Friedrich Salomon Krauss - Biography

Friedrich Salomon Krauss (October 7, 1859, Požega, in Kingdom of Hungary, – May 29, 1938, Vienna) was an Austrian Jewish sexologist, ethnographer, folklorist, and Slavist.

In 1877–78 Krauss attended the University of Vienna. One of his first publications was a translation of Artemidoros' of Daldis "Interpretation of Dreams" was cited in Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." He began his career as a folklorist and ethnologist. In 1884–85, he received funding from the Crown Prince Rudolf to gather folklore and ballads of the Guslar singers in Bosnia, Croatia and Herzogovenia. As a result of this field research, he published a two-volume collection of fairytales, "Sagen und Märchen der Südslaven". Perhaps his most famous work was the "Anthropophytia" (1904-1913), a scholarly yearbook which published folklore of erotic and sexual content. In alliance with the growing psychoanalytic movement, Krauss and his colleagues felt that sexual folklore, which was generally purged from all published collections by scholars, could provide valuable information about a culture and society. His research in the field of sexuality led to some conflict and in 1913 he was brought to trial in Berlin as a pornographer, but he was a correspondent of Sigmund Freud and used the term paraphilia to describe certain deviant sexual practices. He lived and worked as a writer, private scholar, and translator in Vienna.

• Raymond L. Burt: F. S. Krauss (1859-1938): Selbstzeugnisse und Materialien zur Bibliographie des Volkskundlers, Literaten und Sexualforschers (1990) ISBN 3-7001-1693-4
• Peter Horwath & Miroljub Jokovic: "Friedrich Salomo Krauss (1859-1938)" (Novi Sad 1992) ISBN 86-901345-2-2
• Krauss, Friedrich Salomo: "Volkserzählungen der Südslaven: Märchen und Sagen, Schwänke, Schnurren und erbauliche Geschichten" Burt, Raymond L. (Hrsg.); Puchner, Walter (Hrsg.)Wien 2002 ISBN 3-205-99457-4
• Wolfgang Jacobeit u.a. (Hg.): Völkische Wissenschaft. Gestalten und Tendenzen der deutschen und österreichischen Volkskunde in der ersten Hälfte des 20.Jahrhunderts. (Wien 1984)