Gerhard Baer was born in Rorschach/Switzerland in 1934. After finishing school he took up his studies in Basel. Anthropology, Sociology and Comparative Religious Studies were his major subjects. He completed his Ph D thesis on the Xingu River region in 1960.
In 1967 Baer took up a position at the Ethnological Museum (now: Museum der Kulturen) in Basel, which he chaired until 1995. Moreover, he published his habilitation thesis in 1983 and held a professorship at the University in Basel. Besides lecturing Baer did fieldwork in Brazil and Peru several times.
Currently Gerhard Baer is holding a professorship at the Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology of the Westfälische Wilhelms-University in Münster.
(photo source: http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/ivk/vk/fachgebiet/personalia/baer)
