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Franz Baermann Steiner (1909-52) provided the vital link between the intellectual culture of central Europe and the Oxford Institute of Anthropology in its post-Second World War years.
This book demonstrates his quiet influence within anthropology, which has extended from Mary Douglas to David Graeber, and how his remarkable poetry reflected profoundly on the slavery and murder of the Shoah, an event which he escaped from. Steiner’s concerns including inter-disciplinarity, genre, refugees and exile, colonialism and violence, and the sources of European anthropology speak to contemporary concerns more directly now than at any time since his early death.
“This book is an excellent intellectual biography of F.B. Steiner, embracing and bringing together the three distinct facets of his writings: academic, poetic, and aphoristic. Such a study was long overdue… This book will soon become essential reading for anyone interested in the history of European Anthropology… The book is clearly written, shows an impressive erudition, and manages to portray the author and his ideas in a sympathetic and engaging manner.” • João Pina-Cabral, University of Kent
Jeremy Adler is Emeritus Professor of German and Senior Research Fellow at King's College London. A specialist in comparative studies, he has published widely on Baroque literature, Romanticism, and Modernism and has written critical biographies of Goethe and Kafka. He is the editor of the collected edition of Franz Baermann Steiner's poetry.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Part I: An Oriental in the West: A Brief Life
Chapter 1. Beginnings: The Prague German-Jewish Community
Chapter 2. Student Days in Prague and Jerusalem
Chapter 3. First Ethnological Studies in Vienna and London, and Fieldwork in Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia
Chapter 4. The Impact of the Early English Years
Chapter 5. The Exile
Chapter 6. The Oxford Anthropologist
Part II: Orientpolitik, Value and Civilization: The Social Thought
Chapter 7. Beyond ‘Culture Circles’: The Field Trip Revisited
Chapter 8. Zionism, Political and Cultural Critique
Chapter 9. On Slavery
Chapter 10. Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard
Chapter 11. Labour and Value
Chapter 12. Civilization and Taboo
Chapter 13. Simmel and Aristotle
Part III: The Poet Anthropologist
Chapter 14. Conquests
Chapter 15. Kafka in England
Chapter 16. The Chief Sociological Principle
Chapter 17. Suffering and Value
Chapter 18. In Search of the Universal Mathesis
References
Manuscript Sources
F.B.S.’s Unpublished Writings in the Schiller Nationalmuseum, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar
Unpublished Letters to and about F.B.S. and Memoirs Concerning him at the Schiller Nationalmuseum, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar
F.B.S.’s Unpublished Writings and Other Sources in the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford
Letters and Other Written Communications to the Editors
Published Sources
A Selection of F.B.S.’s Published Writings
Published Sources Cited
Index