classification of human races made him one of the leading racial theorists of Nazi Germany.
Christian Feest is an Austrian ethnologist and ethnohistorian.
The Weltmuseum Wien in Vienna is the largest anthropological museum in Austria, established in 1876. It is housed in a wing of the Hofburg Imperial Palace and holds a collection of more than 400,000 ethnographical and archaeological objects from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America.
René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz was a Czech ethnologist and Tibetologist. He is mostly known for his 1956 publication Oracles and Demons of Tibet, which was the first detailed study of Tibetan deity cults.
Moritz Freiherr von Leonhardi was a German anthropologist.
Heinrich Philipp von Siebold was a German antiquary, collector and translator in the service of the Austrian Embassy in Tokyo.
Hugo Adolf Bernatzik was an Austrian anthropologist and photographer. Bernatzik was the founder of the concept of alternative anthropology.
Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf or Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf FRAI was an Austrian ethnologist and professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London. He spent forty years studying tribal cultures in Northeast India, in the central region of what is now the state of Telangana and in Nepal. He was married to British ethnologist of India and Nepal, Betty Barnardo.
Hermann von Wissmann was a German-Austrian explorer of Arabia.
Robert Bleichsteiner was an Austrian ethnologist.
Richard Arthur Hans Kummerlöwe, with the spelling changed to Kumerloeve from 1948 was a German ornithologist who served as an SS Officer during the Second World War. He initially worked as a zoological curator at the Dresden Museum but during the Third Reich he held numerous positions including charge of the Vienna museum after the German annexation of Austria in March 1938. He was involved in the "Nazification" of German and Austrian museums, making them tools for explaining theories of race and genetic purity.
Helmut Petri was a German anthropologist.
Schlosstheater Schönbrunn is a stage at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna which opened in 1747. The Baroque theatre now serves for the training of students of acting and opera of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW), and for performances of the Musik Theater Schönbrunn.
Andre Gingrich is an Austrian ethnologist and anthropologist, member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute for Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and retired professor at the University of Vienna.
Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann was a German ethnologist who served as Professor of Ethnology at the University of Mainz and Chair of Ethnology at the University of Heidelberg.
Marianne Schmidl was the first woman to graduate with a doctorate in ethnology from the University of Vienna. An Austrian ethnologist, teacher, librarian and art collector, Schmidl was plundered and murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis because of her Jewish origins.