The institute was founded in 1931 in St. Gabriel, Mödling near Vienna in Austria in order to provide a better support for the editorial board of the journal Anthropos (which had been founded in 1906) and to coordinate the research of cultures conducted by fieldworkers and scholars from the Anthropos circle. Wilhelm Schmidt together with Wilhelm Koppers, Paul Schebesta and Martin Gusinde – the latter two being acclaimed ethnographers – were the founding members of the institute. Schmidt held the post of the director until 1950.

When Austria was incorporated into the Nazi German state in 1938, Koppers and Schmidt were instantly dismissed from their posts at the University of Vienna on ideological grounds. Schmidt, released from house arrest, found a new home in the Château de Froideville, near Fribourg in Switzerland. Koppers, after a several-months long field research in India, joined him there, as did some of the students, pursuing their studies under Schmidt’s tutelage. A bigger part of the library of the institute was transferred to Switzerland. The Nazis confiscated the rest and handed it over to the University of Vienna (that part of the library collection was returned after the war). In 1942 Schmidt succeeded in establishing a Chair and an Institute for Ethnology at the University of Fribourg, both of which were also organizationally linked with the Anthropos Institute.

By the end of the 1950s, the General Council of the Society of the Divine Word – the umbrella organization that supports the institute – decided to move it to Sankt Augustin near Bonn, in Germany, in order to bring it closer to the universities of Cologne and Bonn, which in turn created new opportunities for scholarly cooperation. The new location of the institute also gave students of the missionary major seminary of the Society of the Divine Word in Sankt Augustin access to the institute’s library and specialists, providing material and insights for a better understanding of cultures. The facilities in which the institute is located today were completed in 1962.

In 2003, the Anthropos Institute has been restructured into Anthropos Institute International, a worldwide network of scholars and affiliated institutes. A coordinator for international cooperation and contact is chosen for a three-year term (see his contact address at the above indicated webpage of the SVD Generalate).

The Anthropos Institute Sankt Augustin has been assigned the role of being responsible for the publications of the Institute (Anthropos journal and two book series).