Richard Thurnwald, “Andrée, Richard”

Richard Thurnwald’s biographical encyclopedia entry, originally published in 1930 and republished in the supplied 1937 version, places Richard Andrée within the history of geography, folklore, and comparative anthropology. Its brief structure moves from family and professional institutions to comparative method and theoretical explanation, closing with a list of important works.

Andrée’s institutional career connects geographical publishing with ethnological inquiry. His father Karl founded Globus; Richard established Velhagen and Klasing’s geographical establishment in Leipsic in 1873 and edited Globus from 1891 to 1903. Thurnwald foregrounds his early comparative activity:

Even before Ratzel, Andrée devoted himself to comparative ethnological studies.

The entry’s central concern is how Andrée interpreted recurring customs among geographically separated peoples. He arranged cultural phenomena—including the evil eye, mourning mutilations, personal names, and standards of value—into comparative series. Similarity at the level of particular traits remained significant despite broader differences between cultures.

He was not dismayed by the fact that the cultures he thus compared were sometimes located on different continents and were on the whole dissimilar.

Thurnwald then distinguishes these observations from the explanation available to Andrée. He presents the absence of a developed diffusionist theory as directing Andrée toward independent origins, while explicitly noting his misgivings. The resulting theoretical commitment is stated plainly:

He subscribed to the theory that the similarities are explained by the essential sameness of the human mind and the consequent uniformity of cultural progress.

The entry thus locates Andrée’s significance in both an early comparative practice and its historical constraints. Its concluding references extend that portrait across folklore and statistical geography without developing their arguments. The work’s value lies in this compact account of the movement from observed cultural parallels to a theory of shared mental capacities and uniform development.