Anton Quack was born in Erfweiler-Ehlingen (now: Mandelbachtal) in the Saar region in 1946. He attended secondary school at the Steyler missionaries (SVD) in St. Wendel from 1957 onward. In 1966 he took up his novitiate and began to study Philosophy in St. Agustin.
Quack was ordained a priest in 1972. The following year he graduated with a thesis on Religion among the ethnic groups in Zaire. In 1974/75 Quack took up his studies of Anthropology at the Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology in Münster, where Rüdiger Schott was among his teachers. He eventually moved to Cologne in order to study Ethnology and African Studies at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology.
Quack graduated in 1978. He subsequently did field work and linguistic researches in Taiwan. Since 1980 Quack was member of the Anthropos-Institute. He began to write his promotion thesis which he completed in 1983. The same year he became editor in chief of the renowned Anthropos magazine. This position he held for the following ten years.
In 1985 Quack began lecturing at the Faculty of Theology in St. Augustin. There he took up a professorship for Ethnology in 1989. From 1994 onward Quack furthermore was head of the review section of the Anthropos magazine, as well as member of the editorial team of its bulletin section.
Anton Quack died in 2009. His major interests included Anthropology of Religion, Shamanism and Syncretism as well as topics such as Cultural Change and Interdisciplinary Studies. His regional focus mainly lay on Africa and Eastern Asia.
(Text written by Vincenz Kokot in July 2012, based on an obituary by Gächter, Othmar: http://www.anthropos.eu/media/anthropos/docs/antonquack.pdf; photo source: http://www.anthropos.eu/anthropos/photos/obituary/index.php)
Short Portrait: Anton Quack
Anton Quack
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