Lina Eckenstein

Lina Dorina Johanna Eckenstein (born September 23, 1857 in Islington , † May 4, 1931 ) was an English polymath .

biography

Lina Eckenstein was a daughter of the German immigrant Friedrich Gottlieb Eckenstein and his wife Julie Amalie Antonia, née Helmke, who probably also had German roots. Corner Stone had for his activities during the German Revolution in 1948 from Bonn to flee and earned in England his living as a merchant . Lina Eckenstein later shared her father's socialist views and became a member of the Fabian Society . She had two siblings, a brother ( Oscar ) and a sister (Amelia). The family belonged to the wealthy middle class .

Eckenstein did not attend school and was believed to have been homeschooled in an intellectually stimulating environment; her grandfather and father had a great influence on their education and interests. So the grandfather became interested in ancient Egypt and collected material on the subject. As she later stated, as a child she was fascinated by the hieroglyphs with the animals and plant motifs. Her special talent lay in the linguistic field: She could read Latin , Ancient Greek , Middle High German and Middle English , and speak German , French and Italian fluently. Friends and acquaintances described her as a woman “of a very determined character with determined goals” who was “a rebel by nature”. She played a prominent role in the British women's movement of her time.

Eckenstein's first scientific project was a transfer of Albrecht Dürer's notes that were kept in the British Museum . Dürer's handwriting was difficult to read and the notes were written in the Franconian dialect . With this work, Lina Eckenstein supported the art historian Martin Conway , who wrote a book about Dürer that appeared in 1889 with the title Literary remains of Albrecht Dürer and the subtitle With Transcripts from the British Museum Manuscripts and with Notes upon them by Lina Eckenstein . The working relationship with Conway probably came about through Lina's brother Oscar, who like Conway was an avid mountaineer . Through Conway, in turn, Lina Eckenstein met the mathematician Karl Pearson , with whom and his family she was to have a lifelong close friendship. The historian Penelope D. Johnson suspects - partly because he did not mention this in his memoirs - that there could have been upsets between Lina Eckenstein and Conway; 13 years after their joint publication, Eckenstein published their own view of things with The Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer .

In the years leading up to this publication, Lina Eckenstein turned to other topics. She wrote a scientific article on the history of the Italian noble family Guidi . After her research on site, she published the small travel guide Through the Casentino with historical notes; the volume was illustrated with drawings by Lucy du Bois-Reymond. In 1890 she translated fairy tales by Wilhelm Hauff into English. In 1896, Eckenstein, who was Catholic, wrote her - from a feminist point of view - most important work Woman under Monasticism , in which she dealt with the history of women in Germany and England and their religious experiences. In the foreword, she wrote of a “mother-age, when women held positions of authority inside the tribal group”, replaced by a “father-age” in which men became the head of the family and suppressed the influence of women. In Christian monasteries, women were given the opportunity to pursue their talents and interests.

Between 1903 and 1906 Lina Eckenstein accompanied the archaeologist Flinders Petrie and his wife Hilda four times on excavation expeditions to Egypt . She helped catalog found objects. In 1904/05 the two women went on a camel ride to Sinai together , only accompanied by local camel herders, an undertaking that was not without risk. One of the results of her trips to Egypt was her publication A History of Sinai (1921).

Lina Eckenstein died on May 4, 1931 at the age of 74; at that time she lived in Little Hampden . She had never married and no children, but was very fond of children, which was shown in her close relationship with the children of the Pearsons, to whom she had dedicated her work Spell of Words , for example .

Publications

• Literary remains of Albrecht Dürer With Transcripts from the British Museum Manuscripts and with Notes upon them by Lina Eckenstein. The Cambridge University Press, 1889.
• The Little Princes and the Great Plot (=  Children's Library ). T. Fisher Unwin, London 1892.
• The Guidi and Their Relations With Florence . In: English Historical Review . tape 14 , 1899, pp. 235-249, 431-450, 656-675 .
• Woman under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life between AD 500 and AD 1500 . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 1896.
• Life and art of Albrecht Dürer (=  Popular Library of Art ). Duckworth, London 1902.
• Through the Casentino. With hints for the traveler . Illustrated by Lucy du Bois-Reymond. JM Dent, London 1902.
• Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes . Duckworth, London 1906.
• Moon-Cult in Sinai on the Egyptian Monuments . In: Ancient Egypt . tape 1 , 1914, p. 9-13 .
• A History of Sinai . 1921.
• Tutankh-aten. A story of the past . J. Cape, London 1924.
• A Spell of Words: Studies in Language Bearing on Custom . 1932.
• The Women of Early Christianity . 1935.

literature

• Penelope D. Johnson: Lina Eckenstein (1857-1931) . In: Jane Chance (ed.): Women Medievalists and the Academy . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI 2005, ISBN 0-299-20750-1 , pp. 55-66 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Lina Eckenstein in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Johnson, Eckenstein , p. 57.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Johnson, Eckenstein , p. 58.
3. ^ Wilhelm Hauff (Hauff, Wilhelm, 1802-1827). In: The Online Books Page. Retrieved May 1, 2020 . 
4. ↑ Johnson, Eckenstein , pp. 59/60.
5. ↑ Johnson, Eckenstein , p. 61.
6. ↑ Johnson, Eckenstein , p. 57 ,.