J. J. Bachofen

J. J. Bachofen
J. J. Bachofen
Born	22 December 1815 Basel, Switzerland
Died	25 November 1887 (aged 71) Basel, Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Fields	Roman law, anthropology

Johann Jakob Bachofen (22 December 1815 – 25 November 1887) was a Swiss antiquarian, jurist, philologist, and anthropologist, professor for Roman law at the University of Basel from 1841 to 1845.

Bachofen is most often connected with his theories surrounding prehistoric matriarchy, or Das Mutterrecht, the title of his seminal 1861 book Mother Right: an investigation of the religious and juridical character of matriarchy in the Ancient World. Bachofen assembled documentation demonstrating that motherhood is the source of human society, religion, morality, and decorum. He postulated an archaic "mother-right" within the context of a primeval Matriarchal religion or Urreligion.

Bachofen became an important precursor of 20th-century theories of matriarchy, such as the Old European culture postulated by Marija Gimbutas from the 1950s, and the field of feminist theology and "Matriarchal Studies" in 1970s feminism.

Born into a wealthy Basel family active in the silk industry, Bachofen studied in Basel and in Berlin under August Boeckh, Karl Ferdinand Ranke and Friedrich Carl von Savigny, as well as in Göttingen. After completing his doctorate in Basel, he studied for another two years in Paris, London and Cambridge. He was called to the Basel chair for Roman law in 1841, but he retired early in 1845, and published most of his works as a private scholar. Bachofen is buried at the Wolfgottesacker cemetery in Basel.

Bachofen's 1861 Das Mutterrecht proposed four phases of cultural evolution which absorbed each other:

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