Roland Hampe

Roland Hampe (born December 2, 1908 in Heidelberg ; † January 23, 1981 ibid) was a German classical archaeologist .

The son of the historian Karl Hampe first studied law at the University of Kiel . After a short time he switched to the subjects of history and economics, which his father had also studied. He came into contact with the George Circle through his teacher Friedrich Wolters . He decided to study Classical Archeology in Munich with Ernst Buschor and received his doctorate with him in 1934 with the work Early Greek Legend Pictures in Boeotia . In August 1933 he joined the Reiter SS . In 1934/1935 he received a travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute . From 1936 he was an assistant at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens and in 1937 took part in the excavation in Olympia with Ulf Jantzen . From 1938 he was assistant to Reinhard Herbig at the University of Würzburg . It was there in 1939 that his habilitation on the charioteer of Delphi took place .

During the German occupation, Hampe - deployed as an interpreter for the Wehrmacht with the rank of senior ensign in Greece - stayed at the German Archaeological Institute in Athens together with the commissioner for the protection of art, the historian Hans von Schoenebeck , the archaeologist Wilhelm Kraiker and the historical geographer Ernst Kirsten . With the support of the Art Protection Department , which was subordinate to the Army High Command, Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner , and the Foreign Office, the German Archaeological Institute succeeded in driving the special staff Reichsleiter Rosenberg out of Greece in autumn 1941 . Hampe, who knew the ancient and modern Greek language, made conspiratorial contact with the military commissioner General Hellmuth Felmy in August / September 1944 in order to help save Athens in October 1944. At the end of 1944, Hampe handed over the key to the completely preserved building of the German Archaeological Institute to Greek colleagues in an orderly manner and then returned to Germany unharmed.

After the war, in 1946, Hampe received the chair for Classical Archeology at the University of Kiel as a full professor, but was unable to set accents either there or as director of the Kiel Collection of Antiquities . From 1948 to 1957 Hampe was a professor at the University of Mainz , from 1957 until his retirement in 1975 he taught at the Archaeological Institute of the University of Heidelberg . He turned down a call to Munich. In 1959 he was accepted as a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . From 1979 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society . Hampe is buried with other members of his family in the cemetery in Heidelberg-Neuenheim .

The early Greek period was the focus of his research. He acquired numerous items for the collection of antiquities at the University of Heidelberg , including some Boeotian primers. Hampes' 1979 translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into German were powerful . He succeeded for the first time in transferring the two ancient Greek works into German hexameters , true to detail (i.e. mostly without filler words), yet factual and modern . His ethno-archaeological observations on the pottery trade on Crete and in Messenia , which he recorded with the ceramicist Adam Winter before the advancing industrialization, are also important.

Fonts (selection)

• Early Greek legends in Boeotia. German Archaeological Institute, Athens 1936.
• The rescue of Athens in October 1944 (= Institute for European History Mainz. Lectures. Vol. 5, ISSN  0537-7927 ). Steiner, Wiesbaden 1955.
• with Adam Winter: With potters in Crete, Messenia and Cyprus. Publishing house of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum and others, Mainz and others 1962.
• with Erika Simon : Greek legends in early Etruscan art. von Zabern, Mainz 1964.
• with Adam Winter: With potters and bricklayers in southern Italy, Sicily and Greece. Publishing house of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum and others, Mainz and others 1965.
• Ancient and modern Greece (= cultural history of the ancient world . Vol. 22). Edited by Erika Simon. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1984, ISBN 3-8053-0802-7 .
• Homerica. Edited with comments by Erika Simon. Verlag Franz Rutzen, Ruhpolding 2008, ISBN 978-3-9386-4631-1

literature

• Tonio Hölscher : Roland Hampe 1908–1981 . In: Reinhard Lullies (ed.): Archaeologists portraits . von Zabern, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-8053-0971-6 , pp. 307-308 ( online ).
• Tonio Hölscher: Roland Hampe †. In: Gnomon 53 (1981), p. 620 ff.
• Tonio Hölscher: Obituary for Roland Hampe (2.12.1908 - 23.1.1981). In: Yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for 1982 , Heidelberg 1983, pp. 50–52.
• Dagmar Düll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1933–1986. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-540-88834-5 , p. 253 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Roland Hampe in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ Some of his memories of this time in: Roland Hampe, Kieler Quellen. Stefan George and Friedrich Wolters. In: Castrum Peregrini 143/144, 1980, pp. 43-49.
2. ↑ Folker Reichert: Learned life. Karl Hampe, the Middle Ages and the history of the Germans. Göttingen 2009, p. 292.
3. ↑ Alexandra Kankeleit: The Greek cultural treasures during the German occupation in World War II - excerpts from the new book by B. Petrakos "Ta archaia tis Ellados kata ton polemo, 1940-1944". In: Delphi - Bilingual Journal. Number 10/11, 1999, pp. 53-57 ( online ).
4. ^ Members of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since it was founded in 1909
5. ↑ Member History: Roland Hampe. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 21, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Karl Kollnig, Inge Fresse: The Neuenheimer Friedhof. Heidelberg 2000, p. 118 f.