Person
Obermaier, Hugo (1877-1946)Alternative forms (other languages) Other forms
1877-01-29 - Fribourg 1946-11-12
Presbyter, prehistorian, teacher, writer and archaeologist.
Born in Ratisbona (Germany) in 1877, and was son of the inspector of the Royal Council, librarian and director of the Royal Library of Ratisbona, Antonio Obermaier.
He did his primary and secondary studies in his hometown, and the universitaries in Munich's University, studying Theology. In 1900 he consecrated as a priest, and the following years he studied Prehistory, Achaeology, Physic Geography, Geology, Palaeontology, Ethnology, German Philology and Human Anatomy at University. In 1904, he obtained his doctorate with the study Contribution to the knowledge of the Quaternary in the Pyrenees. Between 1909 and 1911 he was an assistant in Vienna's University, and subsequently he travelled and investigated for years until 1922, when he was named professor of the Primitive History of the Man. He worked in this position until the start of the Civil War, when he decided to found the Primitive History Seminar. In 1924 he obtained the Spanish nationality and the next year he was named academician of the Royal Academy of History.
He was friends with the philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955).
In 1945 he suffered a hemiplegia -a paralysis that only affects half of the body- by which he passed away the next year in Freiburg (Switzerland).
Date of the event: 1936 - 1939
AGA. Expediente personal de Catedrático de Universidad de Hugo Obermaier. Signatura: AGA,Educación, Legajo 9614-2
Diccionario biográfico de la Real Academia de la Historia (RAH)