Hermione Speier

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Hermine "Erminia" Speier (born May 28, 1898 in Frankfurt am Main , † January 12, 1989 in Montreux ) was a German classical archaeologist . She is one of the few female archaeologists of her time and was the first female employee of the Vatican Museums and one of the first ever at the Vatican. Her work on archaeological photo libraries was fundamental.

Life

Hermione Speier was born into a wealthy Jewish family. She attended the Viktoriaschule in Frankfurt and passed the Abitur after private preparation. In the winter semester of 1918/19 she began studying history , German and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt . In the summer semester of 1919 she moved to the University of Giessen and in the winter semester of 1919/20 to the University of Heidelberg . In Giessen she came into contact with classical archeology for the first time at Gerhart Rodenwaldt's seminar and college . In Heidelberg Friedrich Gundolf , Karl Ludwig Hampe , Hermann Oncken , Eberhard Gothein and Karl Jaspers were important teachers. After Ludwig Curtius was appointed to the university in 1920 , he became its most important teacher and sponsor. She switched entirely to archeology. In addition to Curtius, Franz Boll , Alfred von Domaszewski , Karl Meister and above all Bernhard Schweitzer were important teachers.

Hermine Speier received her doctorate from Curtius in 1925 with a dissertation on the subject of the groups of ajar figures in the 5th and 4th centuries . The only reason she did not get the top grade was because Curtius said it was only for men. The work was published seven years later under the title two-figure groups in the fifth and fourth centuries BC in the Roman Communications . The work was in the tradition of the work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann , whom she adored all her life. During her studies, she also came into contact with the George Circle and developed a close relationship with several close confidants of Georges, including Lise and Edgar Salins and, in particular, Robert Boehringer . When Schweitzer was appointed to the University of Königsberg in 1925 , Speier followed him as an assistant. She stayed in Königsberg until 1928 , when Curtius, the director of the Rome department of the German Archaeological Institute , brought her to Rome .

Curtius entrusted his pupil in Rome with setting up a photo archive (“photo library”), with Adolf Greifenhagen assisting her. The collection was based on a gift of photographs from Walther Amelung , which was gradually expanded. Speier is considered to be the first archaeological photo librarian. Their form of order of photographs became fundamental. In 1934 Speier was dismissed from this position due to the law to restore the civil service . At this point in time, she was particularly well qualified in the field of modern photo libraries. So the General Director of the Vatican Museums, Bartolomeo Nogara , took the opportunity and gave Speier the newly created position in his museum. Speier was the first woman to get a job in the Vatican. Not just Pope Pius XI. was one of their sponsors. Her appointment was not only for the competent archaeologist, but was also a sign for the employment of women and against the development in Germany. Her colleagues in the collection, which for the first time since Nogara's appointment was managed by scientists and no longer by artists, were initially the archaeologist Filippo Magi and the art historian Deoclecio Redig de Campos . Your task was enormous. She arranged 20,000 photo negatives from the old inventory and also had to classify the constantly arriving new images. Almost all pictures in publications up to 1966 came from the photo library administered by Speier. In the course of time, tasks were also added to look after the collection of antiquities alongside Magi. This included, for example, helping to set up the Etruscan collection donated to the museum by Benedetto Guglielmo in 1935 . Of particular importance was the furnishing of two halls with 17 original Greek sculptures, which Speier brought together from the collection. In addition, she worked on the reorganization of the Greek vase collection and the Antiquarium Romanum .

Despite being excluded from working in the DAI, Speier initially attended public events such as lectures, until this too was forbidden in 1938, like all Jews in Italy. During this time it also became apparent whose friendship she could really rely on. Märit Scheler-Furtwängler , the daughter of Adolf Furtwängler and sister of Wilhelm Furtwängler , with whom Speier had even lived for a while, turned away from her, for example. Others, however, like Ludwig Curtius and probably also Erich Boehringer and the head of the library of the DAI Rome, Jan Willem Crous , continued to support her. For Curtius, it may have been one of the actions that later led to his dismissal as director. Like Eduard Fraenkel , Karl Lehmann-Hartleben , Georg Karo and Ernst Kantorowicz, she was not allowed to contribute to the printed version of a commemorative publication for Curtius' 60th birthday ; Curtius only received the unprinted version. Speier was unable to give him this manuscript himself, as she had not been invited to this private celebration.

Shortly before Adolf Hitler's visit to Rome in 1938, Speier was taken as a German Jew in "protective custody" in the notorious Regina Coeli prison . Her fiancé, the Italian general, airship pioneer and Arctic explorer Umberto Nobile , was able to free her after one night. In 1938 the Italian racial laws ( leggi razziali ) also came into force. Bartolomeo Nogara was still able to get Speier to stay in Italy. Hermine Speier converted to Catholicism in May 1939, which did not protect her from persecution. She was arrested at least a second time. As with many other Jews, the conversion was not a protective measure, as stated by Curtius and Crous present at the baptism ceremony, but followed an inner conviction. Her superiors in the Vatican recommended her in 1940, with one of Pope Pius XII. negotiated quota for 3,000 baptized German Jews to emigrate to Brazil. She did not accept the offer because Nobile, who had meanwhile emigrated to the USA and to whom she wanted to flee via Brazil, did not react in the desired way. The conversion to the Catholic faith led to a falling out with her father, who had fled to England, and her brothers who had emigrated to the USA. It was only when she traveled to the USA in the late 1960s that the siblings came together again. During the German occupation of Rome in 1943/1944, Hermine Speier hid in a nunnery in the Priscilla catacomb with the help of the Vatican, as the situation had become life-threatening for Jews and converts. They hid it in their branch in Rieti . In this way she escaped the great raid on Jews on October 16, 1943, in which more than 1,000 Jews, including the art dealer Ludwig Pollak , were deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. On December 8, 1943, she joined the Arch Brotherhood of the Sorrowful Mother of God of the Germans and Flemings at the Campo Santo Teutonico . When Curtius was celebrating his 70th birthday on December 13, 1944, Speier gave touching speeches, first in his private apartment and then at the Swedish Institute in Rome. After the war she tried as far as she could to help former colleagues in Germany in need. The correspondence with Theodor Klauser , with whom she had been friends since his time at the DAI Rome in the early 1930s, shows that she had willingly issued Persilscheine even to disloyal colleagues . She was even able to forgive her former friend Märit Scheler-Furtwängler. Since the 1950s, asked her old friend Robert Boehringer her one of his Roman apartment near the Vatican on the Janiculum in the Salita di Sant'Onofrio which includes a terrace with an idyllic view of the available Tiber , the Field of Mars and the Castel Sant'Angelo was one . Here she held a Dante reading circle led by Filippo Magi , which was well attended and to which she repeatedly invited young German and international scientists. These included Paul Zanker , Paul Augustin Mayer and Engelbert Kirschbaum . In doing so, in a way, she revived the tradition of the Roman salon.

From 1961 Hermine Speier was solely responsible for the collection of antiquities in the Vatican Museums. With it began the tradition that a member of the general management always comes from Germany. Only now did she get a permanent position and no longer low-paid temporary contracts. In 1967 Francesco Roncalli and Georg Daltrop became her successors. Speiers archaeological instincts are due to several significant finds. In 1946 in the magazine of the Antikensammlung she found a horse's head created by Phidias from the west gable of the Parthenon . Further studies based on the signs of weathering led to the conclusion that it was the second horse of the Athena team. She discovered the two so-called ancient Aurai statues that have adorned the Sala Rotonda as the outer coronation since it was built in the 18th century . Her immense knowledge of monuments led to the German Archaeological Institute entrusting her with the publication of the fourth edition of Wolfgang Helbig's guide to the public collections of classical antiquities in Rome in the mid-1950s . She expanded the range of the art guide on ancient works in Rome to include various art groups and included many young scientists in the work, such as Bernard Andreae , Helga von Heintze , Klaus Parlasca , Erika Simon , Hans von Steuben , Dietrich Willers , Paul Zanker and others . She also translated from Italian into German . As a competent expert on the Vatican Museums, she also led prominent visitors there such as the former US President Harry S. Truman in 1956.

Grave of Hermine Speier on the Campo Santo Teutonico

Speier was never married despite several engagements. Her tombstone on Campo Santo Teutonico in the Vatican is adorned with a cast of a Tarentine clay relief, which she wanted to publish in the Corolla Ludwig Curtius commemorative publication in 1937 , but which, as is well known, was not allowed to be Jewish. It was only in 1955 that she was able to publish the piece from her private collection. Her tombstone in the immediate vicinity of Ludwig Curtius' grave is also adorned with the inscription "Life is love".

Speier was a full member of the German Archaeological Institute and the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia . In 1973 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit and the Vatican awarded her the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice award .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermine Speier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Gudrun Sailer from Radio Vatikan in: Richard Ladkani: Vatikan - The hidden world . teamWorx in co-production with Bayerischer Rundfunk, in cooperation with BBC, Autentic and Kwanza; EA: January 6, 2011; WH: 3sat November 1st, 2014 06:00.
  2. ^ Gudrun Sailer : Monsignorina. The German Jew Hermine Speier in the Vatican. Aschendorff, Münster 2015, ISBN 978-3-402-13079-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Speech, Hermione
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Speier, Erminia (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1989
Place of death Montreux