Robert Zahn (archaeologist)

Robert Zahn (born January 9, 1870 in Bruchsal , † November 27, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German classical archaeologist and director of the Berlin Collection of Antiquities .

life and career

Robert Zahn was born to the confectioner Jakob Zahn. He later stated that it was here that interest in ancient industrial art was aroused. In 1876 the family moved to Stuttgart. Zahn first attended elementary school there and graduated from Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium Stuttgart . In 1888 he began studying Classical Archeology, Classical Philology and Ancient History at the University of Heidelberg . His most important teachers were Friedrich von Duhn , Karl Zangemeister , Erwin Rohde and Alfred von Domaszewski . In 1893 he passed the philological state examinationand then worked for a short time as a volunteer at the Heidelberg grammar school. In 1894 he moved to the Archaeological Institute of Heidelberg University as an assistant. He received his doctorate there in 1896 with a thesis that dealt with the representation of the barbarians in Greek art and literature. In the same year, Zahn traveled to Greece for the first time and worked there to organize the vase finds from the Acropolis excavations. From 1897 to 1899, Zahn held the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute for two consecutive years . The knowledge he acquired in this way moved the Leipzig Baedeker publishing house to entrust him with the revision of the art-historical introduction to the 4th edition of the 1904 Greek Baedeker .

After his return to Germany, Zahn initially worked as a freelancer at the antiques department in Berlin and began working at the institution where he was to work until his retirement. In 1901 he was promoted to permanent assistant director, in 1909 he became curator . After Hermann Winnefeld's death in 1918, Zahn moved up to the position of Second Director; after Theodor Wiegand left museum service in 1931, he became the first director of the collection and remained in this position until his retirement in 1935. Zahn declined a call to the Heidelberg professorship 1920, because he did not want to do without the daily use of the antique originals. From 1928 to 1936 he taught alongside his museum work as an honorary professor at the Berlin University . He died in 1945 after a long illness.

During his time in Berlin, Zahn developed into an internationally recognized specialist in antique ceramics, antique glass and antique gold jewelry. Among other things, he succeeded in localizing the so-called clazomenic ceramics . His work was mostly based on individual items or related groups of finds in order to be able to describe entire groups of finds on the basis of the individual considerations. In addition, he always tried to put the finds in a historical context. Zahn's written oeuvre mainly includes essays and reports as well as collection catalogs. In 1921 he described the collection of the Bachstitz Gallery in two volumes , and in 1929 the collection of antique jewelry and antique cabaret of the building councilor Adolf Schiller . He carried out fundamental preparatory work for the catalogs of the jewelry collections in the Berlin Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . Zahn also placed particular emphasis on public relations, for example in the form of museum tours and lectures, and tried to introduce young people to ancient art. Zahn was a full member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1924 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

literature

• Carl Weickert : Robert Zahn † . In: Gnomon 22, 1950, pp. 90-92.
• Gerald Heres : Robert Zahn. A contribution to the history of the Berlin Collection of Antiquities . In: Research and Reports 12, 1970, pp. 7-20.
• Reinhard Lullies : Robert Zahn . In: Reinhard Lullies, Wolfgang Schiering (Ed.): Archaeological portraits . Portraits and short biographies of classical archaeologists in the German language. 2nd edition, Zabern, Mainz 1991, ISBN 3-8053-0971-6 , pp. 175-176.

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Zahn in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, Volume 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 265.