Alfons Maria Schneider

Alfons Maria Schneider (born June 16, 1896 in St. Blasien , † October 4, 1952 near Aleppo ) was a German Christian archaeologist and Byzantinist .

Alfons Maria Schneider was the son of gendarme Liborius Schneider. He visited the archiepiscopal Konvikt in Rastatt . Even before his final exams, he was called up for military service and fought from 1916 to 1918 in the First World War . After graduating in 1918, Schneider studied Catholic theology, oriental languages, comparative religious studies and art history at the University of Freiburg . Among his academic teachers, he was particularly influenced by the theologian, Christian archaeologist and art historian Joseph Sauer , with whom Schneider also wrote his dissertation.

After completing his studies, Schneider was a chaplain in Rheinfelden, Heidelberg and Bietigheim. He was ordained a priest on June 18, 1922. In 1926 he was awarded the title “multa cum laude” by Dr. theol. PhD . For his dissertation he received a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute for 1926/27. In the following years Schneider took part in numerous excavations in Greece, Turkey and Palestine. After he had been appointed vicar at the parish curate of St. Konrad in Freiburg on May 15, 1934 , he completed his habilitation in 1936 at the University of Freiburg for Christian archeology. The granting of the venia legendi was delayed due to concerns within the church. In 1937 the Reich Ministry of Education appointed Schneider to be a lecturer at the University of Freiburg.

On January 1, 1939, Schneider was transferred to the University of Göttingen as a lecturer , where he worked at the Philosophical Faculty with a teaching position for "Byzantine and Early Islamic Architecture and Art History". His work there was interrupted several times: in 1941 he served briefly as an interpreter during World War II , in 1942 he was a professor at the University of Prague , and in 1943/44 he worked as an assistant at the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul .

In 1944 Schneider was appointed adjunct professor in Göttingen and in 1948 he was elected a full member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . During the post-war years he continued his scientific work, especially the excavations in the Orient. In 1952 he was nominated for a chair at the University of Würzburg and at the same time received a call to an extraordinary professorship for Byzantine art history at the University of Munich . Schneider accepted the call to Munich and shortly afterwards started a trip to Resafa in Syria (together with his friend and colleague Johannes Kollwitz and Katharina Otto-Dorn ). While traveling, Schneider died on the night of October 4, 1952 on the train to Aleppo of a ruptured tumor . He was buried in the Franciscan monastery in Aleppo.

Schneider dealt with the monuments of the Christian Orient all his life. His excavation reports and studies contributed significantly to their development. His special research focus was the topography and architectural history of the city of Constantinople . He has also written articles for the Reallexikon für Antike und Christianentum (RAC) and the Realenzyklopädie der Klassischen Altertumswissen (RE) as well as articles and reviews for the Byzantine magazine .

Fonts (selection)

• Refrigerium: I. According to literary sources and inscriptions . Freiburg 1928 (partial print of the dissertation)
• with Bruno Meyer: The land wall of Constantinople. 2. Preliminary report on the completion of the recording 1929–1933 . Berlin 1933
• The Church of the Multiplication at et-tâbġa on Lake Genesareth and its mosaics . Paderborn 1934
  • English translation by Ernest Graf: The Church of the multiplying of the loaves and fishes at Tabgha on the lake of Gennesaret and its mosaics . London / Zurich / Paderborn 1937
• Byzantium. Preparatory work on the topography and archeology of the city . Berlin 1936. Reprint Amsterdam 1967
• with Walter Karnapp : The city wall of Iznik (Nicaea) . Berlin 1938
• The Hagia Sophia at Constantinople . Berlin 1939
• The excavation in the west courtyard of the Sophienkirche in Istanbul . Berlin 1941
• The Roman and Byzantine monuments of Iznik-Nicaea . Berlin 1943
• Voices from the early days of the Church . Cologne 1948
• with Franz Dölger : Byzantium . Bern 1952
• Report on a trip to Syria and Jordan (October 2nd – November 22nd, 1951) . Goettingen 1952
• Constantinople. Face and shape of a historical metropolis . Mainz, Berlin 1956
• Hans Reinhard Seeliger (Ed.): Alfons Maria Schneider. Reticulum: Selected articles and catalog of his collections . Münster 1998 ( Yearbook for Antiquity and Christianity Supplementary Volume 25), ISBN 3-402-08109-1

literature

• Hans Reinhard Seeliger :  Schneider, Alfons Maria. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 9, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-058-1 , Sp. 536-540.
• Albrecht Dihle :  Tailor, Alfons Maria. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , pp. 284 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Hans Reinhard Seeliger: Schneider, Alfons Maria. In: Stefan Heid , Martin Dennert (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon for Christian Archeology. Researchers and personalities from the 16th to the 21st century . Volume 2: K - Z. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7954-2620-0 , pp. 1136–1139.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfons Maria Schneider in the catalog of the German National Library
• opac.regesta-imperii.de
• Page of the pastoral care unit Bietigheim Elchesheim-Illingen about Alfons Maria Schneider (with picture) ( Memento from October 26, 2016 in the web archive archive.today )