Meyer Reinhold

Meyer Reinhold (born September 1, 1909 in Brooklyn , New York , † July 2, 2002 in Nashville ) was an American ancient historian .

Life

Meyer Reinhold came from a Jewish family who immigrated to the USA from Austria-Hungary a few years before he was born. He attended Bushwick High School in Brooklyn and then studied at City College of New York ( Bachelor 1929) and Columbia University ( Master 1930). He then worked Ancient History on his doctoral thesis in with which he 1933 doctorate was. His academic mentor was the papyrologist and social historian William Linn Westermann .

After completing his doctorate, Reinhold was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome from autumn 1933 to spring 1935 and traveled to southern Italy, Sicily and Greece. After returning to the US, he struggled to find a job. From 1938 he worked as a lecturer at Brooklyn College , where he was Assistant Professor in 1947 and Associate Professor of Classical Studies in 1952 .

During the McCarthy era , Reinhold, like many other people, came under suspicion of promoting communism. Under increasing regulatory pressure, Reinhold resigned from Brooklyn College in 1955 and remained unemployed for ten years. During this time he earned his family's livelihood from commissioned work for the Barron Verlag, for which he reviewed translations of Greek and Latin works.

In 1965 a position opened for Reinhold at the newly founded University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale as Associate Professor of Greek, Latin and Ancient History . Here he resumed academic teaching and research. In 1967 he moved to the University of Missouri as Professor of Classical Studies . In 1980 he retired and moved to Boston University , where he continued to teach and research until 1995. Here he founded the Institute for the Classical Tradition in 1985 . He spent the last years of his life in Nashville , Tennessee .

Services

Meyer Reinhold was one of the most productive ancient historians of the post-war period. His dissertation from 1933, a biography of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa , already became a standard work and received two unchanged reprints (Rome 1965, Chicago 1981). Until the end of the Second World War , teaching duties kept Reinhold from further publications. His publishing activity resumed in 1946 with an extensive article on Michael Rostovtzeff's research on ancient history , in which Reinhold praised Rostovtzeff's source work, but criticized his methodology and conception. Together with his colleague at Brooklyn College, the papyrologist Naphtali Lewis , Reinhold wrote the two-volume work Roman Civilization (New York 1951–1955) in the 1950s .

Reinhold's dismissal during the McCarthy era marked another break in his career. In the late 1960s, as a professor at the University of Missouri, the third phase began. Reinhold was now mainly concerned with ancient social history, including the Roman Empire and the Greek world as well as Asia Minor.

Fonts

• History of Purple as a Status Symbol in Antiquity , Brussels 1970
• The Golden Age of Augustus , Toronto / Sarasota 1978
• From Republic to Principate. A Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History Books 49-52 (36-29 BC) , Atlanta 1988
• Studies in Classical History and Society , ed. by Ward W. Briggs , Oxford / New York 2002 (collected small writings)

literature

• In memoriam Meyer Reinhold . In: International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT), 2003, pp. 3–7 (with picture).
• Meyer Reinhold: Two Years at the American Academy in Rome 1933-1935 . In: In Pursuit of Science. Festschrift for William M. Calder III on his 75th birthday , Hildesheim a. a. 2008, pp. 73-104 (autobiographical, with notes on the author).

Web links

• Entry on Meyer Reinhold in the Database of Classical Scholars, written by Mark Toher (English)