Henri Metzger

Henri Metzger (born August 19, 1912 in La Tronche ; died October 2, 2007 in Vaison-la-Romaine ) was a French classical archaeologist , professor at the University of Lyon and director of the French archaeological institute in Istanbul .

Career

In 1932, Henri Metzger began studying humanities at the École normal supérieure in Paris . His main focus was on Greek antiquity and for this reason he undertook a first excursion to Greece with Pierre Amandry in 1934 . In 1937 he passed his state examination and then briefly taught at the Lycée Fustel de Coulanges in Strasbourg before becoming a member of the École française d'Athènes in 1938 . There he met Pierre Amandry, Ernest Will and Roland Martin - his fellow students from Paris - again. When the Second World War broke out , he was called up to Syria , where he was able to renew his contact with Henri Seyrig . After the Armistice of Compiègne , he returned to Athens in 1940 and resumed his work for the École française. Together with Roland Martin he carried out the excavations in the Asklepieia of Epidaurus (1941–1942) and Athens (1943), as well as the excavations in Gortys in Arcadian (1941–1942, 1950).

In 1945 he became an assistant at the Institut français d'Archéologie in Istanbul . The time of his exploration of Lycia began , at the same time he taught as a lecturer at the University of Istanbul . Inspired by Jean Audiat , he directed his second research focus to Greek ceramics . Here he was promoted by Charles Dugas and John D. Beazley . In 1947 he was first assistant for Greek and Classical Archeology at the University of Lyon , from 1948 he was Maître de conférences there . In 1950 he received his doctorate in Paris with a dissertation on Attic vase painting : Les représentations dans la céramique attique du IVe siècle. When Charles Dugas retired in 1957, Henri Metzger followed him to the chair of Classical Archeology in Lyon. From 1961 to 1968 he was also associate professor at the University of Geneva , where he found an academic student in Jean-Marc Moret who was to take the chair in Lyon in 1999. In Lyon, in addition to his chair, Henri Metzger was also responsible for the Bibliothéque Salomon-Reinach - a legacy of 15,000 books from the archaeologist Salomon Reinach to the University of Lyon.

In 1975, Henri Metzger interrupted his university career to take over the direction of the Institut français d'études anatoliennes in Istanbul, which he held until 1980. After returning to the University of Lyon, he retired in 1981.

research

Since the time of his doctorate, Henri Metzger's research has been divided into two parts: on the one hand, Greek ceramics, especially Attica and southern Italy , as he treated them in his main thesis for his doctorate , and on the other hand, the art of Anatolia, which was the subject of his supplementary work (thése complémentaire) : Catalog des monuments votifs du musée d'Adalia.

In the field of vase painting, Henri Metzger was primarily interested in questions of iconography and - following Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Gombrich - iconology . In this regard, he developed the approaches that Charles Dugas had already started to pursue, and differed fundamentally from the research of John D. Beazley, with whom he was in constant contact. In the vase maker and painter, Henri Metzger looked not only at the artist but also at the dealer and tried to work out his interaction with the client or buyer. From 1960 to 1994 he made constant contributions to the subject in the Revue des Études Grecques and headed the Bulletin archéologique - céramique section . As a result of this research, he became director of the international research project Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum in 1988 , which he headed until 2002.

The investigations of Lycia were almost equally decisive for his research life. In 1950, Pierre Demargne and Pierre Devambez had started excavations in Xanthos , the capital of the Lycian League , which Henri Metzger joined in 1951. He was a participant in the excavations until 1959, and from 1962 to 1978 he was head of the archaeological mission in Xanthos and the nearby federal sanctuary, the Letoon - an investigation he initiated. The knowledge of Lycian architecture, Lycian art, and Lycian trade and exchange with the cities of the Aegean Sea was put on a new basis through the research of all these years. Of the nine volumes on the excavation results in Xanthos, Henri Metzger contributed two volumes. One of the milestones of the findings from the Letoon is the Trilingue vom Letoon , which - discovered in 1973 - was first published in 1974 in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres , then with its own volume in the Fouilles de Xanthos 1979.

In 1977 Henri Metzger organized the first Colloque sur la Lycie antique in Istanbul, followed by more in Vienna in 1990 and in Antalya in 2005 . In 1978 he gave up the leadership of the French mission in Xanthos and Letoon.

Memberships and honors

Henri Metzger was elected to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1988. He was in command of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques , Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and Chevalier des Ordre national du Mérite . He was a member of the German Archaeological Institute , the Austrian Society for Archeology and the Archaeological Society Athens .

Publications (selection)

• Les représentations dans la céramique attique du IVe siècle (= Bibliothéque des Écoles d'Athenes et de Rome. Number 172). Boccard, Paris 1951.
• Catalog des monuments votifs du Musée d'Adalia (= Études Orientales. Volume 11). Boccard, Paris 1952.
• Fouilles de Xanthos. Volume 2: L'acropole lycienne. Boccard, Paris 1963.
• Recherches sur l'imagerie athénienne. Boccard, Paris 1965.
• Anatolia II. Debut du Ier millénaire-fin de l'époque romaine. Nagel, Geneva 1969.
• with Dietrich von Bothmer , John Nicolas Coldstream : Fouilles de Xanthos. Volume 4: Les céramiques archaïques et classiques de l'acropole lycienne. Klincksieck, Paris 1972.
• with Roland Martin : La religion grecque. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1976.
• with Emmanuel Laroche , André Dupont-Sommer , Manfred Mayrhofer : Fouilles de Xanthos. Volume 6: La stèle trilingue du Létôon Klincksieck, Paris 1979.
• with André Bourgarel, Gérard Siebert, Alain Davesne, Jean Marcadé , Jean Bousquet: Fouilles de Xanthos Volume 9: La région Nord du Létôon. Two volumes. Klincksieck, Paris 1992.

literature

• Christian Le Roy, Jean-Jacques Maffre, Olivier Pelon: Henri Metzger (1912–2007). In: Revue archéologique . New series, issue 2, 2009, pp. 337–344.
• Edmond Lévy: Allocution de M. Edmond Lévy, président de l'Association. In: Revue des Études Grecques. Volume 121, 2008, pp. XX – XXI ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Henri Metzger on the website of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres