Johannes Frick was born in Gisingen near Feldkirch in 1903. He received his high school education at the Steyler mission seminary in St. Rupert near Bischofshofen and completed high school in Salzburg in 1924.
After joining the Steyler missionaries (SVD), Frick studied Philosophy and Theology in St. Gabriel/Mödling near Vienna. He was ordained a priest in 1931.
Frick subsequently went to China, where he worked in several areas of the country throughout the following fifteen years, e.g., the Tsinghai region. He not only established an ambulatory station but collected a large amount of ethnographic material during this period.
In 1949 Frick was interned at his missionary house by the communists. Three years later he was forced to leave the country.
After his return to Europe Frick was located at the Anthropos Institute in Fribourg/Switzerland and began working on his Ph D thesis. He graduated in Ethnology at the Philosophical Faculty of the Vienna University in 1955.
Between 1962 and 1968 Frick was principal of the Marienburg High School in Rheineck, Switzerland, where he died in 2003.
(Text written by Vincenz Kokot in March 2012, based on information provided by Anthropos Institute)
Short Portrait: Johannes Frick
Johannes Frick
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