Alois Gotsmich

Alois Gotsmich (born April 28, 1895 in Laschkles , † May 15, 1974 in Erlangen ) was a German classical archaeologist , epigraphist and classical philologist .

Alois Gotsmich came from a farming family in South Bohemia and Lower Austria. His father was the farmer Wenzel Gotsmich, his mother Anna Pölz. Gotsmich was born in Laschkles near Kaplitz in southern Bohemia. Until 1913 he attended the grammar school in the Cistercian monastery Wilhering near Linz , he did the Abitur at the k. and k. German state high school in Budweis . After graduating from high school, he began studying Classical Archeology, Classical Philology and Ancient History at the German University of Prague , which he completed in 1921 with a doctorate on ceramics for shaft graves. His most important teachers were Alois Rzach , Heinrich Swoboda and in particular Wilhelm Klein , who ultimately brought him to archeology. Even during his studies, Klein made Gotsmich his assistant. 1930 followed the habilitation with Camillo Praschniker . This was followed by a brief teaching position and a substitute professorship until Gotsmich became full professor of classical archeology in Prague in 1935. In 1945 Gotsmich was taken prisoner in the Czech Republic, from which he was released in 1946, but had to leave his homeland in Prague. Gotsmich ended up in Bavaria, where he was also a lecturer at the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg , the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the University of Regensburg . In Bamberg he had to teach classical philology, in Erlangen epigraphy and in Regensburg archeology. This grueling life did not end until 1954, when Gotsmich was appointed associate professor and head of the epigraphic department in Erlangen. In 1963 he retired, but taught for a long time after that. In Erlangen, his duties also included looking after a student residence hall, and he was also involved in student management. The Free State of Bavaria awarded him the Bavarian Order of Merit in 1972 .

Already during his studies, Gotsmich expanded his training through his own studies in all areas of classical antiquity , especially epigraphy, and was thus able to cover a period from the 3rd millennium BC early on. BC to late antiquity and from ancient oriental cultures to antiquity . One of the main areas of research was the Minoan - Mycenaean world. In 1923, for example, he dealt with the history of the development and the vessel shapes of Minoan ceramics in his monograph Development Course of Cretan Ornamentation , and in 1930 he dealt with the relationship between late Mycenaean ceramics and geometric ceramics in his book Studies on the oldest Greek art . In later works he also dealt with Greek sculpture, including the Berlin goddess , Nike of Delos , Venus of Esquiline and the Praying Boys of Kalamis . During his time in Prague he also dealt with the cataloging of public and private collections in Bohemia , Moravia and Slovakia . However, only a small part of it was published, the rest got stuck in preliminary work and smaller writings. After being expelled from Prague, he was unable to continue the work, not least due to the loss of his documents. In his later years Gotsmich occupied himself more with late antique art, for example with the Theodoric tomb in Ravenna . His Erlangen pupil Gerhard Pfohl took care of the appreciation of his teacher after his death.

literature

• Gerhard Pfohl: archeology, philology, epigraphy. The scientific work of Professor Dr. phil. Alois Gotsmich . In: Innsbruck Contributions to Cultural Studies 20 (1979), pp. 263–272.
• Wolfgang Schiering after Gerhard Pfohl: Alois Gotsmich . In: Reinhard Lullies , Wolfgang Schiering (Hrsg.): Archäologenbildnisse . Zabern, 2nd edition, Mainz 1991. pp. 266 f. ISBN 3-8053-0971-6

Web links

• Literature by and about Alois Gotsmich in the catalog of the German National Library