In 1931 Schmidt, Martin Gusinde, Paul Schebesta [de], and Wilhelm Koppers founded the Anthropos Institute, which became the journal's publisher.

[2] When Schmidt got the first issue of Anthropos out in February 1906 (then at Missionshaus St. Gabriel [de] near Vienna in Austria), it was praised not only by the religious scholars, but also by such an anti-clerical figure as the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep.

Van Gennep confirmed his initial opinion a year later, stating that the four issues printed so far "place this journal among the ethnographic publications of the first rank".

[1] The first issue contained (on 163 pages[3]) articles in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin; more languages were added later.

In the meantime, after the Anschluss in 1938, Anthropos was operating out of Posieux in Switzerland (for more than 60 years the printing continued to be done in Swiss Fribourg, even after the move of editorial staff to Germany).