Weltmuseum
ogy Department. To address this, the Völkerkundemuseum
(Museum of Ethnology) was inaugurated
in 1928 in the Hofburg’s Corps de Logis,
where Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s collection had
been displayed since 1912. This detachment of
the department from its mother institution refl ected
a change of approach in the discipline, which
had evolved from a subcategory of natural science
to a place in the social and cultural sciences.
The creation in the same year of the fi rst
chair of anthropology and ethnology at
the Universität Wien (University of
Vienna) as well as, a year later, of
the Institut für Völkerkunde (Institute
of Ethnology) were also manifestations
of the broadening of this
discipline that had been born within
the context of museums.
The Institut für Völkerkunde’s first director
was Wilhelm Koppers (1886–1961), an
associate of missionary and ethnologist Father
Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954). Together they
founded the Wiener Schule der Völkerkunde
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