Frans Maria Olbrechts

Prof. Dr Frans Maria Olbrechts (Belgian) Knight of Order of Crown PhD
Born	1899
Died	1958
Residence	'Griethuuse', Wezembeek, Belgium [census] Musee du Congo Belge, Tervuren, Belgium [1949]
Occupation	museum work philologist
Society Membership membership ordinary fellow Hon. Fellow 1949 left 1958 deceased elected_AI 1902 1949.01.11 1949.05.15 societies Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium Belgian Royal Colonial Institute Societe des Americanistes de Paris Societe des Americanistes, Brussels Societe des Oceanistes, Paris American Anthropological Association Societe Royale Belge d'Anthropologie

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A63 has 1949.05.15

Professor of ethnology and of primitive art, University of Ghent

1958.05.01 death announced

Notes From Elsewhere

Frans Maria S. Olbrechts was born in Malines, Belgium on February 16, 1899. He studied Germanic philology at the University of Louvain and subsequently moved to New York in 1925 to study linguistics and folklore under Franz Boas at Columbia University. Under the direction of Boas, Olbrechts was introduced to the staff of the Bureau of American Ethnology and began field work among the Cherokee in North Carolina in 1926, focusing in part on the Swimmer manuscript of Cherokee formulas collected earlier by James Mooney. (Olbrechts' Cherokee papers can now be found at the National Anthropological Archives.)
From 1928-1929, again under Boas's direction, Olbrechts undertook fieldwork to study the relationships among Iroquoian languages, drawing in part upon his prior work on Cherokee linguistics. He worked on the Tuscarora Reservation (mainly in 1928), the Onondaga Reservation (mainly in 1929), and the Grand River territory in Ontario. During these visits he also recorded linguistic material from Cayuga, Seneca, Oneida, and Mohawk speakers where the opportunity arose.
He returned to Belgium in 1929 to organize the Department of Ethnology at the Musées Royaux d'Art et Histoire in Brussels. His interest shifted to a focus on African art and ethnography, which he taught as a professor at the University of Ghent beginning in 1932. In 1947 he become the Director of the Musée du Congo Belgé at Tervuren, where he worked until his death in 1958.

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census

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papers at American Philosophical Society