Jacques Breuer (archaeologist)

Jacques Henri Ghislain Breuer (born June 2, 1892 in Liège , † September 21, 1971 in Frasnes-les-Buissenal ) was a Belgian archaeologist .

Breuer mainly dealt with Belgium's Roman past . In doing so, he wrote important works on the late Roman era and the period of migration .

life and career

Breuer's father was the director of an arms factory. After graduating from a humanistic grammar school in Liège, Jacques Breuer attended the University of Liège and obtained a degree in economics in 1913. After the outbreak of the First World War , Breuer wanted to volunteer in the Belgian army on the other side of the Yser , but he did not succeed until the end of 1916. The way to the Belgian troops led him through the Netherlands. As the grandson of German grandparents from the Aachen area, he was not allowed to leave the country, so he used the time to visit Dutch museums and archaeological collections. In the museum of Leiden he met the well-known Dutch archaeologist Jan Hendrik Holwerda , whose collection he was allowed to study. Breuer also took part in excavations, particularly in Nijmegen . He later used his notes for various publications.

After the end of the war, Breuer returned to Liège, where he was soon bored with the business world. He went back to university and took courses in archeology and art history . In 1919 he married Germaine Raick , with whom he had five children. Breuer graduated in 1924 ( licentiate ). During his studies he had already completed an internship in the university library and in 1924 he became editor there. In 1927 Breuer received a position at the Royal Museums for Art and History in Brussels with Edmond Rahir . The two initially jointly headed the department for the Belgique ancienne and the excavation service. After Rahir's departure two years later, Breuer then had sole responsibility. In the following ten years, Breuer carried out important excavations with modest means: in Tongeren , Arlon , Furfooz and Spiennes , as well as the fortresses of Liberchies and Morlanwelz on the Roman road from Tongeren to Bavay (part of the Via Belgica ), which is occasionally part of a Limes Belgicus are considered. There was also research in the necropolises of Haillot , Saint-Gilles-lez-Termonde , Bovigny and Peissant .

Breuer also took part in excavations outside Belgium, for example in Goldberg in Mecklenburg or on the Magdalensberg in Austria. On these trips he acquired knowledge of modern archaeological methods such as aerial archeology , which he used to research the network of Roman roads in Belgium and the neighboring ancient sites. In 1933 he was at the University of Liege with the dissertation Étude sur la céramique provinciale romaine doctorate . A few months later he was giving his first lectures on Belgo-Romance and Franconian history at the same university. In 1938 he founded the journal Archeologie together with Hubert van de Weerd .

The outbreak of World War II forced Breuer to move the museum's collections to safety, but it also gave him the opportunity to search ruined cities. He became a reconstruction adviser, focusing on the cities of Nivelles and Tournai , which were particularly hard hit by bombing . He had impressions made of the bells that the German occupying forces demanded. He also held lectures at the Institut supérieur d'Art et d'Histoire de Bruxelles and the University of Liège.

Ten Duinen Monastery 1580, after Poubus, Brussels, Jubelpark .

After the end of the war, the Belgian excavation system was institutionalized and Breuer finally got scientific staff. Breuer resumed various pre-war excavations. In 1948 Breuer founded the journal Archaeologica Belgica , with which, among other things, the results of the state excavation office were reported internationally. For Breuer, archeology developed into a cross-sectional science of human existence: in addition to urban archeology , he also dealt for the first time with industrial archeology , on which he organized a highly acclaimed conference at the University of Leuven in 1955 . His employees were instructed accordingly: the establishment and implementation of an excavation site, the recording of churches destroyed in the war, the exploration of the city centers, the use of modern exploration methods such as aerial photography, the iconographic documentation. Based on a painting by Frans Pourbus , Breuer found the Ten Duinen monastery in Koksijde .

Even after his retirement in 1957, Breuer remained scientifically active. He was president of the Center national de recherches archéologiques en Belgique and continued to publish numerous writings.

Honors and memberships

In 1962, a special volume was published by the Archaeologica Belgica in honor of Jacques Breuer .

Breuer was a member of the Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques , the Académie Royale d'Archéologie de Belgique , the Institut archéologique liégois , the Société Royale de Numismatique de Belgique , as well as the German Archaeological Institute and the Prehistoric Society in Great Britain.

Fonts (selection)

• Les orfèvres du pays de Liége. Une liste de membres du métier Michiels-Broeders, Tongeren 1935.
• Archeology. In: L'Antiquité Classique Vol. 8-10, 1938-1942.
• Antéfixes romaines trouvées à Sirault Hainaut. In: L'Antiquité classique 8, 1939, pp. 21-40 ( full text ).
• La Belgique romaine. La Renaissance du livre, Brussels 1944.
• La technique romaine: documents graphiques réunis et commentés. La Renaissance du livre, 1966.

literature

• Jacques Breuer. in: Liber Memorialis. L'Université de Liège de 1867 à 1935. Notices biographiques. Liège 1936, pp. 631-634.
• H. Roosens: In memoriam Jacques Breuer 1892–1971. in: Helinium 11, 1971, pp. 209-212
• In memory of Jacques Breuer. in: Archeology. Chronique semestrielle. 1971, pp. 71-75
• M. Frère: Opgravingsherinneringen en herinneringsopgravingen. in: Limburg 51, 1972, pp. 6-19
• M. Vanderhoeven: In memoriam Professor Dr. Jacques Breuer. in: Limburg 51, 1972, pp. 3-5
• Nouvelle biography national . Volume 3, Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1994

Web links

• Literature by and about Jacques Breuer in the catalog of the German National Library

supporting documents

1. ^ Miscellanea archaeologica. In honorem J. Breuer. (= Archaeologia Belgica , Vol. 61) Service National des Fouilles, 1962.