Wilhelm Gieseler was born on 11 October 1900 in Hanover, Germany. After graduating from secondary school in June 1918, he began studying medicine, first in Göttingen in 1919; then in Heidelberg during the summer semester 1920; Freiburg, from late 1920 to early 1921, where he met anthropologist Eugen Fischer; and at Munich from 1922, where he studied anthropology and medicine with Rudolf Martin. In the spring of 1924, Gieseler received his PhD under anthropologist Rudolf Martin, with a thesis titled Studien über die Anthropoidenfemora. Ein Beitrag zur Klaatschen Abstammungshypothese (Studies on the Anthropoid Femora: A Contribution to Klaatsch’s Hypothesis of Descent). Gieseler had to interrupt his medical studies in order to prepare for his doctoral examination, and they were delayed further when he obtained a position as an assistant at the Anthropological Institute at the University of Munich, which he held from 1 October 1924 to 1 July 1930. In September 1925, he became a lecturer in anthropology, and he completed his habilitation thesis in anthropology at the University of Munich the same year. Gieseler completed his previously interrupted medical studies in 1931, when he completed his state examination and received his doctorate in medicine.

In July 1930 Gieseler moved to the University of Tübingen and worked as an assistant to Martin Heidenhain at the Anatomical Institute and as a Privatdozent (private lecturer) in anthropology. In May 1934 the new Nazi government appointed Gieseler Extraordinariat (associate professor) of Anthropologie und Rassenkunde (Anthropology and Race Studies), and he became director of the university’s Anthropology Institute, which was renamed the Institute for Racial Biology in 1938. Gieseler was promoted to full professor of Rassenbiologie (race biology) in October 1938. The change in name to Rassenbiologie was intended to indicate that at the University of Tübingen racial studies and anthropology should be combined with racial hygiene (eugenics). Gieseler quickly transformed the Anthropology Institute, which was housed in Hohentübingen Castle, into a major center of research into anthropology and human genetics, and under his leadership, the institute amassed one of the largest anthropological collections of its kind among European universities. Soon after arriving at the institute, Gieseler received a large collection of skulls and skeletons from the university’s Anatomical Institute, and this was subsequently augmented by various archaeological excavations. These included excavations in the Merovingian burial grounds at Hailfingen and Nusplingen that produced a substantial number of human skeletal remains. Herman Stoll (1939) excavated the huge Merovingian burial site close to Hailfingen in the 1930s, which contained more than 500 graves. Stoll began his career as an assistant to Robert Rudolf Schmidt, who was a professor in the Prehistoric Research Institute at the University of Tübingen. Excavations conducted at the Reihengräber (row graves) cemeteries in Nusplingen, in Baden-Württemberg, unearthed many skeletons belonging to the Alamanni, a Germanic tribe belonging to the Elbe Germanic group. Studies of these Alemannic skeletons were closely linked to ongoing studies of the living population of Baden-Württemberg.

During his career at the University of Tübingen, Gieseler conducted research on the racial composition of regions in Germany, anatomical studies of apes, and anthropological studies of prehistoric German human skeletons, but he was best-known for his work in paleoanthropology. Gieseler established a research project on “Swabian racial studies” (Schwäbische Rassenkunde). This was inspired by racial biologist and anthropologist Walter Scheidt’s innovative work as well as by the nationwide program called Deutsche Rassenkunde, which was directed by Eugen Fischer. From 1931 to 1941, Gieseler and his students traveled to Swabian villages in order to measure, observe, and photograph the local people. Their data was published in doctoral dissertations and other works and contained information on the geographical distribution of physical characteristics and a “racial analysis” tracing the distribution of Nordic, Dinaric, and Alpine-Eastern racial characteristics in the modern population of Swabia. Because of his expertise in racial biology, Gieseler became the district representative of the Racial Policy Office (RPA) during the Nazi period and wrote “racial expert opinions” for health authorities and the Reichssippenamt (Reich Genealogical Office).

Some of Gieseler’s earliest research dealt with primate anatomy. Gieseler collaborated with Stefanie Oppenheim and Adolf Remane on the section titled “Methods for the Study of Primate Morphology” that was published in Emil Abderhalden’s influential Handbuch der biologischen Arbeitsmethoden (Handbook of Biological Working Methods) in 1927. This mostly described the methods that should be employed for measuring the bones of primates. The “Martin method” had been the most commonly used by anatomists and anthropologists to conduct anthropometric measurements, but this method had shortcomings when applied to apes and monkeys, so they proposed new methods. Oppenheim treated craniology, osteometry, and the examination of living specimens; Remane discussed methods for measuring primate teeth; and Gieseler described the methods and instruments used in making measurements of the limb bones of primates.

At this time, Gieseler also began to investigate hominid fossils. In the 1890s the Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois discovered a femur and partial cranium of a hominid on the Indonesian island of Java that he named Pithecanthropus erectus. The fossils were received with great interest, but Dubois’s claim that they represented an ape-like human ancestor was viewed with considerable skepticism. Prompted by a series of new papers on the Pithecanthropus fossils that Dubois published in 1924, which generated renewed interest in them, Gieseler published a paper on the Pithecanthropus cranium. The paper included several photographs of the fossil that Dubois had provided to him. Gieseler presented some measurements of the cranium and also included a German translation of some relevant passages from Dubois’s recent papers (Gieseler 1926). Two years later, Gieseler wrote a paper where he compared the Pithecanthropus erectus fossils with the so-called Rhodesian Man cranium discovered in 1921 at a site called Broken Hill, in modern Zambia. Despite having a very primitive cranium, Gieseler defended Dubois’s view that Pithecanthropus was a human and not an ape fossil. He noted that while the cranium of both the Pithecanthropus and Rhodesian Man specimens were quite primitive, the Pithecanthropus femur was very similar to that of modern humans. On the basis of this observation, Gieseler suggested that during the course of human evolution, the legs evolved toward the modern human form before the skull did (Gieseler 1928). This is significant because influential French and British paleoanthropologists at this time believed that in the course of human evolution a large brain and modern skull had evolved prior to the evolution of modern limbs and body.

The following year, Gieseler examined the incomplete human skeleton (Olduvai Hominid 1) that German geologist Hans Reck discovered in 1913 at Olduvai Gorge, in modern Tanzania (Gieseler 1929). Reck believed the skeleton dated to the Middle Pleistocene, which would make it an important specimen in understanding the course of human evolution in Africa. But from the start, there were doubts over the skeleton’s date, and today it is thought to be only 17,000 years old. In 1936 Gieseler published his first major book on hominid fossils, titled Abstammungs- und Rassenkunde des Menschen (Ancestry and Races of Man). This was one of the first systematic surveys describing the major hominid fossils to be published in Germany. The book discussed the living primates and fossil apes, and significantly, he included Australopithecus in the fossil ape section. He then presented the major European fossils (including Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and the recently discovered Steinheim cranium) as well as the hominid fossils from Asia and Africa, such as Pithecanthropus (including the recently discovered specimens from Ngandong), the Sinanthropus specimens from China, Rhodesian Man, and Louis Leakey’s Kanam and Kanjera fossils. The book became a standard work of Nazi racial anthropology and was praised for its clear presentation of the new fossil evidence for human evolution.

Gieseler contributed a chapter on the hominid fossil record for Gerhard Heberer’s influential Die Evolution der Organismen (The Evolution of Organisms), which was published in 1943. Heberer was a prominent German paleoanthropologist at the University of Jena, and this book brought together nineteen leading biologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists to address a wide range of questions relating to evolution. This was one of the first major works in the German language to discuss the new approach to evolutionary biology called the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Several of its papers promoted a Neo-Darwinian conception of evolution that emphasized the role of natural selection as well as a gradualist and adaptive version of evolution. Equally, it rejected alternative forms of evolution, such as Lamarckism, orthogenesis, and saltationism, as well as metaphysical versions of evolution, such as idealistic morphology and vitalist conceptions of evolution. This book also offered one of the first attempts to investigate anthropological questions from the perspective of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Gieseler was a close friend of Heberer, and he shared Heberer’s views about evolutionary biology and its significance for understanding human evolution. Gieseler’s chapter, titled “Fossilgeschichte des Menschen” (The Fossil History of Humans), discussed the major hominid fossils that were known from around the world. Gieseler’s conception of evolutionary history was consistent with the principles of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis since he believed that the most important mechanisms in evolution were genetic mutations, selection, and isolation. Moreover, he believed that physical anthropology should be connected with work in human genetics as well as other recent developments in biology. Die Evolution der Organismen was only partially successful at modernizing paleoanthropology in Germany by integrating it with the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. The book was influential in Germany but had little effect elsewhere.

In addition to this early work on hominid fossils, Gieseler also undertook the examination of some prehistoric human skulls and skeletons unearthed by archaeologists at the University of Tübingen. Gustav Riek, an archaeologist at the university, excavated Vogelherd Cave, located in the Lone Valley near the town of Niederstotzingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) in 1931. Riek identified nine archaeological layers, ranging from the Middle Paleolithic to the Neolithic, with some layers containing Aurignacian artifacts. During the course of these excavations, Riek found numerous artifacts along with human bones. These included a cranium and mandible (Stetten 1), a humerus (Stetten 3), two vertebrae (Stetten 4), and a metacarpus (Stetten 5) all from the lower Aurignacian layer and a cranium (Stetten 2) from the upper Aurignacian layer. At the time, these provided key evidence that modern humans produced Aurignacian artifacts. Gieseler examined the human bones collected at the site. He suggested that the robust humerus might represent a Neanderthal, but he suspected that the Stetten 2 cranium dated from the Magdalenian period or the Mesolithic (Gieseler 1937; 1940).

Other archaeological discoveries prompted Gieseler to study the mortuary practice of the secondary burial of skulls during the Late Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods. In 1908 Robert Schmidt, a prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Tübingen, discovered instances of Mesolithic skull burials during excavations in Ofnet Cave, in Baden-Württemberg. These consisted of two pits, one containing six human skulls and the other contained twenty-eight skulls that had been arranged facing west. Some of the skulls were covered with ochre. A similarly severed and buried head was found in the Hexenküche cave at the nearby site of Kaufertsberg during excavations led by Ferdinand Birkner and Ernst Frickinger in 1913. Following these discoveries, the University of Tübingen anatomist and paleontologist Robert Wetzel and geologist and archaeologist Otto Völzing discovered an approximately 8,000-year-old skull burial in Stadel Cave, at Hohlenstein-Stadel in Baden-Württemberg, in 1937. In a pit located at the cave entrance, they found human skulls with cervical vertebrae attached of an adult male and female and an infant that had been placed on a pedestal made of stone slabs. Gieseler examined the Ofnet, Kaufertsberg, and Hohlenstein skulls and discussed the evidence these provided for the prehistoric practice of secondary skull burial (Gieseler 1938; 1949; 1951b). Gieseler went on to examine a human skullcap that German archaeologist Emil Gersbach found lying under two stone slabs at Röthekopf, near Säckingen, in 1920. Gersbach thought the skullcap dated to the Magdalenian period based upon the flint artifacts found at the site. Gieseler argued that this was another example of a skull burial like those at Ofnet, Kaufertsberg, and the Hohlenstein cave and that it probably dated from the Mesolithic period (Gieseler 1951c).

After the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, the University of Tübingen became an important center of Nazi ideology and race research. Gieseler became a member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) in May 1933. During the Nazi period, he was a member of many influential Nazi organizations. Gieseler became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1934. Like many university professors, he was a member of both the NS-Lehrerbund (National Socialist Teachers’ League) and the NS-Dozentenbund (National Socialist University Lecturers’ Association). In 1935 Gieseler was given the rank of Rottenführer, and in 1936 he was appointed a squad leader. He became a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1937, and he served as an SS officer in the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (Race and Settlement Main Office). In the autumn of 1937 Gieseler became the district representative of the racial policy office in the district of Tübingen. From 1938 he held the rank of Untersturmführer at the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office), and he successively achieved the ranks of Obersturmführer and finally Hauptsturmführer in the SS. During the early years of World War II, Gieseler served as a medical officer in the Tübingen Army Medical Corps. He also held a local leadership position in the Nazi Party’s Racial Policy Office, where he occasionally delivered lectures on human evolution (see Hoßfeld and Junker 2003 for a more extended discussion of Gieseler’s political and military affiliations).

During this period, Gieseler became involved in several influential scientific organizations. In 1937 he was chosen to be the chairman of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenforschung (German Society for Racial Research), a position he held until 1958. It was originally founded in 1925 by Eugen Fischer as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Physische Anthropologie (German Society for Physical Anthropology) with Fischer as its director and Gieseler as secretary and a founding member. The Society changed its name in 1937 to reflect a shift in focus from typological physical anthropology toward racial biology, human genetics, blood group research, and other biological concerns. It was disbanded in 1945 and was reconstituted in 1948 as the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie. Gieseler worked at the Forschungsstelle für rassenkundliche Kolonialwissenschaft (Research Center for Racial Colonial Science) beginning in 1939, and he was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gesundheitswesen Karl Brandt in 1944. Gieseler declined offers of prestigious professorships at Berlin and Munich during the early 1940s. In 1943 Gieseler was appointed Prorektor (Vice-Rector) of the University of Tübingen.

With the defeat of Germany in World War II, Gieseler was interned by the Allies on 3 May 1945, and he was provisionally dismissed from his professorship on 1 July 1945. On 7 September 1948, Gieseler received the official classification of Mitläufer (Follower) after undergoing denazification, and he was reinstated as provisional head of the Anthropological Institute at the University of Tübingen in January 1955. The Institute was renamed the Institut für Anthropologie und Human-genetik (Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics) in 1961. Gieseler was again appointed a full professor in 1962. Soon after regaining his professorship, Gieseler returned to his studies of prehistoric human remains. In October 1913, during excavations of Klausenhöhle (Klausen Cave), located near the town of Essing in Bavaria, Hugo Obermaier, Paul Wernert, and Ferdinand Birkner discovered a burial pit containing a relatively complete Cro-Magnon male skeleton that had been intrusively buried in an older Mousterian layer of the cave. The skeleton is now dated to just before the Magdalenian period (approximately 20,000 years ago). Gieseler examined the skeleton and initially interpreted damage to the bones as evidence of cannibalism since he assumed that the bones had been deliberately broken to extract the bone marrow (Gieseler 1953b).

Gieseler (1953a) authored the section listing the human fossils found in Germany for the catalogue of human fossils compiled by Henri-Victor Vallois and Hallam Movius in Les Préhominiens et les hommes fossiles, which formed section five of the massive Catalogue des hommes fossiles compiled under the auspices of the International Geological Congress. He published papers on the origin of Homo sapiens (Gieseler 1955; 1959) as well as a paper where he speculated about the intellectual abilities of the Neanderthals based upon evidence that they buried their dead and may have engaged in ritualistic cannibalism (Gieseler 1956). Gieseler again contributed a section dedicated to the human fossils that had been excavated in Germany for the Catalogue of Fossil Hominids. Part II: Europe compiled by Kenneth Oakley, Bernard Campbell, and Theya Molleson in 1971. Gieseler and Alfred Czarnetzki, who was a professor in the Osteological Collection of the University of Tübingen, studied the human bones found in the Brillenhöhle, a cave excavated by Gustav Riek from 1955 to 1963. In 1956 Riek found fragments of smashed human skulls and a partial skeleton dating from the Magdalenian period (approximately 12,500 years old). Gieseler and Czarnetzki interpreted the traces of cutting and burning on some of the bones as evidence for cannibalism (Gieseler and Czarnetzki 1973). This paper was Gieseler’s final contribution to his decades-long investigation of mortuary practices during the Magdalenian and Mesolithic periods.

Gieseler revised his chapter on the “Fossilgeschichte des Menschheit” for the second edition of Gerhard Heberer’s Die Evolution der Organismen (1959). When the third edition of Die Evolution der Organismen was published in 1974, Gieseler’s Die Fossilgeschichte des Menschen appeared as a separate volume. Here, Gieseler summarized the hominid fossils that had been discovered as of 1971. Many new fossils had been discovered since 1959, especially in Africa and Asia, so this was an important update. He also discussed recent discoveries in European Paleolithic archaeology and geology. The book was essentially a catalogue of hominid fossils and did not devote much attention to the process of human evolution, which was increasingly a major subject of discussion among paleoanthropologists during the 1950s and 1960s. However, Gieseler did argue that physical anthropologists should integrate human genetics and other developments in biology into the field. Throughout his writings on hominid fossils, from the 1940s until the end of his career, Gieseler’s views of human evolution reflect the influence of the French paleoanthropologist Henri-Victor Vallois (and thus indirectly of Marcellin Boule) and of Gerhard Heberer. During those years, Gieseler belonged to Heberer’s immediate circle of friends, but unlike Heberer, Gieseler had not been able to travel to important paleoanthropological sites or to international institutions to examine important hominid fossils firsthand.

Gieseler served as the editor or the co-editor of the influential journal Anthropologische Anzeiger between 1926 and 1976, with some interruptions: serving as co-editor with Theodor Mollison from 1927 to 1931 and co-editor with Emil Breitinger from 1956 to 1964. Gieseler was one of the founding members of the Gesellschaft für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Württemberg und Hohenzollern (Society for Prehistory and Early History in Württemberg and Hohenzollern) founded in Stuttgart in 1963 by German prehistorian Hartwig Zürn. He also served as president of the seventh meeting of the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, which met in Tübingen in 1961. Gieseler retired as professor in 1968 due to regulations for mandatory retirement, and he was named emeritus professor the following year. Gieseler died on 26 September 1976 while on vacation in Terracina, in Italy, one day after visiting the paleoanthropological site of Monte Circeo. Gieseler’s personal papers and other archival material are held at the Universitätsarchiv Tübingen and at the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg.

Selected Bibliography

“Über die hauptsächlichsten morphologischen Charaktere der Pithecanthropus-Calotte.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 2 (1926): 117–119.

Stefanie Oppenheim, Adolf Remane, and Wilhelm Gieseler, “Methoden zur Untersuchung der Morphologie der Primaten.” In Emil Abderhalden (ed.), Handbuch der biologischen Arbeitsmethoden, Abt. 7: Methoden der vergleichenden morphologischen Forschung. Pp. 531–682. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1927.

“Neuer Forschungen zum Pithecanthropus-problem.” Forschungen und Fortschritte 4 (1928): 150–151.

“Untersuchungen über den Oldowayfund: Fundstelle, Lagerung des Skeletes und Morphologie des Extremitätenskeletes.” Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Physische Anthropologie 3 (1929): 50–59.

Abstammungs- und Rassenkunde des Menschen. Oehringen: Hohenlohesche Buchh. F. Rau, 1936.

“Bericht über jungpaläolithischen Skeletreste von Stetten ob Lontal bei Ulm.” Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Physikalische Anthropologie 8 (1937): 41–48.

“Anthropologischer Bericht über die Kopfbestattung und die Knochentrümmerstätte des Hohlensteins im Lonetal.” Verhandlungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenforschung 9 (1938): 213–229.

“Die urgeschichtlichen Menschenfunde aus dem Lonetal und ihre Bedeutung für die deutsche Urgeschichte.” Jahresbände der Wissenschaftlichen Akademien des NS-Dozentenbundes 1 (1940): 97–127.

“Fossilgeschichte des Menschen.” In Gerhard Heberer (ed.), Die Evolution der Organismen: Ergebnisse und Probleme der Abstammungslehre. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1943.

“Über die epipaläolithischen Kopfbestattungen aus Süddeutschland.” In Homenaje a don Luis de Hoyos Sáinz. Vol. I. Pp. 173–181. Madrid: Graf. Valera, 1949.

“Zur Entdeckungsgeschichte der fossilen Menschenformen.” Naturwissenschaftliche Monatsschrift Aus der Heimat 59 (1951a): 161–176.

“Die Süddeutschen Kopfbestattungen (Ofnet, Kaufertsberg, Hohlestein) und ihre Zeitliche Einreihung.” Naturwissenschaftliche Monatsschrift Aus der Heimat 59 (1951b): 291–298.

“Anthropologische Bemerkungen zu dem Schädeldach vom Räthekopf bei Säckingen.” Badische Fundberichte 19 (1951c): 11–13.

“Schädelverletzungen, Kannibalismus und Bestattungen im europäischen Paläolithikum.” Naturwissenschaftliche Monatsschrift Aus der Heimat 60 (1952): 161–173.

 “Allemagne.” In H. V. Vallois and H. L. Movius (eds.), Les Préhominiens et les hommes fossiles. (Section V. Catalogue des Hommes fossils). Pp. 13–31. Algiers: Congrès Géologique International, 1953a.

“Das jungpaläolithische Skelett von Neuessing. Ein Beispiel für Kannibalismus und anschließende Bestattung.” Naturwissenschaftliche Monatsschrift Aus der Heimat 61 (1953b): 161–174.

“Zur Herkunft des Homo sapiens.” Naturwissenschaftliche Monatsschrift Aus der Heimat 63 (1955): 166–175.

 “Die geistige Welt des Neandertalers.” In K. Tackenberg (ed.), Der Neandertaler und seine Umwelt. Pp. 106–123. Bonn: Habelt, 1956.

“Zur Herkunftsgeschichte des Menschen.” In Herbert Stachowiak (ed.), Stammesgeschichte: Umwelt und Menschenbild. Pp. 77–86. Berlin: Lüttke, 1959.

Alfred Czarnetzki, Klaus-Dieter Dollhopf, Wilhelm Gieseler, and Eligio Vacca, “Features of Human Bipedalism: A New Look at an Old Problem.” Anthropologie (Brno) 36 (1962): 17–34.

 “Germany.” In K. P. Oakley, B. G. Campbell, and T. I. Molleson (eds.), Catalogue of Fossil Hominids. Part II: Europe. Pp. 189–215. London: Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), 1971.

Gieseler and A. Czarnetzki, “Die menschlichen Skelettreste aus dem Magdalénien der Brillenhöhle.” In G. Riek, Das Paläolithikum der Brillenhöhle bei Blaubeuren (Schwäbische Alb). Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor – und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg 4/1. Pp. 165–168. Stuttgart: Müller & Gräff, 1973.

Die Fossilgeschichte des Menschen. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1974.

Other Sources

Herman Stoll, Die Alamannengräber von Hailfingen in Württemberg. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1939.

Secondary Sources

Holger Preuschott, Festband Wilhelm Gieseler zur Vollendung des 65. Lebensjahres am 11. Oktober 1965. Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965.

Schaefer and H. Walter, “Wilhelm Gieseler 11.10.1900–26.9.1976.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 36 (1977): 1–2.

Alfred Czarnetzki, “Wilhelm Gieseler 1900–1976.” Fundberichte aus Baden-Württemberg 4 (1979): 418–419.

Uwe Hoßfeld and Thomas Junker, “Anthropologie und synthetischer Darwinismus im Dritten Reich: Die Evolution der Organismen (1943).” Anthropologische Anzeiger 61 (2003): 85–114.

Thomas Potthast and Uwe Hoßfeld, “Vererbungs- und Entwicklungslehren in Zoologie, Botanik und Rassenkunde/Rassenbiologie: Zentrale Forschungsfelder der Biologie an der Universität Tübingen im Nationalsozialismus.” In Urban Wiesing, Klaus-Rainer Brintzinger, Bernd Grün, Horst Junginger, and Susanne Michl (eds.), Die Universität Tübingen im Nationalsozialismus. Pp. 435–482. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010.