Frobenius Institute
The Frobenius Institute is Germany's oldest anthropological research institute. Founded in 1925, it is named after Leo Frobenius. The institution is located at Gruneburgplatz 1 in Frankfurt am Main. An autonomous organization, it is associated with the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, and works in collaboration with two other organizations, the Institut für Ethnologie, and the Museum der Weltkulturen. It carries out ethnological and historical research.
History
The institute was founded in 1898 as the Stiftung Afrika Archiv in Berlin. In 1920 it moved to Munich as the Forschungsinstitut für Kulturmorphologie. Since 1925, it has been affiliated with the Goethe University Frankfurt.In 1934, Leo Frobenius undertook an extensive research expedition to Africa, recruiting the artist Alf Bayrle. The aim of the expedition was to document "old Africa" as comprehensively and systematically as possible. The resulting images are of scientific and artistic significance, and had a major influence on the Bayrle's later work and the perception of African culture.
The institute was renamed the Frobenius-Institut by Adolf Ellegard Jensen, its director after the 1938 death of Frobenius.
During the second world war, anthropologist Karin Hahn-Hissink was acting director of the institute, as most of her male colleagues had been drafted. Frobenius' successors as institute director were, from 1946 until 1965 Adolf Ellegard Jensen, from 1965 to 1966 Carl A. Schmitz, from 1968 to 1992 Eike Haberland, from 1996 to 2016 Karl-Heinz Kohl, and since 2017 Roland Hardenberg.
On November 11, 1961, the last day of his state visit to Germany, the Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor was received by Adolf Ellegard Jensen at the Frobenius Institute and awarded the Leo Frobenius Medal, which was introduced for this occasion, for his engagement in Frobenius' life's work. The medal was awarded once more in 1964 to Jensen himself on the occasion of his retirement.
Well-known employees of the institute were Maria Weyersberg, Hans Rhotert, Ewald Volhard, Heinz Wieschhoff, and Christian Feest.