Oscar Ferdinand Peschel (17 March 1826,

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

– 13 August 1875,

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

) was a German

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

and

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms an ...

Biography

As the son of an officer and teacher at the local military school, Peschel studied law from 1845 to 1848 in Leipzig and

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German: ') is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, of which roughly a quarter consisted of students ...

. In 1850 he joined the editorial staff of the ''Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung''. In 1854 he took over the editorship for the journal ''Das Ausland'',Peschel, Oscar Ferdinand
@ NDB/ADB Deutsche Biographie of which he continued until the end of March 1871. In 1871 he became a full professor of the newly established chair of geography at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...

. This is thus the fourth oldest chair of geography in Germany after

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

and

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

. Peschel 1858 corresponding member of the

Bavarian Academy of Sciences The Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (german: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften) is an independent public institution, located in Munich. It appoints scholars whose research has contributed considerably to the increase of knowledg ...

. Shortly before his death he was also a regular member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences in Leipzig.

Racial classification

In 1871 he became a full professor of the newly established Chair of Geography at the

, he was also a prominent corresponding member of the

. Peschel is most remembered for his book ''The Races of Man: and their geographical distribution'' (1876) which classifies man into seven races: Australoids, (

Papuans The indigenous peoples of West Papua in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, commonly called Papuans, are Melanesians. There is genetic evidence for two major historical lineages in New Guinea and neighboring islands: a first wave from the Malay Arch ...

), (

Melanesians Melanesians are the predominant and indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in a wide area from Indonesia's New Guinea to as far East as the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji. Most speak either one of the many languages of the Austronesian language fam ...

), Mongoloids, Dravidians,

Bushmen The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe languages, Khoe, Tuu languages, Tuu, or Kxʼa languages, Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the Indigenous peoples of Africa, first cultures of Sout ...

( Capoids), Negroids and Mediterraneans (

Caucasoids The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...

- the race itself is divided by Peschel into the Hamite, Semite, and Indo-European families).

Selected works

* ''Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen'', 1858 - History of the eras of discovery. * ''Geschichte der erdkunde'', 1865 - History of geography. * ''Neue Probleme der vergleichenden Erdkunde als versuch einer Morphologie de Erdoberfläche'', 1870 - New problems of comparative geography in regards to the morphology of the earth's surface. * ''Völkerkunde'', 1874 -

Ethnology Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

. * "The races of man : and their geographical distribution", 1876. * ''Abhandlungen zur Erd- und Völkerkunde'', 1877 - On geography and ethnology.

Legacy

Peschel Island Peschel IslandKoldewey, Carl. 2015. ''The German Arctic Expedition 1869/1870: Narrative of the Wreck of the Hansa in the Ice''. Reprint (London, 1874). Bremen: Maritime Press, p. 442. ( no, Pescheløya) is the third-largest of the Bastian Islands ...

in the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group rang ...

archipelago is named after Peschel.Stadnamn i norske polarområde: Pescheløya (Svalbard).
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References

* Parts of this article are based on text of an equivalent article at the

German Wikipedia The German Wikipedia (german: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on March 16, 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia (after the English Wikipedi ...

. * Rainer W. Gardener, The development of scientific geography in Saxony under the influence of Oscar Peschel, Delitsch Otto and Ferdinand von Richthofen, typescript written. Diss. Leipzig 1993. *Friedrich Ratzel: Peschel, Oscar . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). * Friedrich Ratzel: Peschel, Oscar . General German Biography (ADB). Band 25, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, S. 416–430. Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 416–430. {{DEFAULTSORT:Peschel, Oscar 1826 births 1875 deaths Amateur anthropologists German geographers German anthropologists German ethnologists Leipzig University faculty