June 29, 1873

Leo Frobenius (June 29 1873 to August 9,1938) was a German student of African culture. His ethnologist studies exhibit the German slant one might expect from that era. Here is part of a story from Ghanan culture, involving a mouse crossing a roof beam in a house. "Below it was a cat. The mouse saw the cat and was so terrified that it fell. The cat pounced on the mouse." The point of the incident is to illustrate what fear is. This excerpt is from a collection of African stories published in 1937, African Genesis: Folk Tales and Myths of Africa .