Abstract:
Wilhelm Mannhardt (1831-1880) is an excluded ancestor par excellence. Never translated, seldom read, his work is only mentioned in passing, as a source of data for The Golden Bough. Despite James Frazer acknowledging his major debt to the German mythologist and folklorist, in particular to his Wald- und Feldkulte (1875-1877) – but also to previous (much less voluminous works), Roggenwolf und Roggenhund (1865), and Die Korndämonen (1868) –, historians of late Victorian anthropology, including specialists of Frazer, have not paid much attention to the originality of Mannhardt's themes and theories. A pathetic figure, suffering since childhood from a disease that gave him the size of a midget, he died aged 49, but that is only one of the reasons for the oblivion in which he fell. The paper is a contribution to filling this surprising historiographic gap through a minute and comparative reading of Frazer, Mannhardt and some of their shared sources. It recaptures the intellectual biography of a man who became a specialist of the prehistoric tree cult in Europe, but most of all highlights his import as a major source of inspiration of Frazer's magnum opus, including its leitmotiv: the killing of the tree spirit's human representative. In the end, the originality of The Golden Bough is both put in perspective and better understood.
Additional Authors: Shaking the Tree, Breaking the Bough: Frazer's Golden Bough at 100 (Conference); Tully, Caroline Jane; Budin, Stephanie Lynn; University of Melbourne;
