Obermaier, Hugo

Born Jan. 29, 1877, in Regensburg; died Nov. 12, 1946, in Fribourg, Switzerland. German archaeologist and Catholic priest.

From 1900 to 1909, Obermaier lived in Vienna and conducted research on the Old Stone Age. He worked at the Institute of Human Paleontology in Paris from 1910 to 1914, and from 1914 to 1936 he studied Paleolithic remains in Spain and other countries. In 1937 he became a professor of prehistory at the University of Fribourg.

One of the outstanding scholars of the Paleolithic, Obermaier excavated numerous Paleolithic caves and habitation sites. He devoted a number of books to Paleolithic art. For its time, his book Prehistoric Man (translated from German, 1913) was an important general research work on the archaeology of the Stone Age.