author
Felix Speiser
1880–1949
A Swiss ethnologist and traveler, he is best remembered for vivid firsthand writing about the western Pacific and for helping shape ethnology in Basel. His work combined field research, museum leadership, and a gift for making distant places feel immediate to readers.
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About the author
Born in Basel in 1880, Felix Speiser studied chemistry before turning to ethnology, later completing further study in Berlin. He went on to teach in Basel and became director of the city's ethnographic museum, building a career that joined academic research with public scholarship.
Speiser is especially associated with Oceania. He carried out fieldwork in the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu, and drew on those experiences in works including Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific, a book known for its detailed observations of everyday life, custom, and social change.
He died in Basel in 1949. Today he is remembered as an important Swiss ethnologist whose writings preserve early twentieth-century records of Pacific societies, while also reflecting the perspectives and limits of his era.