Name Dominik Schroder | ||
Role Ethnologist Born 4 September 1910 Eiweiler, Nohfelden, Saarland Died 25 December 1974 (aged 64) Similar Claude Lévi Strauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan | ||
Dominik Schröder (4 September 1910 – 25 December 1974) was an ethnologist whose researches were focused mainly in the Moungor (Tu) people of Northwest China. He was born in Eiweiler, in the Nohfelden municipality of the Saarland. He worked as a missionary in China from 1938 to 1949. He obtained an MA from Fujen University in Beijing in 1945.
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He was active in the Anthropos-Institut in Fribourg, and undertook research on the Kham people, and the oral poetry of the Monguor people (蒙古尔). He translated the chapter on Folklore from the Xīkāng Tújīng (西康圖經:1934), a work by the Chinese scholar Rèn Nǎiqiáng (任乃強) who pioneered studies on the Gesar epic. From 1946 to 1949 he resided among the Huzhu Monguor people. He returned to Europe in 1949 to pursue his studies in anthropology at both Fribourg and Frankfurt, and obtained a doctorate in 1951. His inaugural dissertation, "Zur Religion der Tujen des Sininggebietes (Kukunor)," published in 1953 was an important addition to a little-known field of ethnology.
He was appointed professor of ethnology at Nanzan University in Nagoya in 1960, a position he held until 1969. During his time in Japan, he undertook multiple journeys to Taiwan to engage in fieldwork with the 'poringao' women, who practice shamanism among the indigenous Puyuma people. His field research notes were later compiled and published posthumously by Anton Quack.
His particular area of research interest was the phenomenon of shamanism among the peoples of East Asia. He collected invaluable materials on the Gesar epic as conserved among the Monguor.