Josef Meier

Josef Meier was a missionary and ethnologist. He was a member of the Roman Catholic Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order. He worked in the Bismarck Archipelago with the peoples of the Gazelle Peninsula on New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea.

Life

Meier recorded myths and stories of the peoples of the Gazelle peninsula in the local Tolai language, and then translated them into German. In this work Meier employed an early version of the interlinear gloss. His work describing the myths and legends of the Admiralty Islanders of the Bismarck Archipelago was one of the earliest collections describing the mythology of a Melanesian tribe.