PREUSS, KONRAD T.

PREUSS, KONRAD T. (1869–1938), was a German ethnologist and historian of religions. Konrad Theodor Preuss was born on June 2, 1869, in the Prussian city of Eylau (present-day Bagrationovsk, Russia). Shortly after completing school in Königsberg in 1887, he began studying history and geography at the university there and in 1894 received his doctorate from these departments. In 1895 he took a position at the Berlin Ethnological Museum; during his career there he first became head of the North and Middle America department and, eventually (in 1920), director of the museum. He received a professorship from the University of Berlin in 1912, and from that time on he conducted lectures and seminars in North and South American ethnology and archaeology. He also conducted an interdisciplinary colloquium in religious history. In accordance with regulations, Preuss retired from his positions in 1934; his retirement did not, however, hinder his scientific work. Preuss's publications, which appeared on a regular basis throughout his career, concentrated on American ethnology and linguistics.

Within the anthropological study of primal religious traditions, Preuss became known as the foremost German exponent of the "preanimist" theory of magic. Preuss, along with those who followed his theoretical course, held that there had been a stage in human religious development prior to the stage named "animism" by evolutionist anthropologists. During this "preanimist" stage, human beings had construed causality in nature in accordance with belief in the efficacy of magical practices in influencing the environment. In this connection, Preuss spoke of the "primal ignorance" of humankind.

The preanimist hypothesis was quickly disputed and has since been thoroughly rejected (see, e.g., Adolf E. Jensen's Myth and Cult among Primitive People, 2d ed., 1969). Deities of later religious eras, even after the existence of an impersonal power came to be accepted, were attended with the same magical methods that Preuss had indicated had been employed by people of an earlier age. But Preuss had already recorded his theoretical construct in a series of articles titled "Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst" (Globus 86 and 87, 1904–1905), and he retained these principles throughout his life.

The experience Preuss gained on two field-research expeditions furnished additional information. The first of these expeditions (1905–1907) brought him into contact with the Cora, Huichol, and Mexicanos tribes of the Sierra Madre of Mexico's Pacific coast. The second journey (1913–1915) was devoted to the study of the Witóto in the lowlands and the Cágaba in the highlands of Colombia. In the religion and mythology of the Witóto, especially, Preuss was able not only to recognize correspondences between various myths and the particular cults that enact them but also to see the roots of these correspondences in an ancient period (see Religion und Mythologie der Uitoto, 2 vols., 1921–1923; cf. Der religiöse Gehalt der Mythen, 1933). The cultic religions that followed the preanimistic stage were the direct result of these deep-rooted sentiments; they were later superseded by religions in which prayers, not magical practices, were employed.

These later religions were built around a central supreme deity. The form taken by this deity became a major concern for Preuss in his work Glauben und Mystik im Schatten des Höchten Wesens (1926). In contrast with Wilhelm Schmidt's view that there has been a universal Urmonotheismus ("primitive monotheism") at the earliest stage of human religious evolution, Preuss did not believe that the supreme being was a predominant element during the initial stage of religious development.

According to Preuss's view, religion is more than the "expressive repetition of prayers of thanksgiving and humble obedience to a supreme deity" (see "Fortschritt und Rückschritt in der Religion," Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft 47, 1932, p. 241). Like that of other gods, the supreme deity's origin can ultimately be traced. Preuss thought, to perceptual impressions of nature. Beside the theoretical problems surrounding the question of the origin of the idea of God, Preuss devoted the remainder of his career to the study of ancient Mexican religion and history.

Bibliography

For further information, see F. R. Lehmann's article, "K. Th. Preusz," in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 71 (1939): 145–150.

New Sources

Preuss, Konrad Theodor, Jesús Jáuregui, and Johannes Neurath. Fiesta, literatura y magia en el Nayarit: ensayos sobre Coras, Huicholes y mexicaneros. México, D.F., 1998.

Otto Zerries (1987)

Translated from German by John Maressa
Revised Bibliography