Georg Steindorff

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Georg Steindorff, probably around 1910

Georg Steindorff (born November 12, 1861 in Dessau , † August 28, 1951 in North Hollywood , California ) was a German Egyptologist . He is regarded as one of the outstanding representatives of his subject in Germany and, alongside Adolf Erman and Ludwig Borchardt, as the most important representative of the second generation of German Egyptologists.

Life

Georg Steindorff studied at the Egyptological seminar at the University of Göttingen . He received his doctorate in 1884 with Paul de Lagarde with the dissertation Prolegomena on a Coptic nominal class . In 1885 he converted from Judaism to Protestantism under the care of de Lagarde. In 1893 the University of Leipzig appointed him to an extraordinary professorship. The chair of Egyptology, which has existed since 1870, was previously held by Georg Ebers (1837–1898).

In 1897, Steindorff also succeeded Ebers in editing the highly scientific Baedeker volume "Egypt" and was its author until the last interwar edition of 1928, which took into account Howard Carter's excavation successes in the Valley of the Kings . Since 1898 Steindorff was a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences . In 1904 he became a full professor and one of the most important teachers at the University of Leipzig of his time. In the troubled times of 1918/19 he was dean of the Philosophical Faculty. During this time, the strictly national-conservative Steindorff fell out with his communist son, the author and translator Ulrich Steindorff . The high point of his career was the rectorate at the University of Leipzig in 1923/24. The Egyptian collection founded by the archaeologist Gustav Seyffarth received its substantial stamp from Steindorff. He expanded the small teaching collection into a museum, the Egyptian Museum of the University of Leipzig . On his research trips to Egypt he acquired items for household and grave use, but also works of art in smaller formats. He also brought the finds from excavations (e.g. the limestone head of Queen Nefertiti ) to Leipzig with the permission of the Antiquities Service, which was then administered by the French . Steindorff's excavation activities in Giza , Qau el-Kebir and Aniba between 1903 and 1931 are of particular importance . The Egyptian Museum owns many objects that were discovered during these expeditions. From mid-December 1926 to mid-December 1932 he was deputy secretary of the philosophical-historical class of the Saxon Academy.

At the request of the university, Steindorff's retirement , due on March 31, 1930 , was initially suspended for two years, and in 1931 again for a year until 1933. Even after that, he continued to teach for another year, as filling the chair turned out to be problematic. The actual preferred candidate, Hermann Kees , did not accept the offer, after all the chair was filled in 1934 by Steindorff's assistant Walther Wolf . At that time, Jewish teachers at German universities were generally dismissed due to the law to restore the civil service . Nevertheless, Steindorff was still allowed to use the infrastructure, such as the seminar's collection and library, until 1937. He also kept his office and the support of his employees. Due to his high reputation worldwide, he enjoyed relative protection from persecution, which is why he misjudged the danger for a long time. From 1935 the situation deteriorated dramatically. A trip to the Orientalist Congress in Rome was forbidden, as was further teaching due to the Reich Citizenship Law , which led to a massive deterioration in the range of courses at the university. He had to accept Wolf as co-editor of the documents of Egyptian antiquity and the journal for Egyptian language and antiquity that he published, and in 1937 he was finally ousted as editor. Another stroke of fate was his forced exit from the Saxon Academy in December 1938, to which he had been a member for 40 years. With this he - on the advice of his friend Ludwig Weickmann , the then acting secretary of the philosophical-historical class - prevented an expulsion. In 1936 Steindorff sold the majority of his Egyptological private collection to the university and toured the USA several times up to 1938. These trips probably served a planned relocation of the family to the USA. At the latest, the events of the November pogroms in 1938 made this decision final. In a letter to the American Egyptologist John Wilson , he described this time as " darkest days at Leipzig, some weeks after the pogrom of November, 1938 ".

In March 1939 he emigrated with his family to the USA; Unlike most Jewish refugees, he was able to take all of his mobile belongings with him to California, including antique furniture , his Bechstein grand piano , his library and around 100 Egyptian antiques. At first he was employed as a research associate at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore , after which he lived in North Hollywood until his death, where he met his son again. In 1944 he became an American citizen. In 1946, Steindorff was re-accepted as a corresponding member of the Saxon Academy. His list of German Egyptologists is known , which he listed in a letter to Wilson and classified them as “burdened” or “unencumbered” depending on their proximity to the Nazi system. In 2008 the Leipzig Egyptological Institute was named after Steindorff.

From 1992 to 2011, the University of Leipzig, the American heirs of Steindorff and the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) fought over the ownership rights of items from the archaeologist's collection sold to the university in 1937. After a decision by the Berlin Administrative Court on May 26, 2011, the antiques should have been left to the JCC. The JCC waived its restitution claim in June 2011 after the public became aware of the incident through an article by the Egyptologist Jan Assmann in the FAZ . The collection is now on permanent display in the Egyptian Museum of Leipzig University , which was relocated in 2010 .

Georg Steindorff was married to Elise Oppenheimer, a sister of the doctor Franz Oppenheimer .

estate

Georg Steindorff's estate was purchased in 1952 at Southern Methodist University in Texas, where it is kept and indexed as Steindorff Collections in the Bridweel Library .

Protection of cultural property

Protected cultural asset

The collection Prof. Georg Steindorff (ancient Egyptian antiquities, 163 individual pieces), inventoried in the inventory of the Egyptian Museum of the University of Leipzig, is available as a cultural asset in Saxony under cultural protection .

Fonts (selection)

  • Prolegomena to a Coptic nominal class. 1884
  • Coptic grammar with chrestomathy, vocabulary and literature (= Porta linguarum Orientalium. Bd. 14, ZDB -ID 1161698-2 ). Reuther & Reichard et al., Berlin 1894.
  • Egypt, past and present. Ullstein & Co., Berlin / Vienna 1915

literature

  • Steindorff, Georg. In: Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto : Small Lexicon of Egyptology. 4th, revised edition. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04027-0 , p. 297.
  • Elke Blumenthal, Kerstin Seidel:  Steindorff, Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , pp. 173-175 ( digitized version ).
  • Thomas Gertzen: Steindorff, Georg. 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. 1188–1190.
  • Sandra Müller: Georg Steindorff in the mirror of his diaries (= small writings of the Egyptian Museum of the University of Leipzig. Volume 9). Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-86583-733-2 .
  • Thomas Schneider : Egyptologists in the Third Reich. Biographical notes based on the so-called "Steindorff list". In: Thomas Schneider, Peter Raulwing (Ed.): Egyptology from the First World War to the Third Reich. Ideology, Scholarship and Individual Biographies (= Journal of Egyptian History. Vol. 5, No. 1-2, 2012). Brill, Leiden 2013, ISBN 978-90-04-24329-3 , pp. 120-247.
  • Susanne Voss , Dietrich Raue (eds.): Georg Steindorff and German Egyptology in the 20th Century. Backgrounds of knowledge and research transfers. (= Supplements to the magazine for Egyptian language and antiquity , volume 5), De Gruyter, Berlin and Boston 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-047756-6 .
  • Susanne Voss: Georg Steindorff, Heinrich Schäfer and Thomas Mann. A new letter find on Thomas Mann's relations with Egyptologists on the occasion of his Joseph novel. In: Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde , Volume 143/2 (2016), pp. 244–255.
  • Elke Blumenthal u. a .: Georg Steindorff . Stations in his life , Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2018 (Kleine Schriften Leipzig; 11), ISBN 978-3-447-11072-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Schneider: Egyptologists in the Third Reich. Biographical notes based on the so-called "Steindorff list". In: Journal of Egyptian History. Vol. 4, Iss. 2, 2011, p. 111.
  2. ↑ Jan Assmann : In whose name is compensation and return? In: FAZ of June 8, 2011, p. N3; Jürgen Kaube: Restitution claims: Steindorff's will . In: FAZ of June 23, 2011, p. 33.
  3. ^ Bridwell Library Special Collections: Steindorff Collections . last accessed on August 17, 2016.
  4. ^ The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media: Kulturgut in Sachsen ( Memento from February 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). On: kulturgutschutz-deutschland.de from 2016; last accessed on August 17, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Steindorff, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Dessau
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1951
Place of death North Hollywood, California