Otto Jahn (archaeologist)

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Otto Jahn, 1857
Signature Otto Jahn (archaeologist) .PNG

Otto Jahn (born June 16, 1813 in Kiel , † September 9, 1869 in Göttingen ) was a German philologist , archaeologist and musicologist . He worked as a professor of philology and archeology at the universities of Leipzig and Bonn.

Jahn wrote fundamental critical editions on various ancient authors, prepared the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) as a well-known epigraphist , steered archeology into new, methodical-critical paths and promoted it through his research work as well as his lecturing, teaching and collecting activities.

As a private lecturer in Kiel (1839–1842) and associate professor in Greifswald (1842–1847), but particularly as a professor in Leipzig (1847–1850) and Bonn (1855–1869), he attracted numerous students and thus influenced classical studies in the 19th century . and 20th century sustainable.

He enriched the still young musicology with biographical and editorial work on Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and thus created the basis for dealing with these composers, which is still valid today . Jahn was also a co-founder of the old Leipzig Bach Society . Jahn himself emerged as a composer in private circles.

Life

Childhood, adolescence and studies

Otto Jahn was the son of the Kiel lawyer Jakob Jahn and on his mother's side a grandson of the Kiel law professor Adolf Friedrich Trendelenburg . The house of the Jahn family forms a center of the city's musical life, and Otto Jahn intended to become a musician. His father sent him to the famous Pforta State School in 1830 , where Jahn gave up this wish and, under the influence of the teachers Christian Friedrich Neue (Latin, 1798–1886), Karl August Koberstein (Latin, 1797–1870) and especially Adolph Gottlob Lange ( Greek, 1778–1831) turned to classical philology .

After a year he moved to the University of Kiel in 1831 , where he was particularly influenced by Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch and Johannes Classen : Classen drew the attention of his student to the Roman satirists, who were to become the main focus of Jahn's later research. For the winter semester of 1832/1833 Jahn went to Leipzig to see Gottfried Hermann , a year later he moved to Berlin . Jahn later saw his actual philological teachers in the local professors August Böckh and Karl Lachmann . The archaeologists Julius Ambrosch and Eduard Gerhard also introduced Jahn to their subject. After his return to Kiel in 1835, Jahn received his doctorate in 1836 with the thesis Palamedes , in which he worked up the myth of the Palamedes from philological and archaeological sources.

Wandering years

After completing his studies, Jahn was able to go on extensive research trips thanks to a travel grant from the Danish government. In autumn 1837 he traveled to Paris , where he studied the manuscripts with the works of Horace and Juvenal and dealt with the archaeological research of France while dealing with Jean de Witte and Désiré Raoul-Rochette . In October 1838 he traveled on to Rome , where he went to work as first secretary of the Emil Braun Archaeological Institute . During this time he got to know the excavations in Rome and published a number of smaller new finds himself. Braun's instruction in Latin inscription gave Jahn the opportunity, with the support of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, to acquire the epigraphic estate of Olaus Kellermann, who died early . This was accompanied by the obligation to publish the collectibles in due course. Jahn spent the spring of 1839 traveling through southern Italy and Sicily. On his return trip he met Karl Otfried Müller in Florence . In the summer of 1839 he returned to Kiel.

Academic teaching

Kiel and Greifswald

In the winter semester of 1839/1840 Jahn began teaching as a private lecturer at Kiel University. One of his first students was Theodor Mommsen , who remained connected to the teacher, who was almost the same age, after he left in 1842 until his death. Her extensive correspondence testifies to this. Jahn was appointed as an associate professor for philology and archeology at the University of Greifswald in 1842 . After he had turned down a call to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Petersburg in 1845 , he was appointed full professor. In the same year the later Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum was born , when Jahn was asked by the Prussian Minister of Justice Friedrich Carl von Savigny to write a memorandum on such a project. However, the realization failed initially due to resistance from August Böckh.

Leipzig: rise and setback

Otto Jahn in Leipzig, 1847

After this setback, Jahn was called to Leipzig as a professor of archeology in 1847 (as the successor to the late Wilhelm Adolf Becker ). Here he worked with his former teacher Gottfried Hermann and with Moriz Haupt . Jahn read to the students on archaeological and philological topics and published commentaries on Cicero's writings Brutus (1849) and Orator (1851), smaller editions of Persius and Florus, and a large Juvenal edition, which also contained the Scholia vetera (1851). At a celebratory lecture by the Leipzig Society of Sciences in 1848, Jahn developed his ideas about the identity and most important tasks of archeology. He turned decisively against the conception of archeology as "monumental philology" , which was represented by Eduard Gerhard among others, and emphasized the independent importance of the subject as art history.

Moriz Haupt , Theodor Mommsen and Otto Jahn in front of a Goethe bust, Leipzig 1848

In the revolutionary year of 1848 , Jahn advocated the appointment of his former student Mommsen to Leipzig. Together with Moriz Haupt, Gustav Freytag , Otto Wigand , Salomon Hirzel and others, they formed a group of friends that belonged to the liberal German Association and actively participated in the politics of 1848. Haupt, Jahn and Mommsen agitated in Leipzig to implement the resolution passed by the Frankfurt National Assembly on a Saxon constitution. After the dissolution of the National Assembly in 1849, the three academics were charged with high treason and, despite an acquittal, removed from their offices in 1850.

In solidarity with his friends, Jahn refused attempts by the university to reinstate him in teaching. His academic career was interrupted for the time being, apart from the post of secretary of the Leipzig Society of Sciences. Mommsen was appointed to Zurich in 1852 and Haupt to Berlin in 1853. In Leipzig, Jahn devoted himself to research and publications in the field of musicology and editorial work on the young Goethe . His critical reviews of Richard Wagner's “ music of the future” also found their way into philology, as Friedrich Nietzsche polemicized them from the spirit of music in 1872 in his work The Birth of Tragedy . He also found time in 1852 and 1853 to travel to Vienna, Salzburg, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, where he sifted through the bequests of Mozart and Beethoven and prepared them for publication. However, the elaboration was interrupted by the order of the Bavarian King Ludwig I to Jahn to catalog the vase collection in Munich . At the end of this activity, which Jahn took up from 1853 to 1854, was the introduction to vase science (Leipzig 1854). Although this book only dealt with the holdings of the Munich vase collection, for a long time it served as a manual for the Greek vases due to its careful interpretation of the image content.

Bonn: The "Philologist War" with Ritschl

Otto Jahn in Bonn (around 1860)
Otto Jahn's grave in the Albanikirchhof in Göttingen

Main article: Bonn philologists dispute

In 1854, the Bonn philology professor Friedrich Ritschl applied to the Ministry of Culture (at that time under Karl Otto von Raumer ) to appoint Otto Jahn to Bonn to appoint another professor of philology and archeology alongside the 70-year-old Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker . Ritschl pursued this calling behind Welcker's back, which Jahn knew nothing about. He agreed at the end of 1854 and began teaching at Bonn University in the summer of 1855 . Here he got into a tense relationship with Welcker, who saw Jahn's new professorship directed against him. Jahn, who wanted to do well with Welcker, tried to distance himself from Ritschl. As a result, the two became estranged within a few months. Nonetheless, both of them agreed methodically in their courses and, against historical claims , aligned them primarily with grammatical and textual criticism and hardly with regard to content.

Otto Jahn was a popular academic teacher in Bonn who also valued personal contact with students. In 1857 Jahn became dean of the philosophy faculty, in 1858 rector of the university (introductory speech: The importance and position of antiquity studies in Germany ). During these first years in Bonn, Jahn also finished his biography on WA Mozart (Leipzig 1856–1859) and published text editions on various ancient authors. In the years 1855 and 1856, essays by Jahn also appeared in the journal Rheinisches Museum für Philologie , published by Ritschl, but no longer because of the distance to Ritschl.

The dispute between Jahn and Ritschl escalated after several years for the following reason: Due to the lack of Greek events in Bonn (the professors for Classical Philology were mainly Latinists ), Jahn tried to call his friend Hermann Sauppe from Göttingen to Bonn. Because he feared a negative reaction, he operated this appointment behind the back of his colleague at the ministry in Berlin. In the spring of 1865 Jahn declared in Vienna that if Sauppe was appointed he would insist on his chair in Bonn, and the ministry responded to this request and appointed Sauppe. However, contrary to his previous assurance, he refused, and Ritschl found out about the incident.

Jahn's misstep and Ritschl's resulting smear campaign split the philological seminar into two camps: the employees were on the side of their then dean Ritschl, while the student body almost without exception sided with Jahn. The affair came to a head when the Ministry issued a sharp reprimand to Dean Ritschl and published it in the press. Because of this tactlessness, the liberals in the Prussian state parliament attacked Bismarck's government . The situation was almost paradoxical: Jahn, the liberal, was counted close to the reactionaries, while the liberals took up the cause of his rival Ritschl. In May 1865 Ritschl demanded his dismissal from the Prussian civil service.

Although the last years of his life in Bonn were overshadowed by this affair, Jahn brought Bonn philology to a new bloom. Hermann Usener was appointed to Bonn in 1866 as Ritschl's successor ; in the same year Jacob Bernays returned from Breslau. An erupting serious lung disease made Otto Jahn aware that he had to finish his remaining writings as quickly as possible. That is why he turned down both an offer to Berlin to succeed Eduard Gerhard and the offer to travel to Italy for research and recreational purposes for a year and a half. During a visit to Göttingen with his sister, the wife of the gynecologist Jakob Heinrich Hermann Schwartz , he died on September 9, 1869. He was buried in the Göttingen Albani cemetery .

Services

It is difficult to assess Otto Jahn's importance for classical studies in general because his publications are spread across numerous individual fields and its impact is difficult to follow. A principle of his work has always been the connection of philology with archeology for the interpretation of ancient texts and antiquities. He thus formed a link between the hostile camps of word philology , which was limited to mere grammar and textual criticism, and subject philology .

Jahn campaigned for the establishment of archeology as an independent subject at the university and thus entered into opposition to the Berlin archaeologist Gerhard, who understood archeology as "monumental philology". The concept that students of archeology always have to devote themselves to philological studies can also be traced back to his demands and influences. This practice lasted in Germany until World War II .

research

In philology, his writings on Roman satire form the basis for further occupation with them, as the satirical researcher Ulrich Knoche (1902–1968) noted with appreciation. In addition to essays in Hermes , his commentary on Persius (1843) as well as the text edition (1851), on which the entire later exegesis of the poet is based, and his large Juvenal edition (1851), which still forms the basis of Juvenal criticism today, should be mentioned. Deutsche Philologie owes Jahn the edition of Goethe's letters to his friends in Leipzig (1849, with additions in 1854) and contributions to Goethe in Strasbourg and Wetzlar (in the general monthly for science and literature , 1854).

His preoccupation with everyday life in Rome related to iconography and religious history. In addition, Jahn was the first well-known philologist to study the ancient novel and fictional prose stories, a genre that research had previously neglected.

Jahn's epigraphic work was particularly important for two major scientific projects: the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and the ancient sarcophagus reliefs . Even if his drafts (1845) for a systematic arrangement of the inscriptions according to subject groups were rejected by Mommsen in favor of a topographical arrangement, his collecting, viewing and interpretation work remained an important component of the project. The corpus of the ancient sarcophagus reliefs was Jahn's idea, and he had started it. The first volumes appeared years after his death, edited by his student Carl Robert .

Jahn's biography of WA Mozart (1856–1859) is of great importance for musicology , in which he collected the written sources on the composer's life for the first time and evaluated them using philological methods. Until the new edition by Hermann Abert (5th edition, 1919/1921), Jahn's work remained fundamental to Mozart research, even if his judgment was not entirely free of prejudices.

In addition, Jahn planned a Beethoven biography and was able to interview several friends and contemporaries of the composer during a stay in Vienna in 1852, including Carl Czerny and Franz Grillparzer . During a subsequent stay in Frankfurt, he had his notes checked by Beethoven's former secretary, Anton Schindler . He also made copies of numerous letters from Beethoven. After Jahn gave up the project, he made his material available to Alexander Wheelock Thayer . Jahn's valuable Beethoven notes (2 folders) are now in the music department of the Berlin State Library .

student

As a stimulating academic teacher with a sociable character, Jahn had a lasting impact on philology in Germany, alongside his research, primarily through his students. His most famous students were the science organizers Theodor Mommsen (Greifswald, 1839–1842) and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Bonn, 1867–1869). He particularly influenced the latter through his view of the subject and especially through his appreciation of the Hellenistic writers, who were only brought into the center of philological research by Wilamowitz.

Other students of Jahn were Otto Benndorf , Hugo Blümner , Eugen Bormann , Conrad Bursian , Karl Dilthey , Wolfgang Helbig , Adolf Michaelis and Eugen Petersen . Friedrich Nietzsche and Erwin Rohde viewed Jahn from a critical distance, especially after they became acquainted with Richard Wagner, whose music Jahn had critically reviewed.

Fonts (selection)

Otto Jahn's bookplate
  • Archaeological:
    • Palamedes (1836)
    • Telephos and Troilos (1841)
    • The paintings of Polygnot (1841)
    • Pentheus and the Maenads (1841)
    • Paris and Oinone (1844)
    • Hellenic art (1846)
    • Peitho, the goddess of persuasion (1847)
    • About some representations of the Paris judgment (1849)
    • The Ficoronian Cista (1852)
    • Pausaniae descriptio arcis Athenarum (3rd edition 1901)
    • Representations of Greek poets on vase pictures (1861)
  • Philologically:
  • Biographically and aesthetically:
    • About Mendelssohn's Paul (1842)
    • Mozart's biography , an extraordinary achievement of great importance for music history (3rd edition by H. Deiters, 1889–1891), also available as a digital edition: WA Mozart , Kleine Digitale Bibliothek, Volume 40 of Directmedia Publishing Berlin 2007, ISBN 978- 3-89853-340-9
    • Ludwig Uhland (1863)
    • Collected Essays on Music (1866)
    • Biographical Essays (1866).

His Greek illustrated chronicles were published by his nephew Adolf Michaelis after his death .

literature

Basic representations
further reading

Web links

Commons : Otto Jahn  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Otto Jahn  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Müller (1991) pp. 35-36.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Knoche: The Roman satire . Berlin 1949. p. 86.
  3. ↑ Ulrich Knoche: The Roman satire . Berlin 1949. pp. 96-97.
  4. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: The birth of tragedy from the spirit of music, Carl Hanser Verlag 1980, p. 109.
personal data
SURNAME Jahn, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archaeologist, musicologist and philologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1869
Place of death Goettingen