Georg Ebers

Georg Moritz Ebers (born March 1, 1837 in Berlin ; † August 7, 1898 in Tutzing ) was a German Egyptologist and writer . With his historical novels and popular science books he contributed to the great popularity of Egyptology in the late 19th century.

Georg Ebers

Göttingen memorial plaque for Georg Ebers

Life

Georg Ebers came from the Berlin upper Jewish bourgeoisie. Both parents had converted to Christianity. Ebers was sent by his mother to Keilhau near Rudolstadt to the boys' education institution there. Since no Abitur exams were taken there, he attended the grammar school in Cottbus from 1852 . Due to his relationship with an actress, he had to leave high school and was only able to do his Abitur in Quedlinburg in 1857 .

Ebers first studied law at the Georg-August University in Göttingen , where he joined the Corps Saxonia . Soon he became more and more interested in ancient Egypt . His teacher in studying hieroglyphs was Richard Lepsius . In 1865 Ebers completed his habilitation in Jena and became a private lecturer , and in 1869 an associate professor of Egyptology .

Appointed as associate professor in Leipzig in 1870 , he received the chair in 1875 . Seriously ill since 1876, he was retired early in 1889 at his own request after a left vocal cord paralysis that had existed since 1887 did not improve and prevented him from giving lectures . He spent his old age in Munich .

In 1869/70 and 1872/73 Ebers carried out two research trips to Egypt, during which he acquired the Ebers papyrus named after him , a comprehensive medical manual from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. BC (now in the papyrus and ostraca collection of the Leipzig University Library ).

In 1895 Ebers was accepted into the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences . He was also a member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences in Leipzig and the American Philosophical Society .

Since 1865 he was married to Antonie, born Beck, widowed Loesevitz; she brought two daughters into the marriage. The marriage produced six more children, including the son Paul and the daughter Maria Sophia, called Marie (born February 4, 1871 in Leipzig), who on August 10, 1894, the then Leipzig lecturer Heinrich Triepel (1868-1946) got married. Marie Triepel wrote memoirs in September 1949 that went unpublished.

Artistic creation

In a harem of the time of the Caliph , book illustration by Adolf Seel from the work Aeggypt in Bild und Wort , published in the journal Die Gartenlaube , 1878

Beginning with An Egyptian King's Daughter (1864), Ebers wrote numerous historical novels that met with great readership. Alongside Felix Dahn , he is considered to be the most important representative of the “ professorial novel ”. He chose the themes of the novels partly from the context of his scientific work, i.e. Egyptian history, but also from other epochs (Middle Ages).

From 1879 to 1884 Ebers published the “elaborately designed” luxury volumes Egypt in Pictures and Words and Palestine in Pictures and Words : The illustrated books with around 700 woodcuts were based on templates by 40 well-known artists and orientalists (including Wilhelm and Ismael Gentz , Leopold Carl Müller and Charles Feodor Welsch ) mainly produced and published by Eduard Hallberger in the Xylographic Institute in Stuttgart .

Works (in selection)

Scientific and popular science works

Disquisitiones de dynastia XXVI. Regum aegyptiorum. (Habilitation) Jena 1865.
Egypt and the books of Moses. Leipzig 1868.
Through Gosen to Sinai. Leipzig 1872.
Papyros Ebers. The Hermetic Book on the Medicines of the Ancient Egyptians in Hieratic Script. Leipzig 1875. digitized
Egypt in pictures and words. 2 volumes. Stuttgart and Leipzig 1879.
Palestine in pictures and words. Stuttgart 1882-1884.
Cicerone through ancient and new Egypt. Stuttgart u. a. 1886.
Egyptian studies and related matters. Stuttgart and Leipzig 1900.

Novels

An Egyptian king's daughter. 3 volumes. Hallberger, Stuttgart 1864 (1st volume as digitized and full text in the German text archive , 2nd volume as digitalized and full text in the German text archive , 3rd volume as digitalized and full text in the German text archive ). Most recently Bastei-Verl. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1995, ISBN 3-404-13743-4 .
Uarda. 3 volumes. Hallberger, Stuttgart a. a. 1877. Most recently Bastei-Verl. Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1998. ISBN 3-404-13943-7 .
Homo sum. Hallberger, Stuttgart a. a. 1878.
The sisters . Stuttgart 1879.
The emperor . 2 volumes. Hallberger, Stuttgart 1881.
The mayor's wife. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1881
Serapis . German publishing house, Stuttgart 1885.
The Nile Bride. 3 volumes. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1886.
The Gred - novel from old Nuremberg. 2 volumes. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1889.
Per aspera . 2 volumes. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart a. a. 1892.
One word . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart et al. 1893
Cleopatra. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart a. a. 1894.
In the forge fire . 2 volumes. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart a. a. 1895.
Barbara Blomberg. 2 volumes. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart et al. 1897.

Others

Collected Works . 32 vols. Stuttgart a. a. 1893-1897.
The story of my life. From child to man. Stuttgart 1893.

literature

Otto Kraus: The professor's novel. Henninger, Heilbronn 1884 (Zeitfragen des Christian Volksleben, Vol. 9, H. 4; online ).

Richard Gosche: Georg Ebers. The researcher and poet. Knaur, Leipzig 1890.

Adolf Erman : Nekrolog auf Georg Ebers . In: Reports on the negotiations of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences, Philological-Historical Class , 51 (1899), pp. 221–223 ( ( page no longer available , search in web archives: PDF ))@1@ 2

Richard Pietschmann: Ebers, Georg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, pp. 469-473.

Karl Richter: Ebers, Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 249 f. ( Digitized version ).

Elisabeth Müller: Georg Ebers. Contribution to the problem of literary historicism in the second half of the nineteenth century. O. O. 1961.

Hannelore Kischkewitz: The Egyptologists Richard Lepsius, Heinrich Brugsch and Georg Ebers and their position on questions of the time. In Research and Reports , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin , issue 20/1980, pp. 89–100.

Hans Fischer: The Egyptologist Georg Ebers. A case study on the problem of science and the public in the 19th century. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994 (Egypt and Old Testament, 25), ISBN 3-447-03458-0 .

R. Dawson, EP Uphill (Ed.): Who Was Who in Egyptology . 3rd edition, revised by ML Bierbrier. London 1995.

Wolfgang Helck : Ebers, Georg Moritz . In: Small Lexicon of Egyptology . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-44704-027-0 , p. 71.

Reinhold Scholl : The Ebers papyrus: the largest book scroll on the medicine of ancient Egypt . University Library, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-910108-93-8 .

Ebers, Georg. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 6: Dore – Fein. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-22686-1 , pp. 26-40.

Web links

Commons : Georg Ebers - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Georg Ebers - Sources and full texts

Literature by and about Georg Ebers in the catalog of the German National Library
Works by and about Georg Ebers in the German Digital Library
Books by and about Georg Ebers at the Berlin State Library
Works by Georg Ebers in the Gutenberg-DE project
Ebers manuscripts in German-speaking libraries and archives
Overview of Georg Ebers' courses at the University of Leipzig (winter semester 1870 to winter semester 1886)
Correspondence between Georg Ebers and Eduard Meyer
On the website of the University of Leipzig on the Ebers papyrus
Georg Ebers In: Project historical novel. Database. University of Innsbruck.
Parody of Georg Ebers (from Fritz Mauthner: Based on famous patterns)
Georg Ebers in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Georg Ebers: The story of my life. From child to man , Stuttgart 1893.
↑ Wolfgang von der Groeben: Directory of the members of the Corps Saxonia zu Göttingen 1844 to 2006 . Düsseldorf 2006
↑ Habilitation thesis: Disquisitiones de dynastia vicesima sexta regum Aegyptiorum
↑ Christian Andree: What was Rudolf Virchow's relationship with contemporary poets, artists, publishers and editors? Attempt to approach via the correspondent. Part II. In: Würzburger medical history reports 12, 1994, pp. 259–286; here: p. 260 ( Georg Ebers to R. Virchow , April 6, 1889)
↑ Member History: Georg M. Ebers. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 26, 2018 .
^ Ulrich Gassner: Heinrich Triepel. Life and work. Berlin 1999, p. 27 fn. 9.
↑ Regelind Heimann: Wilhelm Gentz (1822–1890), a protagonist of German oriental painting between realistic perception and poetic storytelling. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8325-2590-3 , p. 290 ( online via Google books ).

personal data
SURNAME	Ebers, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ebers, Georg Moritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Egyptologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 1, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	August 7, 1898
Place of death	Tutzing

[AB-1] Georg Ebers: The story of my life. From child to man , Stuttgart 1893.

[2] Wolfgang von der Groeben: Directory of the members of the Corps Saxonia zu Göttingen 1844 to 2006 . Düsseldorf 2006

[3] Habilitation thesis: Disquisitiones de dynastia vicesima sexta regum Aegyptiorum

[4] Christian Andree: What was Rudolf Virchow's relationship with contemporary poets, artists, publishers and editors? Attempt to approach via the correspondent. Part II. In: Würzburger medical history reports 12, 1994, pp. 259–286; here: p. 260 ( Georg Ebers to R. Virchow , April 6, 1889)

[5] Member History: Georg M. Ebers. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 26, 2018 .

[6] Ulrich Gassner: Heinrich Triepel. Life and work. Berlin 1999, p. 27 fn. 9.

[7] Regelind Heimann: Wilhelm Gentz (1822–1890), a protagonist of German oriental painting between realistic perception and poetic storytelling. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8325-2590-3 , p. 290 ( online via Google books ).