Friedrich von Duhn

Photography by Friedrich von Duhn

Friedrich Carl von Duhn (born April 17, 1851 in Lübeck , † February 5, 1930 in Heidelberg ) was a German classical archaeologist and from 1880 to 1920 professor at the Archaeological Institute of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg .

Family and origin

Friedrich von Duhn came from an old family of boatmen and merchants. His father Carl Alexander von Duhn (1815-1904) was a judge at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, his mother was Anna Margaretha Heineken (1821-1901); the paternal grandfather Johann Hermann von Duhn was a senator of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck ; the maternal side, Friedrich Wilhelm Heineken , Senator and Syndicus of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen . His godfather was the legal scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny .

In 1880 he married Florence Wolffson (* 1860 in Bradford ; † 1881) in Naples . Their son August Wilhelm died on September 24, 1914 near Douai . In 1882 he married Marie Babette Josefine Anna von Boeckmann (born January 25, 1857 in Baden-Baden ; † May 7, 1928 in Heidelberg). The couple had two sons and two daughters:

• Carl-Christian Waldemar (1883-1884)
• Carl Hans Waldemar (born February 9, 1885 - † February 16, 1951) ⚭ May 20, 1914 Magda Hansine Petersen (* September 24, 1890 - † February 18, 1947)
• Anna Antonie Clara (* 1886) ⚭ 1902 Fritz Burger (1877–1916), art historian
• Carola Maria (Mia) Frieda Elisabeth (1896 - June 13, 1966)

academic career

Even his father, who had studied with Jacob Grimm and Karl Otfried Müller , had shown a tendency towards classical studies. Friedrich von Duhn studied this subject since the summer semester of 1870 at the University of Bonn with Hermann Usener , Reinhard Kekulé and Franz Bücheler . On August 6, 1874 he received his doctorate with the dissertation De Menelai itinere Aegyptio Odysseae carminis IV. Episodio quaestiones criticae and traveled from 1875 to 1877 with the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute through Italy, Sicily and Greece. In 1879 he was appointed private lecturer at the University of Göttingen . In 1880 he became a full professor of classical archeology at the University of Heidelberg . He was the first German scholar to visit Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld in Troy , to comment on the excavations there and to comment positively on their interpretation. 1911/1912 he was Vice Rector of the University of Heidelberg; Member of the Senate and Dean of the Philosophical Faculty in 1886/1887, 1895/1896 and 1915/1916. In 1920 he retired . He expanded the plaster cast collection at Heidelberg University from around 500 to around 700 copies, including casts of the Parthenon frieze .

Friedrich von Duhn was one of the signatories of the Manifesto of 93 , in which 93 prominent Germans in 1914 made the appeal to the world of culture! who denied Germany's sole guilt for the First World War . In the summer semester of 1919 he was retired and at the same time appointed honorary professor.

Honors

In 1889 he was accepted as a first class knight in the order of the Zähringer lion and in the following year he received the officer's cross of the order of Saints Mauritius and Lazarus . In 1907 he was accepted into the Russian Archaeological Society, in 1908 in the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome and in 1909 as a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . In 1910 he received the Greek Order of Savior .

Von Duhn was a foreign member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome .

Researches

Von Duhn dealt with Roman reliefs and other remains throughout his life . He earned great merit when he was the first to recognize that some Roman relief fragments could be assigned to the Ara Pacis .

His processing of the numerous finds in the region provided the working basis for research in the 20th century. For Max Ebert's Reallexikon der Prehistory (1924 ff.) He provided all articles relating to Italy.

The archaeological collections of Heidelberg University and especially the collection of ancient cabaret - both the originals and the casts - experienced the greatest growth during the four decades that Friedrich von Duhn headed the Archaeological Institute and headed the collection (1880-1920) their story. It was he who, through new acquisitions, expanded the Heidelberg collection of antique cabaret into one of the most important teaching collections at German universities. The cast collection, which has now grown to almost 500 exhibits, was first made accessible by him in 1887 through a catalog that was published in six updated editions by 1913.

Among his important students were Rudolf Pagenstecher , Friedrich Pfister , Carl Schuchhardt , Bernhard Schweitzer , Ernst Wahle , Wilhelm Weber , Otto Weinreich and Robert Zahn .

Final rest

Friedrich von Duhn found his final resting place in the Bergfriedhof in Heidelberg in Department O. The grave site is decorated with a boulder. “Originally there was an antique relief stele on the grave. The Paros marble stele depicted a girl with two pigeons. This stele erected for Duhn's first wife, Florence Wolffson (created by Constantin Daub , a sculptor who was friends with Duhn in Rome) was a copy of an ancient work from the middle of the 5th century BC found in Paros in 1875 . BC, which was previously thought to be a creation of the great Greek sculptor Phidias . Unfortunately, the original stele was erroneously cleared and lost in the 1960s, the tomb to be found is a replacement stone provided by the cemetery administration. "

Fonts

• Ancient sculptures in Rome. Karl W. Hiersemann, Leipzig 1881–1882.
• Pompeii, a Hellenistic city in Italy. Teubner, Leipzig 1906. 2nd edition ibid. 1910, 3rd edition ibid. 1918.
• Italian gravesite. 2 volumes, Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1924.

literature

• Otto Wilhelm von Vacano :  Duhn, Friedrich von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 180 ( digitized version ).
• Dagmar Düll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1803-1932. Springer, Berlin et al. 1986, ISBN 3-540-15856-1 , p. 53 f.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich von Duhn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Friedrich von Duhn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Duhn, Friedrich von. In: arthistorians.info. Dictionary of Art Historians, 2018. 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Von Duhn family , private genealogical website.
2. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Friedrich von Duhn. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on July 13, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Quoted from Leena Ruuskanen: The Heidelberg Bergfriedhof through the ages . 2008, ISBN 978-3-89735-518-7 , pp.?.