Georg Thilenius

Georg Christian Thilenius was a German physician and anthropologist, born on 4 October 1868 in Soden am Taunus and died on 28 December 1937. He studied medicine at Bonn and Berlin, and in 1896 he was habilitated as an anatomist at the University of Strasbourg. He then took part in research trips to Tunisia and the South Pacific. In 1900 he became a professor of anthropology and ethnology at the University of Breslau, and in 1904 he was appointed director of the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg, the museum of ethnology, a post he kept until his retirement in 1935. As director he coordinated the Südsee-Expedition of 1908 to 1910 to German-administered territories in Micronesia and Melanesia, which brought more than 15,000 objects back to Hamburg. He also chaired the Kolonialinstitut in Hamburg from 1908 to 1910 and later directed the chair of anthropology at the University of Hamburg.