Friedrich Pfister’s Kampf against Father Wilhelm Schmidt and his “Catholic School of Ethnology”. Their clash over primitive monotheism and its background in earlier scholarship

doi:10.4000/16ign

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43 | 2026
Varia

Archéologie des savoirs

Lectures monothéisantes des polythéismes antiques

Friedrich Pfister’s Kampf against Father Wilhelm Schmidt and his “Catholic School of Ethnology”. Their clash over primitive monotheism and its background in earlier scholarship

Michael D. Konaris

p. 167-200

https://doi.org/10.4000/16ign

Abstract | Index | Excerpt | References | About the author

Abstracts

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The question of whether some form of “primitive monotheism” preceded Greek polytheism has been hotly contested in the history of scholarship on Greek religion due to its major theological implications. This article examines one of the last episodes in the history of that debate: the clash between Friedrich Pfister and Father Wilhelm Schmidt and his followers in the first decades of the 20^th century, against the background of earlier 19^th-century theories and debates on the subject in Germany, France and Britain. Particular attention is given to the competing theological and ideological agendas that historically informed modern scholarly approaches to the issue of Greek primitive monotheism.

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Full text document will be published online on May 2028.

Outline

Introduction

A. Monotheism, Henotheism, Polytheism. 19^th-century theories and debates on the origins of Greek religion

I. Primitive monotheism in the mysteries of ancient Greece?

a. Creuzer’s Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker

b. Schelling on the mysteries of Samothrace

II. Zeus as the Supreme Urgott of the ancient Greeks

III. Greek polytheism as a conglomeration of earlier monotheistic worships

IV. Semitic monotheism versus Indo-European polytheism?

V. Usener’s theory of Sondergötter

B. Pfister versus Father Schmidt and the “Catholic school of Ethnology”

I. Primitive monotheism in the Age of Anthropology

II. Father Wilhelm Schmidt’s Theory of Supreme Beings

III. Pfister’s response

Conclusion

First lines

During the 1920s and 1930s, German classical scholar, Friedrich Pfister (1883-1967), launched a sustained campaign against the theory of Supreme Beings propagated by Father Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954) and his school of ethnology in Vienna, according to which the conception of a single Supreme Being went back to the earliest stages of ancient Greek religion, as well as other religions from all over the world. The clash between Pfister and Father Schmidt and his followers may be regarded as one of the last chapters in the history of the debate on Greek primitive monotheism, or Urmonotheismus, which preoccupied and divided students of Greek religion throughout the 19^th century. I will begin my article with a background discussion of how the question of primitive monotheism has been approached in earlier scholarship and a brief overview of 19^th-century theories postulating that the origins of Greek religion were monotheistic, henotheistic or polytheistic that have been examined by other...

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References

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Electronic reference

Michael D. Konaris, “Friedrich Pfister’s Kampf against Father Wilhelm Schmidt and his “Catholic School of Ethnology”. Their clash over primitive monotheism and its background in earlier scholarship”, Anabases [Online], 43 | 2026, Online since 01 May 2028, connection on 11 October 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/anabases/22502; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/16ign

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