Weidenreich, Franz

WORKS BY WEIDENREICH

Franz Weidenreich (1873-1948), anatomist and anthropologist, was born in Germany. After attending the Gymnasium in Landau, he spent six years studying medicine in Munich, Kiel, Berlin, and in Strasbourg, where he received his m.d. in 1899. He taught anatomy at the universities of Strasbourg and Frankfurt and in 1904 was appointed professor of anatomy at Strasbourg. By 1914 he had published 54 papers, mostly concerned with blood. He was interested in bone and connective tissue, and his anthropological interests commenced with a paper on the chin (1904) and with one on upright posture (1913). Not only did World War i interrupt Weidenreich’s work but it resulted in his dismissal as professor of anatomy when the French took over Strasbourg. In 1921 Weidenreich became professor of anatomy at Heidelberg. His interest in blood continued, but his interest in bone and evolution became much more pronounced. His publications on the foot, the skull, domestication, and race foreshadowed the basic thinking of all his later work. In 1928 he described the Ehringsdorf skull, and in the same year he moved to the University of Frankfurt. There he continued to publish work on blood, bone, teeth, and connective tissue; in addition, he wrote papers on fossil man and on the evolution of the hand and the foot.

His Jewish family background and his work on race brought Weidenreich into conflict with the German authorities; after leaving Germany, he went to the University of Chicago as a visiting professor in 1934. In 1935 he became professor of anatomy at Peking Union Medical College and honorary director of the Cenozoic Research Laboratory. There he prepared a series of monographs on Peking man, including works on the mandibles (1936a), dentition (1937), extremity bones (1941), and the skull (1943). In 1941 Weidenreich moved again, and he spent his final years at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. During his last ten years Weidenreich’s numerous papers dealt exclusively with human evolution, but they were enriched by the profound anatomical understanding that he had derived from his earlier work.

Although the original specimens of Peking man were lost during World War ii, comparable Pithecanthropus erectus fossils became available for study. The Dutch paleontologist G. H. R. von Koenigswald had survived his experiences in a Japanese prison camp and, with the financial assistance of the Viking Fund, had gone to New York, taking original specimens of Pithecanthropus from Java. Many of Weidenreich’s last writings, especially the monograph “Giant Early Man” (1945a), were concerned with the specimens found by von Koenigswald.

Weidenreich summarized his views on human evolution in six lectures, later published as the book Apes, Giants and Man (1946), and in a review article, “The Trend of Human Evolution” (1947a). He believed that human evolution was fundamentally orthogenetic in character. The principal trends that changed an ancestral ape to man were interconnected and consisted of bipedalism, increase in brain size and decrease in face size, and decrease in massiveness in the final giant man, ancient man, modern man series. Weidenreich, like most east European and German paleoanatomists, never accepted Piltdown man, maintaining that the lower jaw was that of an ape. Nor did he ever accept early Pleistocene Homo sapiens, and he believed that mankind comprised only one species from before the time of Java man. Although he saw continuity of structural differences in each of the major geographical areas of the Old World, he believed that there had been genetic connections among all the areas throughout the Pleistocene period (1946); contrary to the misrepresentations of his views on the origin of races, he never proposed a multilineal sequence of human evolution.

Weidenreich’s fossil descriptions remain unequaled. His general chronological arrangement of their forms still appears to be essentially correct, although recent discoveries of jaws show Gigantopithecus to be an ape and not, as Weidenreich had suspected, an early man.

Probably no other person contributed more to the study of human evolution than did Weidenreich. In spite of persecution, the loss of two positions for political reasons, and great personal difficulties, he remained a helpful, friendly person. He welcomed colleagues and students who wanted to see the fossils and his still unpublished material. “Pick it up,” he would say, “it’s the original!” In the few years he was in the United States Weidenreich exerted a profound influence, which went far beyond his scientific opinions and his many useful papers.

S. L. Washburn

[See alsoEvolution, article on Human Evolution; Physical Anthropology.]

WORKS BY WEIDENREICH

1904 Zur Kinnbildung beim Menschen. Anatomischer Anzeiger 25:314-319.

1913 Über das Hüftbein und das Becken der Primaten und ihre Umformung durch den aufrechten Gang. Anatomischer Anzeiger 44:397-513.

1928 Der Schädelfund von Weimar-Ehringsdorf. Jena (Germany): Fischer.

1936a The Mandibles of Sinanthropus pekinensis: A Comparative Study. Palaeontologica sinica Series D 7, fasc. 3.

1936b Observations on the Form and Proportions of the Endocranial Casts of Sinanthropus pekinensis, Other Hominids and Great Apes: A Comparative Study of Brain Size. Palaeontologica sinica Series D 7, fasc. 4.

1937 The Dentition of Sinanthropus pekinensis: A Comparative Odontography of the Hominids. Palaeontologica sinica New Series D no. 1, whole series no. 101.

1941 The Extremity Bones of Sinanthropus pekinensis. Palaeontologica sinica New Series D no. 5; whole series no. 116.

1943 The Skull of Sinanthropus pekinensis: A Comparative Study on a Primitive Hominid Skull. Palaeontologica sinica New Series D no. 10; whole series no. 127.

1945a Giant Early Man From Java and South China. Volume 40, part 1 in American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers. New York: The Museum.

1945b The Brachycephalization of Recent Mankind. Southwest Journal of Anthropology 1:1-54.

1946 Apes, Giants and Man. Univ. of Chicago Press.

1947a The Trend of Human Evolution. Evolution 1:221-236.

1947b Facts and Speculations Concerning the Origin of Homo sapiens. American Anthropologist New Series 49:187-203.

The Shorter Anthropological Papers of Franz Weidenreich Published in the Period 1939-1948: A Memorial Volume. Compiled by S. L. Washburn and Davida Wolffson. New York: Viking Fund, 1949.