Interviews with German anthropologists - Video Portal for the History of German Anthropology post 1945

Ludwig Kohl-Larsen was born in Landau/Pfalz in 1884. There he spent his childhood and youth.

After finishing school Kohl-Larsen took up his medical studies in Munich. In 1911 he became surgeon at an expedition to Antarctica, which was guided by the geophysicist Wilhelm Filchner. After falling ill during the journey, Kohl-Larsen stayed in Georgia, where he met his later wife, and eventually returned to Germany.

During World War I Kohl-Larsen was a governmental doctor in Micronesia. In 1928 he returned to South Georgia, accompanied by his wife and a cameraman, and did his first scientific researches there.

In 1931 Kohl-Larsen joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP). Throughout the following years, he did several journeys to Eastern Africa. There he searched for archaeological evidence of his evolutionist and racist theories.

In 1939 Kohl-Larsen took up a professorship for anthropology at the university in Tübingen. After World War II he was withdrawn from this chair, but took up a position at the Insititute for Prehistory and Early History in Tübingen in 1949.

Kohl-Larsen died in 1969.
 
 
 
 
(Text written by Vincenz Kokot in March 2012; based on BAA Prof. Riese; photo source: Streck 1987 Wörterbuch der Ethnologie)