Histories of Anthropology Annual

In 1936 the American anthropologist Melville Herskovits came to the assistance of Paul Kirchhoff, a German émigré, to prevent his deportation from the United States at the expiration of his visitor's visa. Herskovits urged him to see Samuel A. Goldsmith, executive officer of the Jewish Charities of Chicago, to seek financial assistance to leave for Mexico to avoid deportation to Germany and almost certain incarceration in a concentration camp such as Dachau or Buchenwald. When Goldsmith asked Herskovits to sign a note of endorsement for a loan for Kirchhoff, Herskovits replied testily,

Obviously he must be got out of this country. Since with the best will in the world and all good intention of repaying a loan it is extremely unlikely that he will ever be able to do this, I felt I would much rather underwrite the amount he needs, since your organisation was not willing to do so, than have an endorsement to a note hanging over me. One of my colleagues and I have therefore set about raising the necessary amount, with the understanding that I will personally supply the difference between what is needed and is raised, despite the difficulty of my doing it on an academic budget. We should be very glad to receive a contribution from you to help us save this brilliant young German scientist from the fate that confronts him, and should you care to send me a check for $10.00 by return mail, I will be glad to add it to the fund we are gathering for him.

(Yelvington 2000:7)

Herskovits was successful in arranging sufficient funding so Kirchhoff and his wife, Johanna, could find refuge in Mexico.

In the years between his arrival in London in 1931 and his exile to Mexico Kirchhoff struggled to find political safety and academic security outside of Germany. His political affiliations—he was a communist [End Page 165] (a Spartikist and had possibly been involved in the 1919 Munich uprising)—combined with his Jewishness and his German citizenship all worked against his making a career in Britain and the United States, and after 1933, he believed he could not return to Germany without endangering his life.

Paul Kirchhoff, born August 17, 1900, in Horst, Westphalia, Germany, had studied Protestant theology and comparative religion at Berlin and Freiburg universities, and psychology and ethnology at Leipzig University, where he developed an interest in the "native cultures of the Americas" (Reisse 1991; Broszat 1994:224–225). In 1927 he completed his studies with a dissertation on the kinship organization of "South American Indian groups".¹ Stocking states that Kirchhoff had done "research in Latin America under Boas" (Stocking 1992:205). When awarded a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship under Edward Sapir at the University of Chicago he was employed at the Berlin Museum für Volkerkunde. He returned briefly to Germany and in 1930 he was awarded a Rockefeller fellowship at the London School of Economics (LSE) under Malinowski to write up his earlier South American research (Stocking 1992:205). After leaving England at the end of 1932 he obtained employment first in Ireland, on the Harvard project, and on completion of this work he was then dependent upon the good graces of colleagues until his arrival in Mexico.

In Mexico he was employed first by the Museo Nacional de Anthropología e Historia (National Anthropological Museum). In 1955 he was one of the co-founders of the Escuela Nacional de Anthropología e Historia (National School of Anthropology and History), which became the leading training center for ethnologists in Mexico. In the early 1960s he returned to Germany where he taught at the Universities of Bonn, Heidelberg, and Frankfurt. His efforts to establish scientific cooperation between Germany and Mexico culminated in 1963 in the interdisciplinary Puebla-Tiaxcala Project, which lasted for more than twenty years (Reisse 1991:349). Kirchhoff's Marxist views helped shape his anthropology, which is developed by Gingrich in his essay on anthropology in "The German-speaking countries" (Gingrich 2005:105–110). Kirchhoff established himself as a leading figure in Mesoamerican...