Theodor Poesche

Who is Theodor Poesche?

Theodor Poesche was a German American anthropologist and author, specializing in historical anthropology.

Born in 1824 in Zoeschen near Merseburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Poesche became a student of philosophy at the University of Halle and later a revolutionary. Following the disappointments of 1848, in 1850 he emigrated to the United States. In 1853, he published with Charles Goepp The New Rome, or The United States of the World, a book in which they compare the United States to the Roman Empire.

In 1878 he published The Aryans: A contribution to historical anthropology. Based on the physical characteristics attributed to Indo-Europeans by the philologist Ludwig Geiger, Poesche placed the origin of the Aryans in the vast Rokitno Marshes, then in the Russian Empire, now covering much of the southern part of Belarus and the north-west of the Ukraine, where albinism was common. Similarly, he argued that the Lithuanian language is as near to the parent language of Indo-European as Sanskrit. Adding linguistic and archaeological arguments, Karl Penka later expanded the area of origin to include northern Germany and Scandinavia.