Otto Waser

Otto Waser, 1914

Otto Waser (born September 23, 1870 in Zurich , † January 24, 1952 in Zollikon ) was a Swiss classical archaeologist .

Otto Waser completed all school levels in his hometown of Zurich and also studied at the University of Zurich . He received his doctorate in Classical Philology in 1894 under Hermann Hitzig and Adolf Kaegi , with a minor in Classical Archeology under Hugo Blümner . Waser then became a teacher and taught at high schools in Bern , Zurich and Winterthur . In 1900 he completed his habilitation at Berlin University , and in 1903 again in Zurich. In 1915 Waser became adjunct professor in Zurich. In 1919 he succeeded Blümner as associate professor and director of the archaeological collection at the University of Zurich . While Blümner still held a professorship that combined archeology and classical philology, Waser was the first professor of archeology who only had to represent this subject. In 1940 he resigned from his professorship.

Waser's specialist publications are not very numerous. The book Folklore and Greco-Roman Antiquity , published in 1916, was one of the few monographic publications . He made a large number of articles for the Realencyclopedia of Classical Antiquity and for Roscher's Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology . Other publications dealt with the university collection. He published a description of the cast collection and a small volume with lectures on sculpture. He tried to make the collection known beyond specialist circles through guided tours and many articles in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung .

But Waser's interests were not limited to the archeology and mythology of antiquity. He was the editor and driving force of the cultural magazine Die Schweiz , which was distributed as far as southern Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Treatises on modern art as well as modern literature have been published here. Co-editor was Maria Krebs, whom he married in 1905 and who became known as a writer under her new name, Maria Waser . From his early years Waser was also a leading member of the Hottinger reading circle , in which a large part of contemporary authors of European literature read their works. In 1926 he founded the Hellas association. Swiss Association of Friends of Greece with. Until 1949 he was President of the Eastern Switzerland Section. He then became honorary president of the association. In several writings he dealt with the painter Anton Graff .

Fonts

• Scylla and Charybdis in the literature and art of the Greeks and Romans. Zurich 1894 (= dissertation, digitized version ).
• Charon, Charun, Charos. Mythological-archaeological monograph. Weidmann, Berlin 1898 (= habilitation thesis).
• Folklore and Greco-Roman Antiquity. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel 1916.
• Anton Graff 1736-1813. (= Switzerland in German intellectual life . Illustrated series. Volume 7), Huber & Co., Frauenfeld 1926.
• The Zurich Archaeological Collection, its creation and development. (= New Year's paper for the best of the orphanage in Zurich. Volume 98), Beer, Zurich 1935.
• From the Acropolis and the Parthenon. From the equestrian frieze and the meaning of the gable representations. (= Hofmann Library. Number 102), Hofmann, Zurich 1944.

literature

Wikisource: Otto Waser  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Otto Waser in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hans Peter Isler : Otto Waser 1870–1952. In: Reinhard Lullies , Wolfgang Schiering (Hrsg.): Archäologenbildnisse . Portraits and short biographies of classical archaeologists in the German language. Von Zabern, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-8053-0971-6 , pp. 177-178.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Switzerland on E-Periodica .