Georg Karo

Georg Karo (born January 11, 1872 in Venice , † November 12, 1963 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German classical archaeologist .

Georg Karo was of Jewish origin, but baptized Protestant. He was first taught by private tutors (including Carl Schuchhardt ) in Florence , then attended the Berthold-Gymnasium Freiburg and began studying classical philology and archeology in Munich in 1890. In 1892 he moved to the University of Bonn , where Georg Loeschcke became his teacher, where he received his doctorate in 1896 with the thesis De arte vascularia antiquissima quaestiones . In the following years Karo traveled through the Mediterranean region and completed his habilitation again in Bonn in 1902. From 1905 he worked at the German Archaeological Institute, Athens Department, initially as second director ("secretary"), from 1910 as first director (until 1919). In 1920 Karo succeeded Carl Roberts as professor at the University of Halle until he returned to Athens in 1930 as director of the DAI . Because of his Jewish origins, he was released in 1936, first lived in Munich and emigrated to the USA in 1939. There he taught at Claremont College and in 1941 and 1942 as a Martin Lecturer at Oberlin College . After returning to Germany, Karo lived in Freiburg from 1953, where the university made him an honorary professor in 1954. In 1952 he received the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Karo dealt with the influence of oriental cultures on Greek and Etruscan art as well as with the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. He led the excavations of the DAI in Tiryns and scientifically evaluated Heinrich Schliemann's finds from the shaft graves in Mycenae .

Fonts (selection)

• Guide through Tiryns
• The shaft graves of Mykenai , 2 vols., 1930/33
• Greek Personality in Archaic Sculpture , 1948
• Grasp on the throne , 1959
• 50 years from the life of an archaeologist , 1959

literature

• Reinhard Lullies : Georg Karo. In: portraits of archaeologists . Portraits and short biographies of classical archaeologists in the German language. von Zabern, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-8053-0971-6 , pp. 181-182.
• Friedrich Matz : Georg Karo. In: Gnomon . Volume 36, 1964, p. 637 ff.
• Christoph Schwingenstein:  Karo, Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 280 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Astrid Lindenlauf: Karo, Georg Heinrich. 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. 641 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Karo in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Georg Karo in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis