Dr. Robert Pfaff-Giesberg (1899 - 1984)

Robert Pfaff-Giesberg was born on 25 November 1899 in Offenburg. He studied ethnology under Ernst Grosse at the Albert Ludwig University Freiburg and worked for a while in the ethnographic collection of the then Museum für Natur- und Völkerkunde, furthering the developments Grosse himself had made in the field. He completed his doctorate in 1922 in Freiburg. He then worked as an assistant and later as a curator at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart between 1928 and 1936. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933–1939 and a member of the SA between 1934 and 1935. In 1936, Robert Pfaff-Giesberg took over the supervision of the City of Mannheim’s ethnological collection. He held this office until 1964. Robert Pfaff-Giesberg died on 11 May1984 in Bad Bellingen.

In 1928 Robert Pfaff-Giesberg donated numerous ethnographic artefacts acquired in Africa, Oceania and Asia to the Museum für Natur- und Völkerkunde in Freiburg.