Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen

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The Archaeological Institute of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen is one of the oldest university institutes for classical archeology in Germany.

It is located in a building erected between 1910 and 1912 at Nikolausberger Weg 15 on the grounds of the central campus, which in addition to classical archeology houses the institutes for Christian archeology and Byzantine art history, for art history and for prehistory and early history as well as the plaster cast collection . There are also two other important archeology collections there.

History of archeology in Göttingen

Christian Gottlob Heyne, the professor for "poetry and eloquence" who is considered the founder of archeology as a subject

Archeology as a university subject began in 1767 when Christian Gottlob Heyne , professor of poetry and eloquence, gave a specialist lecture on archeology for the first time. The lecture quickly became very popular, so that Heyne repeated it almost every summer semester for the next 40 years. Heyne also founded the plaster cast collection that still exists today when he started buying up casts of Greek and Roman sculptures in 1767. Thanks to Heyne, archeology had become so popular as a subject that his successor Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker had to continue the lecture. In 1844 the then associate professor Friedrich Wieseler founded the Archaeological Seminar , which comprised five grants. By the archaeological institute he mainly understood the collections. Until 1907 the institute was called the Archaeological-Numismatic Institute , from 1907 to 2010 the Archaeological Institute , and since 2010 the name has been the Archaeological Institute and Collection of Plaster Casts .

ladder

See also the list of classical archaeologists at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen .

Collections

Plaster cast collection

View of the cast collection of the University of Göttingen

The collection of plaster casts comprises almost 2000 objects, making it one of the largest of its kind. It was founded in 1767, making it the world's oldest university cast collection. Since 2004, their holdings have been available online in the Virtual Antiques Museum (VIAMUS).

Original collection

The original collection contains archaeological finds mainly from the Greek, Etruscan and Roman, but also from the Egyptian and Near Eastern cultural areas, for example vases, marble sculptures, bronze statuettes and utensils, terracotta figures, glass vessels and much more.

Coin collection

The coin cabinet includes around 40,000 Greek, Roman, Byzantine, medieval, oriental and modern coins and medals. This collection is also kept in the archaeological institute on Nikolausberger Weg.

Projects

Viamus

The Viamus (Virtual Antiques Museum) is a virtual exhibition offered by the Archaeological Institute in Göttingen and is funded by the Lower Saxony Foundation. The name refers to the Latin expression “viamus”, which means something like “we travel around”, which refers to the virtual tour through the collection rooms. The site offers three main offers: the virtual tour through the rooms of the cast collection, the database, which contains image material and scientific data on the more than 2000 plaster casts, and the "e-learning", an electronic learning program that comes in two versions (one for the university use, another especially for school lessons) is available and is used for self-study on antique portraits.

literature

  • Daniel Graepler , Joachim Migl (ed.): The study of beautiful antiquity. Christian Gottlob Heyne and the emergence of classical archeology . Lower Saxony State and University Library, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-930457-82-3 .
  • Klaus Fittschen : From Wieseler to Thiersch: One Hundred Years of Classical Archeology in Göttingen . In: Carl Joachim Classen (Hrsg.): The classical antiquity at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen: A lecture series on its history . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-525-35845-8 , pp. 78-87.
  • Daniel Graepler: The original collection of the Archaeological Institute. In: “Completely designed for studying.” The museums, collections and gardens of the University of Göttingen. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3892444528 , pp. 55-63.
  • Christof Boehringer: About the Göttingen collection of plaster casts of ancient sculptures. In: “Completely designed for studying.” The museums, collections and gardens of the University of Göttingen. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3892444528 , pp. 64-72.
  • Christof Boehringer: The Göttingen University Coin Collection. In: “Completely designed for studying.” The museums, collections and gardens of the University of Göttingen. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3892444528 , pp. 73-81.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Fittschen (ed.): Directory of plaster casts of the Archaeological Institute of the Georg-August University of Göttingen. Stock 1767-1989 . Goettingen 1990.
  2. ↑ Viamus website .