Hans Graeven

Johannes August Theodor Wilhelm "Hans" Graeven (born August 15, 1866 in Hanover , † November 4, 1905 in Trier ) was a German classical archaeologist and philologist .

Life

Hans Graeven, the son of a hatter, attended the Realgymnasium I, later the Lyceum I in his hometown. As a schoolboy he lost both parents. Despite this stroke of fate and his poor health - Graven suffered from a chronic lung disease - he studied classical philology, archeology and history at the University of Göttingen from 1884 , where he was particularly influenced by the classical scholars Karl Dilthey and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff . Graeven spent one semester each at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin . Graeven published an archaeological study of the Pompeian wall paintings during his studies; however, he was forced to take several breaks in his studies because of his illness. During a recreational stay with his relatives in Paris, on Wilamowitz's recommendation, he compared the manuscript of Anonymus Seguerianus , a rhetorical treatise from the 3rd century AD, and prepared a critical edition of the text. An excerpt from the preliminary work was his dissertation, with which he was awarded a Dr. phil. received his doctorate . The edition appeared the following year. In March 1891 Graeven passed the senior teacher examination, but because of his poor health he could not think of a teaching career.

On December 1, 1891, he traveled to Rome to relax, where he spent several years doing intensive research. His research focus was the ivory diptychs that Dilthey had pointed out to him. The Göttingen professor Wilhelm Meyer gave Graeven his extensive material on this topic. However, Graeven did not come to publications for the time being, since his fortune was insufficient for a private scholar. For his maintenance he took on collations in Roman and other Italian libraries on behalf of other philologists . He also collected material for studies on the ancient rhetors and scholias of Lucian . He later gave this material to his brother-in-law Hugo Rabe , whose edition of the Lukianscholien appeared in 1906.

From 1895 Graeven worked on a study of the late Roman diptychs , for which the Beneke Foundation of the Göttingen Society of Sciences had awarded a prize. After two and a half years, Graeven completed the work and received the award with which he financed research trips and, above all, photographic equipment. He collected his photographic recordings for several panel volumes that appeared from 1898.

Graeven's health had stabilized in the Mediterranean climate to such an extent that he returned to Germany in 1900. On July 1, 1900, he accepted a position as assistant director at the Kestner Museum in Hanover. He stood out there through public lectures and magazine articles and took part in a wide variety of research projects: He dealt with the Hildesheim silver find and examined the contemporary portraits of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for his skull, which had been exhumed shortly before .

Graeven was a corresponding member of the German and Austrian Archaeological Institute (since 1902).

On March 1, 1903, Graeven moved as director of the Provincial Museum Trier . He only worked there for a year and a half, but in this short time he undertook many excavations and brought in friends and sponsors for the museum. In the spring of 1905 Graeven developed liver disease. An operation on July 1, 1905 could not do anything, so that he died on November 4, 1905 at the age of 39.

His grave with a neoclassical stele can be found in the Engesohde city cemetery .

Graeven's scientific estate is in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier and in the archive of the headquarters of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.

Fonts (selection)

• Prolegomenorum in Cornuti artis rhetoricae epitomen pars prior . Göttingen 1891 (dissertation)
• Cornuti artis rhetoricae epitome. Berlin 1891 (extended dissertation) full text
• Early Christian and medieval ivory works in photographic reproduction. Series 1: From collections in England . Rome 1898
• Early Christian and medieval ivory works in photographic reproduction. Series 2: From collections in Italy: Nos. 1–80 . Rome 1900
• Antique carvings made of ivory and bone in photographic reproduction . Hanover 1903
• Leibniz's portraits. Completed and edited by Carl Schuchhardt . Berlin 1915

literature

• Biographical yearbook and German necrology . Volume 10 (1905), 1907, p. 175 *.
• Theodor Preger : Hans Graeven . In: Annual report on the progress of classical antiquity . Volume 136 (1907), Nekrologe (= Biographisches Jahrbuch für Altertumskunde, 30th year), pp. 73–82 (with list of publications).
• Johannes Kollwitz :  Graeven, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 718 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Jürgen Merten: Hans Graeven (1866–1905) and the Provincial Museum in Trier. In: Finds and excavations in the Trier district 27 = Kurtrierisches Jahrbuch 35 (1995), pp. 85 * –93 *.
• German biographical encyclopedia . Volume 4 (1996), p. 125.
• Klaus Mlynek : Graeven, Hans. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 134 ( online at Google books ).
• Klaus Mlynek: Graeven, Hans. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 228.

Web links

Wikisource: Hans Graeven  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Hans Graeven in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Hans Graeven  in the German Digital Library