Johannes Toepffer
Johannes Alexander Ferdinand Toepffer (born November 9, 1860 in Dorpat , Estonia , † August 23, 1895 in Anzio ) was a German ancient historian .
Life
Toepffer was born in Dorpat as the eldest son of a Protestant pastor and grew up in the nearby village of Talkhof . He received his first lessons from his parents and was then prepared by a private tutor for attending the grammar school in Dorpat, which he left in 1878 with the school leaving certificate. Influenced by his tutor Reinberg, Toepffer turned to classical studies, which he studied from 1878 with Georg Loeschcke , Wilhelm Hoerschelmann and Ludwig Mendelssohn at the University of Dorpat . In Dorpat he became a member of the Livonia student union and passed the state examination in 1884 with a thesis on the Battle of Salamis .
In the summer semester of 1884 Toepffer went to Bonn , but after just one semester he switched to the University of Göttingen , where he became a student of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff . He later dedicated his monographs Quaestiones Pisistrateae (1886) and Attische Genealogie (1889) to him and Georg Loeschcke .
After a short stay in Berlin Toepffer returned to Dorpat and passed the master’s examination. His opponents were Loeschcke, Mendelssohn and Valerian von Schoeffer . In the same year he returned to Göttingen, where he wrote the Attic Genealogy under the supervision of Wilamowitz , his most extensive and most widely regarded publication. When he moved to Berlin, the work was welcomed by professors Ernst Curtius , Hermann Diels , Ulrich Köhler and Carl Robert and, despite all developments and new discoveries, remained fundamental to the chronology for decades. In Berlin, Toepffer particularly followed Curtius and Robert, in whose group of students “Anomia” he frequented. In order to be admitted to the habilitation in Berlin, he had to do his doctorate at a German university. He did this in Leipzig .
After his habilitation on January 18, 1890, Toepffer began to travel through the sites of classical antiquity. For a year he received a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute and traveled to Asia Minor, where he met the archaeologist Karl Humann while digging in Magnesia am Mäander . At that time he encouraged him to undertake the later excavations in Miletus . Toepffer spent many months in Athens, where he came into contact with Paul Wolters and Wilhelm Dörpfeld in particular . His relationship with Dörpfeld was divided: he admired him as an architect, and fought him as a topographer. An extension of his travel grant failed because of the bureaucracy, so Toepffer left Athens in the spring of 1892 and dropped numerous projects. He spent the next few months traveling through Italy, France, Belgium and England.
In the spring of 1893 Toepffer returned to Berlin, but was very dissatisfied here after his Athens fiasco and therefore gladly accepted the suggestion of his friend Ferdinand Dümmler to move to Basel . Toepffer was appointed associate professor there in the summer of 1894. His considerable teaching success was accompanied by great physical exhaustion, which affected his poor health. He died suddenly and surprisingly on a spa trip in Anzio in the summer of 1895. He found his final resting place in Rome in the Protestant cemetery at the Cestius pyramid , where his friends erected a funerary monument for him. His biographer Otto Kern published the anthology Contributions to Ancient Greek Studies in 1897 , in which one can find a biography, a list of writings and a course catalog in addition to the scattered writings of the deceased.
Fonts (selection)
- Attic genealogy . Berlin 1889
- Otto Kern (Hrsg.): Contributions to Greek antiquity by Johannes Toepffer . Berlin 1897
literature
- Otto Kern: Töpffer, Johann Alexander Ferdinand . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 54, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1908, pp. 706-708.
- Roderich von Engelhardt: The German University of Dorpat in its intellectual historical significance . Franz Kluge Reval 1933 (reprinted 1969). 303f.
Web links
- Johannes Toepffer estate in the Basel University Library
- Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Johannes Toepffer. In: BBLD - Baltic Biographical Lexicon digital
- Information about the tomb
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Toepffer, Johannes |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Toepffer, Johannes Carl Alexander Ferdinand (full name); Töpffer, Hans |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German ancient historian |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 9, 1860 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dorpat |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 23, 1895 |
| Place of death | Anzio |