Carl Nicolai Starcke

Carl Nicolai Starcke (1858 to 1926) was a Danish sociologist, politician, educator and philosopher, born and died in Copenhagen. He graduated in 1883 with a thesis on Feuerbach, joined the liberal party Venstre, and in 1905 co-founded the social-liberal party Det Radikale Venstre, later helping to establish Danmarks Retsforbund. In 1899 he founded Det Danske Selskabs Skole, the first free high school in Europe. His best known sociological book, Die primitive Familie in ihrer Entstehung und Entwickelung (1888), compared the social structures of populations in Africa, Asia and Australia. He argued for the comparative method, warning that similar customs and myths need not share a common origin, and he distinguished four categories of historical sources.