Short Portrait: Peter Tschohl

Peter Tschohl
Peter Tschohl

* 3. April 1935 bis 27. September 2007

 Peter Tschohl was born in Munich in 1935. There he spent his childhood and youth. Tschohl not only developed an early interest in indigenous American cultures but also was in contact with the art historian Heinrich Ubbelohde-Doering who chaired the Munich State Museum of Ethnology.

After finishing school and a brief period of employment Tschohl took up his studies at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Hamburg University in 1955. Anthropology, European Ethnology and Ancient American Studies were his major subjects. Günter Zimmermann, Wilhelm Giese and Franz Termer were among his teachers. Tschohl furthermore attended lectures on Sociology, Philosophy and Psychology. He graduated in 1962, with a Ph D thesis on the Ancient Aztec Empire in Southern Mexico.

Between 1962 and 1973 Tschohl received a scholarship of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) and began to work on his habilitation thesis. Moreover, he participated in several archaeological researches (e.g., in Turkey and Irak 1962/63 and in Mexico 1963/64). From 1969 onward Tschohl held a post-doctoral position at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne which was chaired by Helmut Petri.

Tschohl completed his habilitation thesis in 1972. Subsequently he lectured both in Hamburg and Cologne. In 1975 he took up a professorship at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, where he taught until his retirement in 2000.

Tschohls regional focus lay on America and Mesoamerica while his field of interest included Ethno-History, Ancient American Cultures, Systematic Anthropology and Art.


Peter Tschohl died in Malaga/Spain in 2007.



(Text written by Vincenz Kokot in July 2012, based on an obituary by Berthold Riese; photo shows Tschohl in 1977, by courtesy of Ulla Johansen)
 

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