Arnold van Gennep, in full Charles-Arnold Kurr van Gennep (23 April 1873 – 7 May 1957) was a noted French ethnographer and folklorist.
Biography
He was born in Ludwigsburg, Kingdom of Württemberg. His father was a German, his mother, whose family name he later adopted, was originally Dutch. At the age of six his parents divorced and he and his mother moved to France where she later married a French doctor who moved the family to Savoy.
Van Gennep is best known for his work regarding rites of passage ceremonies and his significant works in modern French folklore. He is recognized as the founder of folklore studies in France.
He went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, but was disappointed that the school did not offer the subjects he wanted. So he enrolled at the École des langues orientales to study Arabic and at the École pratique des hautes études for philology, general linguistics, Egyptology, Ancient Arabic, primitive religions, and Islamic culture. This scholarly independence would manifest itself for the remainder of his life. He never held an academic position in France.
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