Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (archaeologist)

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Contemporary portrait of Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein

Baron Otto Magnus von Stackelberg (born July 3 . Jul / 14. July  1786 greg. In Tallinn , † March 20 jul. / 1. April  1837 greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Swedish-born, Baltic German archaeologist , painter and writer.

Life

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg was born the son of Colonel Otto Christian Engelbrecht von Stackelberg and his wife Anna Gertruda Düker . The family lived on their Fähna estate . In contrast to his brothers, he showed more love and talent for musical things than for the pursuits that were popular with young men at the time, such as horse riding, fencing and hunting. He lost his father in 1792. When his mother recognized his talent in early drawings, she brought the German painter Reus to Fähna as a teacher. Nevertheless, a diplomatic career was planned for Stackelberg.

In 1803 Stackelberg first went to the University of Göttingen . From there he made a trip to Zurich with two of his brothers , which was to shape his future path in life. He looked at pictures by Johann Caspar Lavater and Salomon Gessner and visited Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi . They spent the winter in Geneva . Then he toured Italy with his brother Karl . There the decision matured to devote himself to art. In 1804 followed a stay to study painting in Dresden . The following year he continued his studies in Moscow , where he continued to prepare for his diplomatic career. But his mother had to realize that her son was not suitable for the diplomatic profession. From now on, Stackelberg devoted himself to art and his growing interest in archeology .

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg: "Costumes and customs of the modern Greeks"

This was followed by a second period of study in Göttingen and between 1806 and 1808 at the Dresden gallery. In the autumn of 1808 he set out on a second trip to Italy. This time Ernst Heinrich Toelken accompanied him . On the way to Italy he met Jean Paul in Bayreuth and visited the Schleissheim gallery in Munich . In 1809 he reached Rome . There he met the archaeologist Carl Haller von Hallerstein , the Danish archaeologist Peter Oluf Brøndsted and the Danish classical philologist Georg Koës , with whom he built friends. Bröndsted and Koës persuaded Stackelberg to accompany them on their trip to Greece . Together they wanted to present an archaeological publication after the trip, to which Stackelberg should contribute the landscape pictures.

Stackelbergs engraving from Greece

The trip to Greece was long and adventurous. They left Naples in July 1810 and finally arrived in Piraeus in September of that year . Other participants in the expedition were his three friends from Rome, the German painter Jakob Linckh , the then Austrian consul in Greece Georg Christian Gropius, and the British architects and archaeologists Charles Robert Cockerell and John Foster . The group carried out excavations in several locations in Greece. In 1812, parts of the Temple of Apollo at Bassae near Phigalia in Arcadia were uncovered. The frieze uncovered by the expedition is now in the British Museum in London . The expedition also discovered the temple of the Panhellenic Zeus in Aegina

Title page to “The Graves of the Hellenes in Pictures and Vase Paintings”, Berlin 1837

In autumn 1814 Stackelberg returned to his family in the Baltic States. In 1816 he traveled again to Italy and did research as an art historian on antiquity and the Middle Ages . In Rome he founded the Roman Hyperboraeans with Eduard Gerhard , August Kestner and Theodor Panofka in 1824 and in 1829 co-founded the Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica . Both were forerunners and germ cells of the later German Archaeological Institute . In 1826 von Stackelberg published his archaeological work The Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadien and the sculptures unearthed there , which also included his drawings. From Rome, the center of his life at that time, Stackelberg undertook further trips to Greece, Turkey and within Italy. In Etruria he discovered the Etrurian Hypogea of Corneto in 1827 .

In 1828 Stackelberg left Rome and Italy forever. From 1829 to 1833 he traveled again to Germany - where he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , among others -, England, France and the Netherlands. From 1835 he lived in Riga again . His niece Natalie von Stackelberg published his biography in 1882 on the basis of Stackelberg's diaries and letters. Gerhart Rodenwaldt described Stackelberg in a biography he wrote as the “discoverer of the Greek landscape”.

Fonts

  • with August Kestner: [ Unedited graves of Corneto ]. [not published; Print template from 1827/28]. Blackboards, digitized (ARACHNE)
  • Costumes et usages des peuples de la Grèce modern . Rome 1825-1826.
  • The Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia and the sculptures unearthed there. Rome 1826. Digitized version (HEIDI)
  • La Grèce. Vues pittoresques et topographiques, dessinus par OM baron de Stackelberg. Paris 1830. Digitized version (HEIDI)
  • The graves of the Greeks in sculptures and vase paintings . 2 volumes. 1835.
    • 2nd edition, in one volume, under the title Die Graeber der Hellenen . Berlin 1837 digitized (HEIDI)
  • Stackelberg or Peter Oluf Brøndsted are considered to be the originators of the anonymous writing: Quelques mots sur une diatribe anonyme intitulée "De quelques voyages récens dans la Grèce à l'occasion de l'expédition scientifique de la Morée" , Paris 1829

literature

Web links

Commons : Otto Magnus von Stackelberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register of the Olaikirche zu Reval (Estonian: Tallinna Oleviste kirik)
  2. ↑ According to other information, he died on March 23rd July. / April 4, 1837 greg. or March 27th jul. / April 8, 1837 greg. , see New Nekrolog der Deutschen (1839) and page 528 of the biography of C. Hoheisel (1863) in the bibliography.
  3. ^ Joseph Girgensohn:  Stackelberg, Otto Magnus Freiherr von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 35, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, p. 349.
personal data
SURNAME Stackelberg, Otto Magnus from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish-born, Baltic German archaeologist, painter and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Reval
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1837
Place of death St. Petersburg