Louis Blondel

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Louis Blondel (born November 24, 1885 in Geneva , † January 17, 1967 ibid) was a Swiss archaeologist .

Life

Louis Blondel was the son of Auguste Blondel (1854-1922), lawyer and writer , and his wife Emilia Benigna Sophia Bossi, Marquise of Musso. He attended high school in Geneva until 1904 and completed a degree in architecture at the University of Geneva , which he graduated from the Technical University of Munich with a diploma ; he then did an internship in Paris with the painters Aristide Maillol and Maurice Denis .

After his return to Geneva he dealt with the historical cadastre and published Les faubourgs de Genève , a key work in the history of town planning .

Together with the Lausanne doctor Eugène Bach and the art historian Adrien Bovy (1880–1957) he wrote the first volume La cathédrale de Lausanne ; In this work he not only limited himself to the construction as such, but also deciphered and interpreted the results of the excavations carried out under the cathedral by Albert Naef from 1909 to 1912 . At that time he was already internationally recognized as an early medieval archaeologist.

From 1913 he was in charge of the Vieux Genève department of the Musée d'art et d'histoire , and in 1914 he worked for the Swiss National Exhibition and for the Historical-Biographical Lexicon of Switzerland .

During the First World War he served as first lieutenant in Battalion 13. From 1920 to 1963 he was a cantonal archaeologist in Geneva and regularly led excavations in the Abbey of Saint-Maurice in Valais .

In 1931 the Federal Council appointed him to the Federal Commission for Historical Art Monuments, of which he was initially a member for two terms and from 1942 to 1955 as a vice-president.

With Adolphe Guyonnet (1877–1955), he drew up a map of Geneva's old town from 1937 to 1938.

Louis Blondel's investigations and research, which spanned decades, shed light on the history of the Rhone crossing near Geneva, back to the fortifications built by Caesar against the Helvetii. He also researched the remains of early Christian sculpture in Geneva, the altar frontal (1922) and other fragments (1960) from St. Germain. His excavations under the so-called Auditorium Calvin, the former church of Notre-Dame de Genève southeast of the Cathedral of St. Pierre , and his research on the in the Reformation vanished priory of St. Victor rounded out the picture of the late antiquity and the early Middle Ages from churches of Geneva.

He methodically examined the remains of the church buildings in the so-called Cour du Martolet behind today's basilica of St. Maurice, which was newly built in the 17th century south of it, and here he provided evidence of an impressive continuity, unique in Switzerland, from a Roman spring sanctuary to the first burial chapel of the Theban Martyrs from the end of the 4th century mentioned by Eucherius von Lyon , the church of the 5th century, the basilica of King Sigismund from 515 and its renovation in the late 6th century, the early Carolingian double-choir abbey church to the new building, the At the beginning of the 11th century it was built by Archbishop Burkhard von Lyon.

The discovery of the Merovingian Coemeterialkirche (a church built on a coemeterium ) Notre-Dame sous le Bourg, the evidence he provided of an early medieval rock hermitage in Notre-Dame du Scex and finally the excavation of the ring crypt under the parish church of St. Sigismond The canton archaeologist Olivier Frédéric Dubuis from Valais led him to interpret the church family of St. Alaurice as a sacred city in 1962 in an essay dedicated to his friend Linus Birchler .

Blondel published his research in many books and in specialist articles in the Geneva and Valais journals Genava and Vallésia ; he wrote the archaeological chronicle for the Genava magazine from 1944 to 1963 .

Louis Blondel was married to Claire Amélie, daughter of the lawyer Louis-Adrien Bonnard, since September 14, 1920, and together they had a daughter and a son. His son Denis (* 1923; † December 20, 2018) later became a civil engineer, was represented in the Grand Council and from 1984 to 1992 President of the Geneva Homeland Security.

His brother-in-law was the linguist and historian Georges Bonnard (1886-1967).

honors and awards

The University of Basel awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1936 and the University of Geneva in 1942 .

Memberships

  • At a young age, Louis Blondel was one of the founders of the Swiss Boy Scout Movement in 1911 and became Federal Field Champion in 1934 and President of the Swiss Boy Scout Association from 1946 to 1957 ; In 1957 he was made honorary president. His boy scout name was Grand Sachem .
  • As a long standing member of the Parti Libéral he was from 1918 to 1943 the council of Lancy on.
  • He served as a long-time board member and president of the Academic Society ( Société académique ) and the Society for History and Archeology of Geneva ( Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Genève ).
  • In 1943, as the successor to Konrad Escher , he took over the presidency of the Society for Swiss Art History for eight years , and he also headed its committee for archaeological research, the so-called Roman Commission. During this time the number of members exceeded 6,600, for which the inventory work Die Kunstdenkmäler der Schweiz was published, on which Louis Blondel collaborated.
  • He was a member of the Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France.
  • As one of two Swiss representatives, he was a member of the Comité international d'histoire de l'art , whose responsibility includes organizing the international art history congresses.

Fonts (selection)

literature

  • Louis Blondel . In: Hans R. Hahnloser, Alfred A. Scmid: Homage à Louis Blondel. Our art monuments: newsletter for the members of the Society for Swiss Art History, Volume 18. 1967.
  • Louis Blondel. In: Linus Birchler : Louis Blondel 70 years old. In: Our art monuments: information sheet for the members of the Society for Swiss Art History, 1955. P. 50 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bovy, Adrien. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Guyonnet, Adolphe. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
  3. ^ Roman Hollenstein: Geneva in Roman times: a city in which one can live . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed on September 20, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Saint Maurice (Valais). In: Aerial images of Switzerland. Swiss Air Force, accessed September 20, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Heimatschutz / Patrimoine 1-2019. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
  6. ^ Bonnard, Georges. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Bundesfeldmeister - Scout-o-wiki. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Louis Blondel. In: Central Archive and Museum of the Scout Movement Switzerland. Retrieved September 20, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Blondel, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blondel, L .; Grand Sachem
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1967
Place of death Geneva