An Autobiography of José Rizal Embedded in Blumentritt’s Obituary of Rizal: Rizal Contra European Racism

By Dr. Paul Arvisu Dumol

Published in European Studies: Essays by Filipino Scholars.1999. Vya Victoria M, Aguire, editor. UP  Press. 

In 1897, the Austrian ethnographer Ferdinand Blumentritt published an obituary of his intimate  friend, José Rizal, in the Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie (10: 88–92 [1897]).¹ Wenceslao Retana  calls the article, from which he quotes extensively in his biography of Rizal, “curioso,”²and such it may  well strike the reader as it gives us a biographical sketch of Rizal from an unusual point of view: Rizal’s  study of European racism. “Ihn beschäftigte besonders die Analyse der Gefühle, welche Weisse und  Farbige einander wechselseitig einflössen,”³claims Blumentritt. Blumentritt clarifies that he makes this  claim of Rizal den geistreichen Tagalen and not of Rizal den Politiker, but even when we take this  distinction into consideration, the claim is surprising, since there is nothing in Rizal’s output as a scholar or  scientist dedicated to this subject. One may, of course, dismiss Blumentritt’s remark as a personal opinion,  and yet Blumentritt is Blumentritt, the sole person in Rizal’s copious correspondence before whom Rizal  himself says he has no secrets (letter to Blumentritt, Brussels, June 18, 1890).⁴ What is the basis for  Blumentritt’s claim? 

Read the Complete Essay

This article continues in its original scholarly format, including citations and footnotes.

An Autobiography of José Rizal Embedded in Blumentritt1999 .pdf

Download PDF • 228KB