Peter Oluf Brøndsted

Peter Oluf Brøndsted, painted by Christian Albrecht Jensen

Peter Oluf Brøndsted (born November 17, 1780 in Fruering in Jutland , † June 26, 1842 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish archaeologist and explorer. The son of a pastor initially studied theology in Copenhagen and switched to philology from 1802. In 1806 he went to Paris with his friend Georg Koës for two years and then to Italy. From 1810 the two traveled to Greece with Otto Magnus von Stackelberg , Carl Haller von Hallerstein , the painter Jakob Linckh (1787–1841) and Georg Christian Gropius . The following year Koës died of pneumonia. Brøndsted and Linck carried out excavations at the Temple of Apollo on the island of Kea in the winter of 1811/12 . He was the first Dane to take part in archaeological work in Greece.

After three years of active research in Greece, Brøndsted returned to Copenhagen in 1813, where he received an extraordinary professorship in Greek philology because of his success. He married the sister Frederikke of his late friend Koës, who died after giving birth to their third child. Brøndsted evaluated the notes and results of his field work in Greece and gave his lectures to a large group of interested students who, after his death, carried out further Danish expeditions to the Mediterranean under his successor Johan Louis Ussing (1820–1905) (e.g. Acropolis of Lindos ).

Brøndsted did not consider the available material to be sufficient, he gave up his professorship and in 1818 became Danish envoy to the Holy See in Rome. This enabled him to visit Sicily and the Ionian Islands in 1820/21 to collect additional material.

In 1826 Brøndsted went to London, mainly to study the Elgin Marbles and other antiques in the British Museum . From 1828 to 1832 he lived in Paris to oversee the publications for his travels. He was then appointed full professor of philology and archeology in Copenhagen and director of the royal coin and medal collection (now a department of the National Museum of Denmark ). In 1842 he became rector of the university. A fall from his horse days later resulted in his death.

His main work was the journeys and investigations in Greece (Stuttgart and Paris 1826 and 1830), of which only two volumes of the planned eight were published. Niels Vinding Dorph edited Den Ficoronisce Cista (Copenhagen 1847) from his estate .

In 1826 Brøndsted became a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . He was also a member of the Royal Society of Literature and a Knight of the Dannebrog Order .

Fonts

• Travel and research in Greece: in addition to the presentation and explanation of many newly discovered monuments of the Greek style, and a critical overview of all undertakings of this type, from Pausanias to our time,
  • Book 1, About the island of Keos now Zea, Stuttgart – Paris 1826 (digitized, Heidelberg library (Heidi) German edition)
  • Book 2, The Parthenon at Athens Castle, in its archaeological and historical relationships. Stuttgart – Paris 1830 (Heidi) German edition , (Heidi) French edition
• The Bronzes of Siris: Now in the British Museum. An archæological essay. London, 1836 (Heidi)

literature

• Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach : Memories from the life of the archaeologist Peter Oluf Bröndsted . In: Sheets for literary entertainment . 1845 II, no. 330–334 digitized volume II

Web links

• Works by and about Peter Oluf Brøndsted  in the German Digital Library