Karl Penka (26 October 1847,
Mohelnice – 10 February 1912,
Vienna) was an
Austrian philologist and anthropologist. Known for his now-outdated theories locating the
Proto-Indo-European homeland in Northern Europe,[1] Penka has been described as "a transitional figure between
Aryanism and
Nordicism".[2]
Biography
Born in Müglitz,
Moravia (now
Mohelnice,
Czech Republic), Penka was between 1873 and 1906 a master at the Maximiliansgymnasium, a high school for boys, in
Vienna.[3]
He studied
anthropology from the point of view of
comparative linguistics and took a particular interest in the origins of the
Indo-Europeans. He used the term
Aryan in the
linguistic sense, and extended it into a broad term of race and culture. Penka popularised the theory that the
Aryan race had emerged in
Scandinavia and could be identified by the Nordic characteristics of blue eyes and blond hair. In his 1883 book Origines Ariacae ('Origins of the Aryans'), he proposed that the Indo-European homeland was situated in the far north, corresponding to the
Hyperborea of antiquity.[4]
Penka died in
Vienna in 1912. He is now seen as a pioneer of racist and anti-Semitic theories in
ethnology.[5]
Selected works
Die Nominalflexion der indogermanischen Sprachen (Vienna, 1878)
Origines Ariacae. Linguistisch-ethnologische Untersuchungen zur ältesten Geschichte der arischen Völker und Sprachen (Vienna, 1883)
Die Herkunft der Arier. Neue Beiträge zur historischen Anthropologie der europäischen Völker (Vienna, 1886)
'Entstehung der arischen Rasse' in Das Ausland (1891), from p. 132
Neue Hypothesen über die Urheimat der Arier (Leipzig, 1906)
O. Schraders Hypothese von der südrussischen Urheimat der Indogermanen (Leipzig, 1908, in series Beiträge zur Rassenkunde, 6)
Further reading
Lars von Karstedt, Sprache und Kultur. Eine Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Ethnolinguistik (Diss, Hamburg 2004)
Z. Filip, Biografický slovník okresu Šumperk (Šumperk, 2001)
Kurt Riedel, Die rassenkundliche Begründung des Begriffs "nordisch" durch den Wiener Professor Karl Penka (Dresden, 1940)
References
^Mallory, J. P. (1989). In search of the Indo-Europeans : language, archaeology, and myth. Thames and Hudson. p. 268.
ISBN0-500-05052-X.
OCLC20394139.
^Christopher Hutton, Race and the Third Reich (2005), p. 108: "A transitional figure between Aryanism and Nordicism was Karl Penka (1847–1912), who argued for the origin of the Aryans in northwest Europe, so that the Aryan race was in effect a Nordic race".
^Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien (Anthropological Society of Vienna, 1912), p. 222: "Karl Penka: Der am 10. Februar 1912 verstorbene Paläoethnologe Prof. Karl Penka wurde am 26. Oktober 1847 zu Müglitz ... geboren... Im Jahre 1873 wurde er Professor am kk Maximiliansgymnasium in Wien, an dem er bis 1906 im Lehramte tätig war."
^Jocelyn Godwin, Arktos: the Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival (Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1993), pp. 32-50
^Von Karstedt, Lars (2004). Sprache und Kultur. Eine Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Ethnolinguistik, p. 78f.