Alexander Scharff (Egyptologist)

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Alexander Scharff (born February 26, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main , † November 12, 1950 in Munich ) was a German Egyptologist .

Life

Scharff went to school in Frankfurt am Main, where he graduated from high school in 1910. He began studying Egyptology at Oxford, but interrupted it to volunteer in the artillery for a year from 1910 to 1911. He then studied Egyptology, Semitic languages ​​and ancient history at the University of Berlin. During the First World War he served as a lieutenant on the Western Front . He then worked on the Egyptian dictionary in Berlin from 1919 and received his doctorate in 1920. He then worked as a research assistant at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, from 1922 as curator, and in 1928 he became assistant director. In 1927 he received his habilitation at the University of Halle , and in the following year he was awarded the title of professor. In 1931 he received his habilitation at the University of Berlin, in 1932 he became professor of Egyptology at the University of Munich , where he was also head of the Egyptian State Collection . He led the institute through the time of National Socialism and during this time also and especially supported students who would not have had an academic career during this time, including Hanns Stock and Hans Wolfgang Müller . Since 1935 he was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In a letter that Georg Steindorff wrote to the American archaeologist John Wilson in June 1945, he listed German Egyptologists in the so-called Steindorff List and assessed their behavior during the National Socialist era . Alexander Scharff is at the top of the list of people who maintained integrity during the Nazi era. The integrity he retained even after the war when, as he his former student and strict Nazis Hellmut Brunner in the denazification no clean bill exhibited, but also made truthful information.

Fonts (selection)

  • Basics of Egyptian prehistory, Leipzig 1927 (= habilitation thesis)
  • The antiquities of the prehistoric and early days of Egypt. Two volumes, Berlin 1929/1931.
  • Archaeological contributions to the question of the origin of hieroglyphic writing, Munich 1942
  • with Anton Moortgat : Egypt and the Middle East in Antiquity, Munich 1950

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Beckh: A small history of the Munich Institute for Egyptology on aegyptologie.uni-muenchen.de , more detailed in The Institute for Egyptology of the LMU in National Socialism , in: Elisabeth Kraus (Ed.): The University of Munich in the Third Reich , vol. 1, Munich 2006, p. 292.
  2. ^ Alexander Scharff obituary in the 1951 yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Scharff, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1950
Place of death Munich