Leo Frobenius and Africa
Leo Frobenius and Africa
Leo Frobenius and Africa
It expresses itself in the activity of all Negro people even in their sculpture. It speaks out of their
dances and their masks; out of the understanding of their religious life, just as out of the reality of
their living, their state building, and their conception of fate. It lives in their fables, their fairy
stories, their wise sayings and their myths.
And once we are forced to this conclusion, then the Egyptian comes into the comparison. For this
discovered culture form of Negro Africa has the same peculiarity.
Leo Frobenius (1873-1938) was an ethnologist and archaeologist. His first expedition to Africa was
to the Congo in 1904. In 1918, he began his expedition to North, West and Central Africa. He
rediscovered the famous Ori Olokun in Ife in 1912. Back in Germany, he founded the Institute for
Cultural Morphology in Munich in 1920. In 1925, the city of Frankfurt acquired his over 4,700
historical African stone paintings and even more sculptures of African art currently in the
Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt. He died in Italy in 1938, aged 65. He corresponded and
collaborated with the great Professor of History, Sociology and Economics and author, the AfricanAmerican, W.E.B Du Bois.
The above article was published in W. E. B Du Boiss The World and Africa: An inquiry into the
part which Africa has played in world history.