Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf
Coat of arms of the House of Fürer-Haimendorf
Born	Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf 1909 (1909)
Died	1995 (aged 85–86)
Nationality	Austrian
Occupation	Ethnologist
Years active	1943-1982
Known for	Fieldwork in Northeast India and in the central region of what is now the state of Telangana and in Nepal
Notable work	The Chenchus, The Reddis of the Bison Hills, The Raj Gonds of Adilibad

Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf or Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf (22 June 1909 – 11 June 1995) was an Austrian ethnologist and professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London. He spent forty years of his life studying tribal cultures in Northeast India, in the central region of what is now the state of Telangana and in Nepal.

Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf was born in an Austrian family. Very early he developed an interest in Indian culture, having read Rabindranath Tagore as a young man.

He studied anthropology and archaeology in Vienna and there he was most influenced by Robert von Heine-Geldern. He wrote his thesis on the tribal social organization of the peoples of Assam and NW Burma (Staat und Gesellschaft bei den Völkern Assams und des nordwestlichen Birmas) and in later years was inspired by John Henry Hutton, a fellow researcher of the tribal communities in that region.

After his thesis, von Fürer-Haimendorf moved to London in order to establish contact with the main anthropologists of his time, such as Bronislaw Malinowski. By 1936 he traveled to India, where he worked among the Naga people and established good friendships among the local administrators of the British Raj. After five months and great effort, he succeeded in learning the local language and was able to do without an interpreter. From then onwards, von Fürer-Haimendorf would insist that it was of the utmost importance for an ethnologist or ethnographer to learn well the language of the people who were the subject of the fieldwork in order to be competent in his or her studies.