Johann Jakob Bachofen (22 December 1815 – 25 November 1887) was a Swiss

antiquarian An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic si ...

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

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

, and professor of

Roman law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...

at the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis''; German: ''Universität Basel'') is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest univ ...

from 1841 to 1844. Bachofen is most often connected with his theories surrounding prehistoric

matriarchy Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of Power (social and political), power and Social privilege, privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. Whil ...

, or ''Das Mutterrecht'', the title of his seminal 1861 book ''Mother Right: an investigation of the religious and juridical character of matriarchy in the Ancient World.'' Bachofen assembled documentation demonstrating that

motherhood A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given childbirth, birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case ...

is the source of human society, religion, morality, and decorum. He postulated an archaic "mother-right" within the context of a primeval Matriarchal religion or ''

Urreligion ''Urreligion'' is a postulated "original" or "oldest" form of religious tradition (the German prefix expressing the idea of "original", "primal", "primitive", "elder", "primeval", or "'"). The concept contrasts with later organized religions ...

''. Bachofen became an important precursor of 20th-century theories of matriarchy, such as the Old European culture postulated by

Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas (, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeology, archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old European Culture, Old Europe" and for her Kurgan ...

from the 1950s, and the field of

feminist theology Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Jainism, Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scri ...

and "

matriarchal studies Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, ...

" in 1970s feminism.

Biography

Born into a wealthy

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

family active in the silk industry and attended the service of the French Reformed Church in Basel.Stagl, Justin (1990).p.21 After having attended the Gymnasium, Bachofen studied in Basel and in Berlin under

August Boeckh August is the eighth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. In the Southern Hemisphere, August is the seasonal equivalent of February in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, August ...

, Karl Ferdinand Ranke and

Friedrich Carl von Savigny Friedrich Carl von Savigny (21 February 1779 – 25 October 1861) was a German jurist and historian. Early life and education Savigny was born at Frankfurt am Main, of a family recorded in the history of Lorraine, deriving its name from the cast ...

as well as in Göttingen. After completing his doctorate in Basel, he studied for another two years in Paris, London and Cambridge. He was called to the Basel chair for

in 1841. In 1842 he travelled to

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

accompanied by his father to, according to him, see his spiritual homeland with his own eyes. Having returned to Basel, he was called to the appellate court and his next book on Roman law received the acclaim of the academics. He would also become elected into the Grand Council of Basel. He retired from his professorship in 1844, after in the local press it was suggested the wealth of his family would have helped him assume the job at the university.Stagl, Justin (1990).p.12 In 1845 he also quit from the Grand Council. As a judge he would stay for twenty-five years and resign after his marriage to Louise Bachofen-Burckhardt. In 1848 he undertook a second journey to Rome in which he witnessed the Roman revolution, changed his research focus from the

classical antiquity Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural History of Europe, European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the inter ...

but the early antiquity.Stagl, Justin (1990).p.13 In 1851–1852 he travelled to Greece,

Magna Graecia Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...

, and

Etruria Etruria ( ) was a region of Central Italy delimited by the rivers Arno and Tiber, an area that covered what is now most of Tuscany, northern Lazio, and north-western Umbria. It was inhabited by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization that f ...

. He published most of his works as a private scholar.

Personal life

His mother Valeria Merian Bachofen died in 1856 but he kept living in the same house as his father.Stagl, Justin (1990).p.14 It was the same house which would become the seat of the Civil Register of Basel between 1962 and 1983 and part of the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig in the 1980s. In 1865, he married the at the time twenty five-years old Louise Bachofen-Burckhardt from a noble family of Basel. He would buy a house at the square before the Minster of Basel and a son was born. Louise Bachofen Burckhardt would live in the house at the Minster Square after her husband would die in 1877. Johann Jakob Bachofen is buried at the ''Wolfgottesacker'' cemetery in Basel. The tomb was sculptured by Richard Kissling.

''Das Mutterrecht''

Bachofen's 1861 ''Das Mutterrecht'' proposed four phases of cultural evolution which absorbed each other: # Hetaerism: a wild nomadic 'tellurian' chthonic or earth-centered">chthonic.html" ;"title=" chthonic"> chthonic or earth-centeredphase, characterised by him as communistic and polyamorous, whose dominant deity he believed to have been an earthy proto Aphrodite. # Das Mutterecht: a matriarchal 'lunar' phase based on agriculture, characterised by him by the emergence of chthonic mystery cults and law. Its dominant deity was an early

Demeter In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Demeter (; Attic Greek, Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric Greek, Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Twelve Olympians, Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over cro ...

. # The Dionysian: a transitional phase when earlier traditions were masculinised as patriarchy began to emerge. Its dominant deity was the original Dionysos. # The Apollonian: the patriarchal 'solar' phase, in which all trace of the Matriarchal and Dionysian past was eradicated and modern civilisation emerged.

Reception

There was little initial reaction to Bachofen's theory of cultural evolution, largely because of his impenetrable literary style, but eventually, along with furious criticism, the book inspired several generations of ethnologists, social philosophers, and even writers:

Lewis Henry Morgan Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social e ...

;

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan'' () is an 1884 anthropological treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is partially based on notes by Karl Marx to Lewis H. Morgan's book ''Anc ...

'';

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

;

Jane Ellen Harrison Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September 1850 – 15 April 1928) was a British classical scholar and linguist. With Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, Harrison is one of the founders of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She ...

, who was inspired by Bachofen to devote her career to

mythology Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

;

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...

;

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...

;

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and set ...

;

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were b ...

;

Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. Acclaimed as an Idiosyncrasy, idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as ...

; Joseph Campbell; Otto Gross; Erich Neumann and opponents such as

Julius Evola Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola (; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974) was an Italian far-right philosopher and writer. Evola regarded his values as Traditionalist conservatism, traditionalist, Aristocracy, aristocratic, War, martial and Empire, im ...

. In the 1930s his work was acclaimed by several prominent academics in the German speaking world. Because of his theoretical commitment to

Marxist historiography Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided s ...

, Friedrich Engels faulted Bachofen for regarding "religion as the main lever of the world's history" and therefore considered it a "troublesome and not always profitable task to work your way through isbig volume .e. ''Das Mutterrecht''. Nevertheless, he credited Bachofen with inaugurating research into the

history of the family The history of the family is a branch of social history that concerns the sociocultural evolution of kinship groups from prehistoric to modern times.Hareven 1991, p. 95. The family has a universal and basic role in all societies. Research on the ...

. He summarized Bachofen's views as follows: :"(1) That originally man lived in a state of sexual promiscuity, to describe which Bachofen uses the mistaken term " hetaerism"; :(2) that such promiscuity excludes any certainty of paternity, and that descent could therefore be reckoned only in the female line, according to mother-right, and that this was originally the case amongst all the peoples of antiquity; :(3) that since women, as mothers, were the only parents of the younger generation that were known with certainty, they held a position of such high respect and honor that it became the foundation, in Bachofen's conception, of a regular rule of women (gynaecocracy); :(4) that the transition to monogamy, where the woman belonged to one man exclusively, involved a violation of a primitive religious law (that is, actually a violation of the traditional right of the other men to this woman), and that in order to expiate this violation or to purchase indulgence for it the woman had to surrender herself for a limited period." (Friedrich Engels, 1891: see link below)

Emile Durkheim Emile or Émile may refer to: * Émile (novel) (1827), autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life * Emile, Canadian film made in 2003 by Carl Bessai * '' Emile: or, On Education'' (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a treatise o ...

credited Bachofen with upsetting the "old conception" that the father must be "the essential element of the family". Before Bachofen, Durkheim claims that "no one had dreamed that there could be a family organization of which the paternal authority was not the keystone". In contrast to Engels and Durkheim, the American sociologist Carle Zimmerman criticized Bachofen's work for initiating a research paradigm in

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

that "completely divorced" the study of the family from history, replacing the "constant struggle between familism and

individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote realizing one's goals and desires, valuing independence and self-reliance, and a ...

" with "imagination". He characterized Bachofen and the other members of this research paradigm, such as J.F. McLennan, L.H. Morgan, E.A. Westermark, and others, as "evolutionary cultists" and considered them to have "destroyed history as a fundamental study in social science" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As has been noted by Joseph Campbell in ''Occidental Mythology'' and others, Bachofen's theories stand in radical opposition to the Aryan origin theories of religion, culture and society, and both Campbell and writers such as Evola have suggested that Bachofen's theories only adequately explain the development of religion among the pre-Aryan cultures of the Mediterranean and the Levant, and possibly Southern Asia, but that a separate, patriarchal development existed among the Aryan tribes which conquered Europe and parts of Asia.

Works

* ''De legis actionibus de formulis et de condictione''. Dissertation Basel. Dieterich, Göttingen 1840. * ''Das Naturrecht und das geschichtliche Recht in ihren Gegensätzen.'' Basel 1841. reprint: Off. Librorum, Lauterbach 1995, * ''Römisches Pfandrecht.'' Schweighauser, Basel 1847. reprint: Keip, Goldbach 1997, * ''Ausgewählte Lehren des römischen Civilrechts.'' Leipzig 1848. reprint: Keip, Goldbach 1997, * ''Versuch über die Gräbersymbolik der Alten.'' Basel 1859 * ''Oknos der Seilflechter : ein Grabbild : Erlösungsgedanken antiker Gräbersymbolik.'' Basel 1859. reprint: Beck, München 1923 * ''Das Mutterrecht: eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur''. Stuttgart: Verlag von Krais und Hoffmann, 1861
Internet Archive link
** abbreviated edition, ed. Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs. (Suhrkamp Taschenbücher Wissenschaft; Nr.135.) Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975 ** excerpts edited as ''Mutterrecht und Urreligion: eine Auswahl'', ed. Rudolf Marx. (Kröners Taschenausgabe; Band 52) Leipzig: A. Kröner, 1927; Stuttgart, 1954; 6th ed. 1984 . * ''Antiquarische Briefe vornemlich zur Kenntniss der ältesten Verwandtschaftsbegriffe.'' 2 vols. Trübner, Strassburg 1880 & 1886. * ''Römische Grablampen nebst einigen andern Grabdenkmälern vorzugsweise eigener Sammlung.'' Basel 1890 * ''Gesammelte Werke'' (collected works) ed. Karl Meuli. Basel: B. Schwabe, 1943–1967, in 8 volumes (I-IV, VI-VIII and X) ** I. Antrittsrede; politische Betrachtungen ** II. Das Mutterecht, erste Hälfte ** III. Das Mutterecht, zweite Hälfte ** IV. Die Sage von Tanaquil ** VII. Die Unsterblichkeitslehre der orphanischen Theologie: Römische Grablampen ** VIII. Antiquarische Briefe ** X. Briefe * ''Myth, Religion and Mother Right'' Princeton University Press, translated by Ralph Manheim, 1967 * ''An English Translation of Bachofen's Mutterrecht (Mother Right) (1861): A Study of the Religious and Juridical Aspects of Gynecocracy in the Ancient World'' Volumes 1-5: ** ''Vol 1. "Lycia," "Crete," and "Athens"'' Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, translated by David Partenheimer, 30 January 2008 ** ''Vol 2. "Lemnos" and "Egypt"'' Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, translated by David Partenheimer, 1 April 2007 ** ''Vol 3. Orchomenus And the Minyan's And India And Central Asia'' Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, translated by David Partenheimer, 30 June 2006 ** ''Vol 4. "Elis", "The Epizephyrian Locrians", and "Lesbos"'' Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, translated by David Partenheimer, 1 June 2005, ** ''Vol 5. Mantinea; Pythagoreanism and Subsequent Doctrines; The Cantabri;'' Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, translated by David Partenheimer, 1 January 2003

References

External links

Johann Jakob Bachofen Explorer of the Mother Right
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bachofen, Johann Jakob 1815 births 1887 deaths Swiss anthropologists Swiss sociologists Swiss philosophers Men and feminism Matriarchy