OBITUARY

DR. L. FROBENIUS

Dr. Leo Frobenius, who died on Tuesday at Biganzolo after some years of illhealth, as reported in our columns yesterday, was known in Germany and throughout the world as an explorer and as one of the foremost authorities on morphology, a subject to which he devoted his life, writes our Berlin Correspondent. His loss will be particularly felt in Frankfort-on-Main, where he founded, 14 years ago, the Institute of Cultural Morphology.

Born in Berlin on June 29, 1873, Frobenius was attracted at an early age to the science which became his life work and to exploration. After working for some years at the Ethnological museums of Bretnen, Leipzig, and Basic, his passion for exploration distracted him from a purely academic career. In 1904 he founded the German Central African Research Expedition, and in the same year embarked upon his first journey to the Congo Basin, which lasted until 1906. Between 1907 and 1915, Frobenius made six further journeys of exploration, which took him to the Upper Niger, Timbuctoo, and To*oland, the Northern Sahara. the Western Sudan, to Khartoum and El-Obeid, to Algeria and Tunisia, and finally, in the first year of the War, to Turkey and Northern Abyssinia.

From experience gained on these journeys Frobenius, who even as a very young man had been attacked by his elders for his unorthodox theories, developed his so-called " doctrine of cultural continuity," which was the subject of bitter controversy. He concluded that the development of the various phases of civilization took place in a manner exactly similar to the growth of a living organism, a contention which was hotly attacked by naturalists, biologists, and philosophers.

Accompanied by seven assistants, Frobenius once more set out in 1928 on an African expedition, in which he visited the Zimbadwe ruins in Rhodesia, and decided that, contrary to English opinion, Zimbadwe had 6,000 years ago been an outpost of Sumerian and Babylonian culture and that it offered no evidence of an early Bantu negro civilization. From excavations which were made on the site he also deduced that the Iron Age began in Africa 1,000 years earlier than in Europe and that the art of working in iron had come to Africa from India and Madaqascar. At the end of this expedition Frobenius received £5.000 from the South African Government to finance further studies.

The explorer's next expedition was to India, where he studied the connexion between South African and Indian civilization. The results of this tour were published under the title "Indian Journey."

In 1930 Frobenius's second major work appeared under the title " Atlantis: The FolkTales and Poetry of Africa," published in 12 volumes. Two years later be again set out, this time to Tripoli, where he studied the prehistoric course of the Nile, lying some 100 rniles west of the present course, and by excavation discovered many primitive dwellings in the region.

in 1934 Frobenius made his twelfth and last...