Margarete Bieber

Margarete Bieber (born July 31, 1879 in Schönau , West Prussia ; † February 25, 1978 in New Canaan , Connecticut , USA ) was a German - American classical archaeologist and university professor who was revoked as a Jew in 1933. She was the first professor of archeology to qualify as a professor at a German university and is considered a pioneer in women's studies.

Life

Margarete Bieber was born into a secular Jewish family as the daughter of a wealthy mill owner. Therefore it was financially possible for her to prepare for the Abitur at Helene Lange's private high school in Berlin from 1899 , which she passed as an external student in Thorn in 1901 as the first woman in West Prussia. From the winter semester 1901/02 she began studying in Berlin, where she had the status of a guest student, since women were only officially granted the right to matriculation in the winter semester 1908/1909. Their participation in courses depended on the permission of the respective professor. She first studied German and philosophy for teaching, but became increasingly interested in antiquity and attended lectures on Greek sculpture with Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz . In 1904 she went to Bonn to attend lectures by the archaeologist Georg Loeschcke , where she received her doctorate in 1907 as the second woman at Bonn University with a thesis on The Dresden Drama Relief.

After completing her doctorate, she went to Rome (1907-1908), where she became friends with Walter Amelung and Friedrich Spiro , and in the following years undertook research trips to the Mediterranean to study monuments of Greek and Roman classical art. In 1909/10 she was the first classical archaeologist to receive a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) . Until 1914 she did research first in Athens , then in Rome and in 1913 became a corresponding member of the DAI. After the outbreak of World War I , she had to return to Germany and worked there as a Red Cross helper. From Easter 1915 she was the assistant to her doctoral supervisor Loeschcke, who was now teaching at Berlin University, as a substitute for the drafted Gerhart Rodenwaldt and Valentin Müller . When he fell ill shortly afterwards and died in November 1915, she took over the representation of Loeschcke's chair until Ferdinand Noack , who had been appointed as his successor , forbade her to teach and Bieber could only hold private courses.

After several unsuccessful attempts, she was finally admitted to the Habilitation at the University of Gießen in 1919 at the intercession of Rodenwaldt , before the official regulation of 1920. Thus she became the first private lecturer at the University of Gießen . In 1923, after the mathematician Emmy Noether, she was appointed as the second woman in Germany to be a 'scheduled extraordinary' professor. From 1928 she headed the Giessen Institute for Classical Studies, as the full chair was not filled for financial reasons. Everything looked like she would get the chair in 1933. Since she was considered Jewish by the National Socialists, she was dismissed in July 1933 on the basis of the " Professional Civil Servants Act ". However, the reason given was not § 3 ("not Aryan descent"), but § 4 ("political unreliability").

Friends convinced her to leave Germany for the United States in 1934, where she first taught at Barnard College in New York. The American Association of University Women recommended her to Columbia University , where she taught from 1935 to 1948 as visiting professor in the Department of Art History and Archeology. In 1940 she received American citizenship. Even after her retirement, she continued teaching until 1956, when she was the first visiting professor at Princeton University (1949/50).

After 1945, she had to legally fight for her pension entitlements that had been developed in Giessen. In 1959 she was made the first and so far only honorary senator there (in 1997 a lecture hall at the university was also named after Margarete Bieber). In 1971 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . She remained scientifically active into old age and last lived with her adopted daughter Ingeborg Sachs. She died in New Canaan, Connecticut (USA) at the old age of 98 .

Bieber's special field of research was antique clothing, to which she devoted extensive studies since her time in Berlin, as well as antique theater and antique sculpture. She continued to publish articles on the reception of antiquities and sculptures in American museums.

Publications (selection)

• The drama relief in Dresden. A contribution to the history of tragic costume and Greek art . Dissertation, University of Berlin 1907.
• The ancient sculptures and bronzes of the Royal Museum Fridericianum in Cassel. Marburg 1915.
• The monuments to the theater in antiquity . Habil., University of Giessen 1919.
• Greek clothing . Berlin 1928.
• The History of the Greek and Roman Theater , Princeton University Press, 1939, 1961
• The sculpture of the Hellenistic age. Columbia University Press, New York 1955.
• Development history of the Greek costume . 1967.
• Ancient copies. Contributions to the history of Greek and Roman art. New York University Press, New York 1977.

literature

• Larissa Bonfante ; Rolf Winkes: Bibliography of the works of Margarete Bieber. For her 90th birthday July 31, 1969 . New York 1969.
• Rolf Winkes : Margarete Bieber on her 95th birthday . In: Gießener Universitätsblätter 1 (1974), pp. 68-75.
• Addenda to the bibliography of the works of Margarete Bieber . In: American Journal of Archeology, 79 (1975), pp. 147-148.
• EB Harrison: Margarete Bieber, 1879–1978 . In: American Journal of Archeology, 82 (1978), pp. 573-575.
• Larissa Bonfante : Margarete Bieber . In: Gnomon 51 (1979), pp. 621-624.
• Larissa Bonfante: Margarete Bieber (1879–1978). An Archaeologist in Two Worlds. In: Claire Richter (Ed.): Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820–1979 . London 1981, pp. 239-274.
• Hans-Günter Buchholz : Margarete Bieber, 1879–1978. Classical archaeologist . In: Gießen scholars in the first half of the 20th century . Marburg 1982, 58-73.
• Bruno W. Reimann: Emigration and Dismissal. The Giessen University in the years after 1933. In: Gideon Schüler (Hrsg.): Between unrest and order. A German reader for the period from 1925 to 1960. Giessen 1989
• Larissa Bonfante: archaeologist in two worlds. Margarete Bieber. A pioneer for the emancipation of women in ancient studies . In: Antike Welt 28 (1997), p. 178.
• Eva-Maria Felschow: Difficult beginning, end of the year and a new beginning in the distance. The fate of Margarete Bieber . In: Horst Carl et al. (Ed.): Panorama 400 years University of Giessen . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-7973-1038-5 , pp. 278-283.
• Matthias Recke : Bieber, Margarete. 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 , Sp. 103-105.
• Matthias Recke: Margarete Bieber (1879–1978). From the German Empire to the New World. Archeology lived for a century against all odds. In: Jana Esther Fries , Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann (ed.): Excavators, researchers, pioneers. Selected portraits of early archaeologists in the context of their time. Waxmann, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-8309-2872-0 , pp. 141-150.
• Hans Peter Obermayer: Margarete Bieber in exile. In: The same: German ancient scholars in American exile. A reconstruction. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 35–107.
• Bieber, Margarete. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 2: Bend Bins. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-598-22682-9 , pp. 418-423.
• Carmen Arnold-Biucchi / Martin Beckmann (eds.): Sculpture and coins. Margarete Bieber as Scholar and Collector , Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2018 (Loeb Classical Monographs; 16), ISBN 978-0-674-42837-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Margarete Bieber in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Margarete Bieber  in the German Digital Library
• Short biography on the homepage of Brown University with a detailed biography for download as a PFD
• Short biography on the homepage of the University of Giessen, with picture

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Matthias Recke: "The presence of Miss Bieber was particularly horrible". The archaeologist Margarete Bieber (1879–1978) - establishing a woman as a scientist . In: Jana Esther Fries, Ulrike Rambuscheck, Gisela Schulte-Dornberg (eds.): Science or Fiction ?: Gender roles in archaeological images of life. Report of the 2nd meeting of the Gender Research Working Group during the 5th German Archaeological Congress in Frankfurt (Oder) 2005. Waxmann Verlag, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8309-1749-6 , p. 212f.
2. ^ Hans Peter Obermayer : German ancient scholars in American exile. A reconstruction , Walter de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin / Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-030279-0 , p. 36
3. ↑ Hans Peter Obermayer (2014), ibid., Pp. 40/41