23 Facts About Gustaf Kossinna

Gustaf Kossinna was a German philologist and archaeologist who was Professor of German Archaeology at the University of Berlin.

Gustaf Kossinna was a Germanized Mazur He was born in Tilsit, East Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia.

Gustaf Kossinna's father was a teacher at the secondary-school level.

Gustaf Kossinna studied German history, local history and art history.

Gustaf Kossinna was influenced greatly by Karl Mullenhoff, who encouraged him to research the origins of Indo-European and Germanic culture.

Gustaf Kossinna came under the influence of Otto Tischler and Friedrich Ratzel.

Gustaf Kossinna obtained his doctorate at Strasbourg in 1887 in the subject of the early records of the high-Frankish language.

In 1902, Gustaf Kossinna was appointed Professor of German Archaeology at the University of Berlin.

Gustaf Kossinna became the most famous archaeologist in the German-speaking world, and was notable for his use of archaeology to promote claims for an expanded German nation.

Notably, Gustaf Kossinna only conducted one excavation during his career, in 1915.

Gustaf Kossinna wrote, "Sharply defined archaeological cultural areas correspond unquestionably with the areas of particular people or tribes".

Gustaf Kossinna's ideas have been connected to the claim that Germanic peoples constitute a national identity with a historic right to the lands they once occupied, providing an excuse for later Nazi annexations of lands in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

For example, in his article "The German Ostmark, Home Territory of the Germans", Gustaf Kossinna argued that Poland should be a part of the German empire.

In 1902, Gustaf Kossinna identified the Proto-Indo-Europeans with the Corded Ware culture, an argument that gained in currency over the following two decades.

Gustaf Kossinna placed the Proto-Indo-European homeland in western central Europe, north of the alps.

In studying the prehistory of the Germanic peoples and ancient Indo-Europeans, Gustaf Kossinna saw the key to the unwritten prehistory of Europe.

Gustaf Kossinna's theories aimed to present a history of the Germanic peoples superior to that of the Roman Empire.

Gustaf Kossinna considered the Romans and the French as destroyers of culture as compared to the Germanic peoples.

Gustaf Kossinna's ideas have been heavily criticised partly because of the political use to which they were put, but because of inherent ambiguities in the method.

Problems with Gustaf Kossinna's theories have been summarized by Hans Jurgen Eggers.

Gustaf Kossinna occupies a key role in the emergence of prehistory as an academic discipline.

Gustaf Kossinna's methods influenced those of V Gordon Childe, whose associates dominated the field of archaeology for decades after World War II.

The apparent similarity of the once outdated theories of Gustaf Kossinna has been referred to as Gustaf Kossinna's Smile.