During the first half of the 20th century, the scientific traditions of and institutional settings in Germany and France evovled in quite differently. With respect to ethnology however, intersections between the two respective epistemologies existed which render the exploration of their histoire croisée interesting. The objective of this project is to illustrate how the two academic realms influenced each other – be it in concurrent or antagonistic ways or by borrowing from each other – in the sense of histoire croisée. The scope will be to highlight particularly how ethnologic knowledge was received and disseminated in Germany and France respectively and later on in a form of reciprocity via African countries. The scientists partaking in this programme will focus on the ethnologists' methods, the knowledge they acquired through exchanges and their supporting institutions in Germany and France respectively. At the heart of this scientific inquiry will be figures of ethnology in Germany – Adolf Bastian, Franz Boas, Friedrich Ratzel, Leo Frobenius, Richard Thurnwald, Felix von Luschan, Bernhard Ankermann – as well as those of sociology, ethnology, art history, archeology, and prehistory in France – Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Georges-Henri Rivière, Paul Rivet, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Henri Breuil, Christian Zervos – due to their mutual contacts and the interconnections that exist between the epistemic disciplines they helped to create. Since ethnology then still was a discipline in the process of institutionalisation, a histoire croisée of ethnologic knowledge also has to consider its links to adjacent disciplines. Subsequently, the africanists' knowledge as well as its fabrication and reappropriation in France and Germany (following African procurement) will come into focus. An international network of scientists – partially already in place – will thus work on the history of the development of ethnology and of the africanist knowledge in Europe relating to these adjacent fields of study. To this end, conferences will be held, exhibitions be organised, and works be published also in the aim of disseminating the know-how in the field of ethnology and prehistory that primarily pertain to the African continent.

In France and Germany, the scientific and disciplinary traditions as well as their institutional contexts have sometimes developed in a very diverging way in the first half of the 20th century. Regarding ethnology, one may however also note intersections between the two epistemological national approaches, which make the investigation of their ‘histoire croisée’ particularly promising. The perspective adopted in this project focuses on the knowledge produced as well as on the way it was received and reflected upon in the studied national contexts, which makes this approach even more relevant. The present program aims at showing how these thematic areas have evolved in a parallel, antagonistic or interrelated way in the sense of an ‘histoire croisée’. In the frame of the ANTHROPOS program (ANR-DFG 1/2015-6/2017), the attention was particularly drawn on the ways ethnological knowledge spread and on how it was received in Germany, in France and in a reciprocal way in the mirror of African countries. The researchers have worked on the methods of ethnologists, on the knowledge they have gained through these methods and on the institutions that supported them in France and Germany. The project has shown that the ‘histoire croisée’ of the ethnological knowledge necessarily includes an interaction and a relationship to related disciplines, in particular to prehistory, with which ethnology has developed fruitful relationships. The shared disciplinary knowledge and practices and the similar approaches vis-à-vis the material culture or the “Other”, may he be far distant on a geographical or temporal level, as well as the joint institutions and associations and the transnational relations built between German and French scientists confirm this. It is these interactions between ethnologists and specialists of prehistory regarding for example the analysis of the concepts ‘ethnic group’ or ‘culture’ that will be analyzed during this ANTHROPOS 2 program. This investigation reaches from the story of a union between both disciplines at the end of the 19th century at the time of the emergence of these fields of study and of theories based on a common conceptual basis: that of ethnographic comparativism and that of the evolutionary, and later diffusionistic paradigm – to the story of a divorce between ethnology and prehistory during the 1950’s, when their similarities were strongly contested, in particular by André Leroi-Gourhan, who triggered the development of two independent, and, after Second World War, sometimes antagonistic disciplines. In Germany, this question was highly political. It was first linked to the question of origins, before Germanity became a thorny point of convergence during the Third Reich that led to a long silence between the disciplines after the war. Conferences and exhibitions will be organized and publications accomplished that will also strive to make this knowledge on ethnology and prehistory accessible to a broad public.