Caspar Reuvens

Oil painting Reuven by Louis Moritz

Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens , Latinized Casparus Iacobus Christianus Reuvensius , (born January 22, 1793 in The Hague , † July 26, 1835 in Rotterdam ) was a Dutch scholar of antiquity . He is considered the founder of classical archeology in the Netherlands and was the founding director of the Museum Antiquarum in Leiden , which later became the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden .

Caspar Reuvens attended school in Amsterdam and then studied law in Paris, where he also received his doctorate in 1813. In 1815 he became a full professor of Greek , Latin and history at the University of Harderwijk ( Gymnasium Reichs-Athaneum ) . In the summer of that year he traveled to Germany, where he was exposed to formative impressions. At the University of Göttingen he was particularly impressed by the library of the ancient philology seminar and the academic art collection. In 1818, after the Reichs-Athaneum Harderwijk grammar school closed, he moved to the University of Leiden as associate professor of archeology . He was the first professor in the world whose field of work was exclusively related to archeology. He visited him there in 1822, the year he married the writer Louise Sophie Blussé , Karl Otfried Müller . In Leiden he set up the Museum Antiquarum, based on the museum concepts of Taylor Combe and Ennio Quirino Visconti , whom he had met on trips to England and Italy. Unlike many other collectors, Reuvens did not limit himself to works of ancient Greco-Etruscan-Roman art for the antiquarum , but also went beyond that. He collected works of Egyptian art , but also Hindu - Buddhist sculptures from Java , in which he believed he recognized a Hellenistic heritage spread across India . Reuvens not only collected Aegyptiaca, he was inspired by the work of Jean-François Champollion with ancient Egypt . This makes him one of the pioneers of papyrology . As a field archaeologist , he was able to set accents with his excavations in the Forum Hadriani near Rotterdam from 1827 to 1833 using newly developed methods. In 1834, together with Conradus Leemans , he uncovered a 90 m by 60 m stone building in Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum (Nijmegen), the function of which has not yet been conclusively clarified.

At the age of 42, the father of three children died of a heart attack and was buried in Leiden. His daughter Maria Ereardina is the mother of the biologist Hugo de Vries . Reuven's successor as museum director was Conrad Leemans .

The archaeological faculty of the Leiden University has its seat today at Reuvensplaats (Reuvensplatz), named after Reuvens . The Leiden Study Association of Classical Archaeologists was also named KAD Reuven in his honor . The Reuvensdagen (Reuven's Day), an annual archaeological congress, is held annually at different locations in the Netherlands .

literature

• Ruurd B. Halbertsma: Scholars, Travelers, and Trade. The Pioneer Years of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden 1818-1840. Routledge, London 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-27630-6 , pp. 2-3, 21-30, 153-154.
• Mirjam HE Hoijtink: Caspar JC Reuvens en de musea van oudheden in Europe (1800-1840) . Dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam 2009.
• Mirjam HE Hoijtink: Exhibiting the past. Caspar Reuvens and the museums of antiquities in Europe, 1800-1840. Brepols, Turnhout 2012, ISBN 978-2-503-54152-5 .
• Mirjam HE Hoijtink: Reuvens, Caspar Jacob Christiaan. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 1049 f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hendrik Brunsting : Een van opgraving Reuvens en Leemans bij het continued Krayenhoff te Nijmegen in 1834 . In: Oudheidkundige Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden 30 (1949), pp. 47-65.