EICKSTEDT, Egon Rudolf Ernst Adolf Hans Dubslaff, Freiherr von. Jersitz, Kreis Posen-Ost (now Jeżyce in Poznań, Poland) 10.4.1892 — Mainz 20.12.1965. German Ethnologist and Racist. Professor in Breslau and Mainz. Son of Hans von E. (1860–98), Prussian Distriktkommissar, of a Pomoranian noble house, and Elisabeth Pauer (1871–1945). Worked as merchant, then studies of science at Berlin and Frankfurt. War service in Balkan. Dr. rer.nat. 1920, with anthropological diss. on Sikh war prisoners. Worked as Assistant at Institut für Menschenkunde in Berlin, then in Freiburg and in Vienna Anthropological Museum. After fieldwork in India, from 1926 (or 1928) PD at Breslau Medical Faculty, from 1929 Docent at Philosophical Faculty and in charge of ethnology. From 1933 ao. and soon ord. Professor der Rassenkunde und Völkerkunde at Breslau. In 1937-39 expedition to India, Philippines and East Asia. From 1946 ord. Professor at Mainz. Retired 1961. Honorary Dr.med. Married 1918 in Bucharest Elvira Gomes (1893-1965, of Brazilian origin), one daughter and one son.
Already in the 1920s Eickstedt concentrated on “racial questions” (Rassenhygiene & Eugenetik), in 1933 wanted to join NSADP. Although rejected he was known as the “Nazibaron” and became one of the leading racial theoreticians of the Nazis. He developed a system of defining Jewish origin on “racial characteristics”, when father was unknown, and thus sent people to ghettos and lagers. After war he got a new position, because his theory of the three principal human races was still accepted as science, in fact it was definitely rejected only long after his death. At Mainz his work was finally questioned in the 1990s.
Publications: Diss. “Rassenelemente der Sikh”, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 52/53, 1920-21, 317-368.
– “Negritos der Andamanen”, Anthropologischer Anzeiger 5, 1928, 251-268; “Der Zentral-Dekkan und die Rassengliederung Indiens”, Anthropologischer Anzeiger 8, 1931, 89-103.
– Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit. 1-2. 936+1359 p. Stuttgart 1934-37; Rassendynamik von Ostasien. 648 p. B. 1944; and other similar works.
– Türken, Kurden und Iraner seit dem Altertum. Probleme einer anthropologischen Reise. 123 p. Stuttgart 1961.
Sources: Dt. biogr. Enz. 3, 1996; family in Gen. Handb. des Adels, Adelige Häuser A IX, 1969; German Wikipedia (with references to obituaries, ets., written by Ilse Schwidetzky, who was his Assistant at Breslau and colleague at Mainz).
*K. Müller, Die Eickstedt-Sammlung aus Südindien. Differenzierte Wahrnehmungen kolonialer Fotografien und Objekte. 307 p. Europäische Hochschulschriften 84. Frankfurt 2015.
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