Hermann Grapow

Hermann Grapow (born September 1, 1885 in Rostock , † August 24, 1967 in Berlin ) was a German Egyptologist . Technically an excellent representative of the philological branch of the subject, which among other things had great merits in the creation of the dictionary of the Egyptian language , he was politically strongly involved in the injustice state of the German National Socialists and used the opportunity to gain positions and capacities of expelled scholars occupy. Despite the deep involvement, he was able to successfully continue his scientific career in the GDR after 1945 .

Life

As a student at the Lessing Gymnasium in Berlin , Grapow began to learn Egyptian , inspired by Georg Steindorff's heyday of the Pharaonic Empire , by copying Adolf Erman's Egyptian Glossary . In 1905 he was introduced to Adolf Erman and enrolled at the Berlin University of Egyptology the following year . In 1912 Grapow received his doctorate there with a dissertation on the 17th chapter of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and its significance in the history of religion . Since 1907 he was an assistant in Erman's project for a dictionary of the Egyptian language and was responsible for sifting through and sorting the 1.4 million voucher slips. Together with Wolja Erichsen , he was the most important collaborator on the second volume of the work.

In 1922, the Berlin Academy appointed him a scientific officer. In 1928, under Erman's influence, he was appointed honorary professor at the Berlin University and has held lectures here alongside Kurt Sethe since 1929 . For the year 1932/33 he was awarded the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute . After Sete's death in 1934, he initially took over as deputy head of the Egyptological seminar. After joining the NSDAP in 1937 , he was appointed full professor in 1938. On June 8, 1938, the Prussian Academy of Sciences appointed him a full member and acting secretary of the philosophical-historical class. From 1943 to 1945 he was Vice President of the Academy. In the summer of 1940 he was appointed dean of the Philosophical Faculty and in the spring of 1943 he was appointed prorector of Berlin University. In his list of the political activities of German Egyptologists in the Nazi era , which he wrote in the summer of 1945, Georg Steindorff led Grapow at the head of the Egyptologists involved in the Nazi regime. He described him as a fundamentalist and arch-Nazi. According to Steindorff, Grapow is said to have denounced people because of trivialities such as not using the Hitler salute. Hans Wolfgang Müller is said to be one of his victims , although only the denunciation, not the denouncer, is on record. In addition, he used his good contacts with the Reich Education and Research Minister Bernhard Rust to pursue the Belgian Egyptologist Jean Capart . Last but not least, this was intended to weaken the only international center of Egyptology that could keep up with Berlin's reputation. Grapow used the political circumstances to make a significant career at a comparatively old age. The closest collaborator was Alfred Hermann , who had a similar character .

Despite his entanglements, Grapow was able to continue his career in the GDR after the war. He justified himself by reinterpreting the trench warfare peculiar to the Nazi system, in which he was involved, as resistance to the system. In 1947 he founded the Institute for Orient Research at the Berlin Academy together with Richard Hartmann and Diedrich Westermann and was appointed director of Richard Hartmann's successor in 1956. In 1953 and 1959 he received the GDR National Prize . After the Second World War , Grapow continued to work on the completion of the dictionary of the Egyptian language . After its publication, he devoted himself to ancient Egyptian texts with medical content . Six years after his death, the ninth and last volume of the outline of medicine of the ancient Egyptians, which he initiated, was published in 1973 .

Fonts (selection)

with Adolf Erman: Aegyptisches hand dictionary. Berlin 1921.
Dictionary of the Egyptian language. (7 volumes), Berlin 1925 ff.
Studies of the annals of Thutmose the Third and related historical reports of the New Kingdom . Treatises of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin . Philosophical-historical class. Born in 1947 No. 2. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1949.
Anatomy and physiology. Berlin 1954.
Sick, diseases and doctor. From the healthy and sick Egyptian, from diseases, from the doctor and from medical activity. Berlin 1956.
The medical texts are autographed in hieroglyphic description. Berlin 1958.
with Hildegard von Deines: Dictionary of Egyptian drug names. Berlin 1959.
How the ancient Egyptians addressed one another, how they greeted one another and how they spoke to one another. Berlin 1960.

literature

Short biography for: Grapow, Hermann . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
Thomas L. Gertzen: The Berlin School of Egyptology in the Third Reich. Encounter with Hermann Grapow . Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86599-269-7 .

Web links

Literature by and about Hermann Grapow in the catalog of the German National Library
Research colloquium on Hermann Grapow
Thomas L. Gertzen: "Dixi et salvavi animam meam" - The Hermann Grapow case at LISA

Individual evidence

↑ Georg Steindorff: The heyday of the Pharaonic Empire , Bielefeld 1900.
^ Adolf Erman: Egyptian glossary. The more common words of the Egyptian language , Reuther & Reichard, Williams & Norgate, Berlin and London 1904.
↑ see Günter Vittmann : Erichsen, Wolja. 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 , Col. 369 f.
^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 196.
↑ to Thomas Schneider : Egyptologists in the Third Reich. Biographical notes based on the so-called "Steindorff list". In: Journal of Egyptian History. Volume 4, No. 2, 2011, pp. 109–216 = 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. Brill, Leiden 2013, ISBN 978-90-04-24329-3 , pp. 120–247 ( digitized version of a somewhat shortened version ).
↑ see Henning Franzmeier , Anke Weber: "[...] on the other hand, I think that one shouldn't pretend that nothing happened." German Egyptology in the years 1945-1949 reflected in the correspondence with the JC publishing house Hinrichs. In: Susanne Bickel , Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert , Antonio Loprieno , Tonio Sebastian Richter : Egyptologists and Egyptologies between the Empire and the founding of the two German states. Reflections on the history and episteme of an ancient science subject in the 150th year of the magazine for Egyptian language and ancient studies. (= Journal for Egyptian Language and Archeology, Supplements 1), de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, pp. 113–152.

personal data
SURNAME	Grapow, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH	September 1, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH	Rostock
DATE OF DEATH	August 24, 1967
Place of death	Berlin

[1] Georg Steindorff: The heyday of the Pharaonic Empire , Bielefeld 1900.

[2] Adolf Erman: Egyptian glossary. The more common words of the Egyptian language , Reuther & Reichard, Williams & Norgate, Berlin and London 1904.

[3] see Günter Vittmann : Erichsen, Wolja. 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 , Col. 369 f.

[4] Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 196.

[5] to Thomas Schneider : Egyptologists in the Third Reich. Biographical notes based on the so-called "Steindorff list". In: Journal of Egyptian History. Volume 4, No. 2, 2011, pp. 109–216 = 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. Brill, Leiden 2013, ISBN 978-90-04-24329-3 , pp. 120–247 ( digitized version of a somewhat shortened version ).

[6] see Henning Franzmeier , Anke Weber: "[...] on the other hand, I think that one shouldn't pretend that nothing happened." German Egyptology in the years 1945-1949 reflected in the correspondence with the JC publishing house Hinrichs. In: Susanne Bickel , Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert , Antonio Loprieno , Tonio Sebastian Richter : Egyptologists and Egyptologies between the Empire and the founding of the two German states. Reflections on the history and episteme of an ancient science subject in the 150th year of the magazine for Egyptian language and ancient studies. (= Journal for Egyptian Language and Archeology, Supplements 1), de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, pp. 113–152.