Johann Jakob Bachofen

Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815 to 1887) was a Swiss jurist, antiquarian, philologist and anthropologist, professor of Roman law at the University of Basel from 1841 to 1844, best known for Das Mutterrecht of 1861, his study of the religious and juridical character of matriarchy in the ancient world. Born into a wealthy Basel silk family, he studied in Basel, in Berlin under Friedrich Carl von Savigny and others, and in Göttingen, took a doctorate at Basel and studied for two more years in Paris, London and Cambridge. After his appointment to the Roman law chair in 1841 he was named to the appellate court, wrote a book on Roman law that won academic praise and sat in the Grand Council of Basel until 1845. He retired from the professorship in 1844, served as a judge for twenty-five years and then worked as a private scholar after journeys to Rome and Greece. His four stages of cultural evolution, from hetaerism through mother right to the Dionysian and Apollonian phases, influenced later ethnologists and writers.