Dr. Peter Snoy was born in Stuttgart in 1928. There he spent his childhood and youth. Snoy finished school in 1948 and eventually did an apprenticeship as a carpenter.
In 1951 Snoy took up his studies at the Frobenius-Institute in Frankfurt/Main, where A.E. Jensen and Helmut Petri were among his teachers. At the institute Snoy was taught not only a historical approach but also the relevance of material culture. Furthermore, he developed a regional focus on Asia and therefore visited lectures of Adolf Friedrich and Carl Hentze.
Still being a student, Snoy accompanied Adolf Friedrich, Karl Jettmar and Georg Buddrus on their field research trip to Afghanistan in 1955/56. He helped collecting ethnographic material and became interested in linguistic matters.
In 1962 Snoy graduated. He eventually participated in another field research in Afghanistan which was initiated by the renowned Linden-Museum in Stuttgart. Moreover, Snoy took up an assistant position at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies in Mainz and started lecturing, e.g., on material culture. Karl Jettmar was head chairman of the department.
When Jettmar was announced head chairman of the department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg in 1964, Snoy went with him. Since 1967 Snoy was head of the institutes branch in Kabul, where he not only lectured but also organized further field researches within the country.
Snoy returned to Heildeberg in 1971 and kept lecturing at the South Asia Institute until his retirement in 1993.
Peter Snoy died on Jan 17th, 2012.
(photo by courtesy of Peter Snoy)
