Alfred Louis Kroeber
1876-19601 1. For much of the personal information, I have drawn upon several unpublished manuscripts written by Kroeber in 1958 and 1959 for the Bancroft Library: "Early Anthropology at Columbia," "Teaching Staff (at California)," and the typescript of an interview. Mrs. Kroeber has filled me in on many details of his personal life, especially before 1925 when I first knew him, and Professor Robert Heizer has helped round out the picture in many ways. Important insights into Kroeber's childhood and youth are provided by the late Dr. Carl Alsberg, his lifelong friend, in "Alfred L. Kroeber" in Essays in Anthropology Presented to A. L. Kroeber in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, University of California Press, 1936, and by Kroeber's reminiscences of Alsberg in "The Making of the Man" in Carl Alsberg, Scientist at Large (Joseph S. Davis, ed.), Stanford University Press, 1948. I am also indebted to members of the Department of Anthropology, University of California, for placing records and other materials at my disposal, and to Robert Heizer, John Rowe, Edward Bruner, Dell Hymes, and Thomas Sebeok for reading the manuscript. Ann Judith Gibson and John Rowe have kindly provided me with Kroeber's bibliography, which is far more complete than any previously published and which was a task of many months. The excellent photograph was taken by Paul Bishop of 2125 Durant Ave., Berkeley, California. Many appreciations will doubtless be written of Kroeber, but mention may now be made of L. Kroeber by Earl W. Count, an address given at Syracuse University, October 20, 1960.

Kroeber's last days were not very different from all the other days of his long, active life. His insatiable curiosity had not been curtailed, his writing had not slackened, and his zest for living was undiminished. During the summer of 1960, he had organized and chaired the final 1960 Wenner-Gren Conference, "Anthropological Horizons," at the Foundation's castle at Burg Wartenstein in Austria, after which he and his wife, Theodora—known to friends as Krakie—stayed over in Paris. On October 4, Kroeber had read anthropology, written, and, with Krakie, visited a museum and dined at a favorite restaurant. His last illness, resulting from a heart condition which had been incurred during World War II, came less than an hour before his death.

The fullness of Kroeber's life was manifest in many ways. He played a major role in developing American anthropology from the rather random endeavors of amateurs and self-trained men to a coherent, scientific, and academic discipline. His contributions to knowledge included extensive ethnographic investigations in California and the Great Plains, archeological studies in Mexico and Peru,22. An account of Kroeber's archeological work by John Howland Rowe will appear in an early edition of "American Antiquity." linguistic research,3 especially in California, theory of communications in the animal world generally, historical syntheses which often had world scope, and a large number of papers on the nature of culture. Kroeber developed one of the world's great research museums and teaching departments of anthropology.3. Dell H. Hymes has written on Kroeber's linguistic studies for Language, 37:l-28, 1961. I have felt entirely incompetent to deal with this highly important aspect of Kroeber's work. As the impact of his influence was felt, kudos accrued to him. He was the recipient of five honorary degrees (Yale, California, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago), two gold medals, and honorary membership in 16 scientific societies. He held offices in innumerable professional organizations. These kudos resulted from undeviating dedication to scholarship. He never sought to popularize, he wrote little that was not on a serious anthropological subject, and he avoided the lecture circuits.

FORMATIVE YEARS

Kroeber left no autobiographical materials, except occasional notes and interviews on phases of his professional career, and he made no assessment of the major factors in his life. To a request for a brief sketch of the critical influences and events that led to his professional achievements, he replied with characteristic modesty, "I do not in the least feel myself a public character." He also expressed "a certain inward reluctance about supplying for the record facts which have a personal and sometimes even intimate coloring."

The social background of the man and scholar was a very special one in 19th century America. It was a German upper middle class society of New York in which intellectual, esthetic, and scientific interests and professional aspirations were a matter of course. Prior to World War I, Americans who wished the best training in the humanities and sciences spent a few years in Germany. Kroeber found the requisite milieu in New York, and did not, in fact, visit Germany until he was 39 years old, a little before the United States entered World War I. This society of New York German families was a fairly tight-knit and extensively-intermarried group, it shared a very special culture (though none of them thought of it as non-American), and it produced a disproportionate number of eminent scientists, writers, lawyers, and other professional persons. It included families of Jewish and Protestant background, but its rationalistic orientation had eliminated religious orthodoxy. Family life and child training followed the German pattern. Children heard classical music and accompanied their parents to concerts, became familiar with the finest literature and art, and attended lectures on serious subjects.

Kroeber's parents were both upper middle class Protestants of German ancestry. Grandfather Kroeber had come to the United States when his son, Florence Kroeber, who had been born in Cologne, Germany, was 10 years old. The date is unclear, but it was early enough so that the grandfather fought in the Civil War. Florence became an importer of French clocks in New York, but affiliated himself with the German colony. Alfred Kroeber's mother, Johanna Muller, was American-born in a German family which produced many distinguished persons.

Florence and Johanna had four children, all of whom acquired a scholarly interest, especially in natural history. Alfred was the oldest. His sister, Johanna, the next oldest, graduated from Bryn Mawr College and worked in biology at the American Museum of Natural History before marrying. Edward, the third child, died at 18. Elsbeth, the youngest, first became a biology teacher in New York City high schools and later supervisor of biology teaching in all the city schools and author of the main text book.

Alfred was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, June 11, 1876, but his family moved to New York City when he was very young. He was never entrusted to what little public schooling New York offered at that time. He was first taught at home. His family was bilingual, but German was the household language. During childhood he was introduced to Latin and Greek. This early experience in four languages stirred an enduring interest in linguistics. He later remarked that, as a school boy, he had been intrigued by the forms, or grammars, of languages but had preferred Greek and Latin because English was too simple.

At seven or eight, Alfred was placed under a private tutor, Dr. Bamberger, whom he shared with six other children. This vigorous German, who later organized the Ethical Culture Society's school in Chicago, aroused great enthusiasm in his pupils. He not only taught the three R's, but made geography lessons vivid through views from Brooklyn Bridge, stimulated interest in natural history by means of collecting expeditions in Central Park, and so excited his students about classical history that, during summers on Long Island, they erected forts to fight ancient battles, such as the siege of Troy.

Kroeber's formal schooling continued in the German pattern. He was first sent to Sachs' Collegiate Institute, a grammar and high school, modeled on the French lyceé or German gymnasium, which prepared boys for college. Here, too, his fellow students were German-American boys, many of Jewish descent. Except for a year at a private boarding school in Connecticut to provide him a more out-of-door life, he continued at Sachs' school until he entered Columbia in 1892 at the age of 16.

These formative years established the fundamental characteristics of the man: a vast range of interests with special emphasis on natural history, a love of languages, an extraordinary esthetic perceptivity, and a strong sense of workmanship, or attention to detail and willingness to do thoroughly all the grubby little chores required of first rate scholarship. It always delighted Kroeber to discover this last trait, which is all too rare, in others.

Alsberg described the young Kroeber as shy and reserved but always an independent thinker and a dissenter. While an undergraduate at Columbia College, he and a small circle of friends founded a magazine which, though mainly literary, barred no holds on criticism of any subject, including the University. Kroeber's attack on how history was taught, Alsberg believes, may have influenced the University to appoint James Harvey Robinson to teach cultural history. If Kroeber was shy, he did not lack courage. When his friends became offended at the poor taste of the statuary in Central Park, he emphasized the point by painting the statues with bizarre adornments in lurid colors. He was traced through the source of the paint, and apprehended, but then reprimanded and released. Years later, classical statuary stored in the temporary anthropology building in Berkeley was to experience similar treatment by University of California undergraduates.