Arnold Dietrich Schaefer

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Arnold Dietrich Schaefer

Arnold Dietrich Schaefer (born October 16, 1819 in Seehausen , today in Bremen; † November 19, 1883 in Bonn ; also Arnold Schaefer ) was a German ancient historian who worked as a professor at the universities of Greifswald (1857-1865) and Bonn (1865– 1883) worked.

Life

After attending the Bremen School of Academics (1833–1838), Schaefer studied Classical Philology and History at the University of Leipzig . His academic teachers included Moriz Haupt , Gottfried Hermann and Wilhelm Wachsmuth . After completing his doctorate, Schaefer first turned to an Old High German habilitation project, inspired by Moriz Haupt. However, through a favorable job offer from the secret school councilor Karl Justus Blochmann , he turned to the education office and went to the Vitzthumsche Gymnasium in Dresden as a teacher of ancient languages ​​and history . During this time, Schaefer made numerous publications, including the school program Commentatio de libro vitarum decem oratorum (Dresden 1844) and history tables for learning by heart (Leipzig 1847), a practical manual for schoolchildren. The work contains important dates of world history from ancient times to the present, which are divided into three courses: general history, epochal history and cultural history. By 1888, 17 updated new editions had appeared, the last two (1885 and 1888) were taken care of by Schaefer's colleague Julius Asbach . On October 15, 1851, Schaefer moved to the royal Saxon state school in Grimma as a high school professor . Here he completed the first two volumes of his three-volume work Demosthenes und seine Zeit (Leipzig 1856–1858), on which he had worked for ten years. He gave his farewell speech at school on Demosthenes' wreath speech.

On November 30, 1857, Schaefer accepted a call to the University of Greifswald as a full professor of history. In his lectures and seminars, for which he founded the historical seminar in 1863, Schaefer dealt with all epochs and fields of history (primarily he read Roman history and the modern history of Prussia). He was on friendly terms with colleagues from various fields, including the cameraman Eduard Baumstark , the archaeologist Adolf Michaelis and the philologists Martin Hertz , Georg Friedrich Schömann and Hermann Usener . He turned down an offer to the University of Königsberg , which had been given to Schaefer in 1863 after Wilhelm von Giesebrecht had left . In the summer semester of 1865 Schaefer was transferred to the University of Bonn , where he held the chair for history, especially ancient history, at the history seminar that was founded at the same time until his death. He was the first history professor to teach his subject independently from the philological seminar. In the academic year 1871/72, Schaefer was the rectorate of the university.

Schaefer continued his lectures from Greifswald in Bonn. As there, the Greek and Roman source studies formed an important part of his teaching, so that in 1867 he finally published an outline of the source studies of Greek history up to Polybius as the basis of his lecture . He published a second section of the work shortly before his death under the title Abriß der Quellenkunde of Greek and Roman history (Leipzig 1883). His successor Heinrich Nissen published a second edition of this work in 1885, which was reprinted in 1967.

His intensive preoccupation with Prussian history came from Greifswald. During his time in Bonn he published the history of the Seven Years' War in three volumes (Berlin 1867–1874). The work was praised by the domestic and foreign press for its novel representation of the events. Shortly after completing the last volume, Schaefer went on an extensive educational trip through Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and Italy. In 1879 he attended the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, and in 1880 he traveled to the Peloponnese and especially Olympia. On the return trip he suffered a severe rheumatism, from which he recovered on spa trips. A few weeks after returning from a spa stay, Schaefer suddenly died of a stroke on November 19, 1883 in the middle of work. His grave is in the old cemetery .

In the last years of his life, Schaefer also prepared a new edition of his Demosthenes work, which he brought up to date after numerous papyrus finds and emendations over the past thirty years. It appeared in three volumes shortly after his death (Leipzig 1885–1887), completed by Max Hoffmann.

His widow Eugenie Schaefer b. Großmann (a daughter of the theologian Christian Gottlob Großmann ) founded the "Arnold Schäfer Foundation" in 1894 with 100,000 marks, which is still used to support students and young scientists at the University of Bonn.

Fonts (selection)

  • Commentatio de libro vitarum decem oratorum. School program. Dresden 1844 ( digitized ).
  • Demosthenes and his time . Three volumes. Leipzig 1856-1858. [2nd, revised edition, Leipzig 1885–1887; Reprint: Hildesheim 1966; CD-ROM edition: Duehrkohp and Radicke, Göttingen 2001. ISBN 3-89744-021-0 .] ( Digitized version ).
  • De ephoris Lacedaemoniis. Leipzig 1863 ( digitized )
  • Disputatio de rerum post bellum Persicum usque ad tricennale foedus in Graecia gestarum temporibus. Bonn 1865 ( digitized version ).
  • History of the Seven Years War. Three volumes. Berlin 1867–1874 ( digital copies ).
  • History tables to memorize. 15th edition Arnoldi, Leipzig 1880 ( digitized version ).

literature

  • Julius Asbach:  Schaefer, Arnold Dietrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 30, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, pp. 521-524.
  • Julius Asbach: In memory of Arnold Dietrich Schaefer . Leipzig 1895.
  • Johannes Poeschel: The College of the Princely and State School Grimma from 1849 to 1900 . Grimma 1901, pp. 29-32.
  • Roderich Schmidt: Arnold Schaefer, 1819-1883. In: Ders .: Fundatio et confirmatio universitatis. From the beginnings of German universities (Bibliotheca Eruditorum. International Library of Sciences, Vol. 13). Goldbach 1998 (first published: 1968), pp. 349–368.
  • Michael Czolkoß: Studies on the history of historical science. The University of Greifswald in the Prussian university landscape (1830-1865) . Marburg 2015, Tectum, ISBN 978-3-8288-3515-3 .

Web links

Commons : Arnold Dietrich Schaefer  - Collection of images
Wikisource: Arnold Dietrich Schaefer  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the history of the Historical Institute, see the following volume (in which Schaefer is also discussed in various places): Niels Hegewisch, Karl-Heinz Spieß , Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann : Geschichtswwissenschaft in Greifswald. Festschrift for the 150th anniversary of the Historical Institute of the University of Greifswald (Contributions to the History of the University of Greifswald, Vol. 11). Steiner, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-515-10946-8 .
  2. ↑ On Schaefer's academic career and his various professorships cf. Michael Czolkoß: Studies on the history of historical science. The University of Greifswald in the Prussian university landscape (1830-1865). Marburg 2015. For Schaefer's work in Bonn, see Paul Egon Hübinger: The Historical Seminar of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn (Bonn Historical Research, Vol. 20). Bonn 1963.
personal data
SURNAME Schaefer, Arnold Dietrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schaefer, Arnold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ancient historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Seehausen (Bremen)
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1883
Place of death Bonn