Ludwig Woltmann

Life & Legacy

Ludwig Woltmann (18 February 1871 – 30 January 1907) was a German anthropologist, zoologist and neo-Kantian.
He studied medicine and philosophy, and obtained doctorates in the two fields from the University of Freiburg in 1896.
Ludwig Woltmann falls in the spiritual and ideological history of the 20th century with the racial theorists Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in particular in terms of his racial theoretical thought. In his book Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien (1905), he argued that the emergence of the Renaissance in Italy was led not by the descendants of the Romans, but by the Germanic tribes who had subdued Italy during the Middle Ages. His ideas were mainly published by the journal Political-Anthropological Review (1902–1907) and in the book Political Anthropology written in 1903. This and two other of his books were published in a 1936 Otto Reche anthology.