Tübingen gun runner
The Tübingen gun runner is an ancient statuette of a Greek athlete wearing only a helmet from around 485 BC. In Attica . It is exhibited in the Museum of the University of Tübingen (MUT) . At the end of the 19th century, the athlete's characteristic posture led Friedrich Hauser to interpret the statuette as an armed Hoplitodromos runner in the starting position, an interpretation that is still undisputed today.
description
The small statuette is made of solid tin bronze . It depicts a bearded, naked man with a helmet in a forward leaning position, taking a small step with his left leg. The athlete stands in the starting position typical for Greek runners, with the left foot slightly forward and the right arm extended horizontally forward with an open hand. The hole in his left fist shows that he was originally holding an object. Both feet are on the ground and his bearded face is raised expectantly. The runner bends his knees and tenses his muscular, forward-leaning upper body as if waiting for the start signal. The chest is turned towards his left arm, on which he probably wore a round shield. The statuette lacks the shield that was once made separately. The helmet bush has also been lost in the meantime. It tapered to a point in front and back and hung far back down to the back. The figure is firmly attached to its flat bronze base plate by two round pins on the soles of the feet.
His nakedness characterizes the portrayed man as an athlete as opposed to a soldier. However, it does not correspond to reality, because in the race, which was over 2 stadiums (350 meters), the athletes had to wear a shield and helmet as well as a heavy breastplate and sometimes even greaves . The gun barrel was used for the physical training of heavily armed warriors. At the same time it was a combat tactic: for example, the united Greek army at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. BC initiated the decisive defeat of the Persians with their attack at a run.
history
Presumably a winner of a Hoplitodromos competition has the bronze figure around 485 BC. And then bequeathed to the Acropolis of Athens. The statuette could have been used as a dedication by a victorious athlete in the sanctuary, where it was probably placed with an inscription in a prominent place so that every passerby could be informed of the name and performance of the victorious athlete.
Carl Sigmund Tux (1715–1798), a government official, had inherited the statue from his father and donated his collection to the University of Tübingen when he died on January 29, 1798 without an heir. The statue initially had an inconspicuous existence in Tübingen, until its value was recognized by the Munich Councilor Friedrich Thiersch . In 1827 he recognized the resemblance of the 163 millimeter high bronze statue to the almost life-size marble gable sculptures of the Aphaia Temple on Aegina , which had just arrived in Munich at the time, supplemented and reconstructed by the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in Rome . It became clear that the statue had to be supplemented with a shield.
The statue was originally kept in the Tübingen University Library, which moved to Hohentübingen Castle in 1831 . In 1833 it was given its own base with a glass case in the north-east tower of the castle. In 1997/98, the bronze statue found its way back to the castle, in the same tower room, in which it had stood over 100 years ago, via various intermediate stops in the collection of antiquities in the Pflegehof and in Wilhelmstrasse 9.
As the X-ray images show, the statuette was made as a solid cast using the lost wax technique. Three samples were taken from the attached floor slab for a material analysis in 1886 and analyzed by Tübingen chemist Lothar Meyer . The alloy consists of 88% copper, 11% tin and 0.4% iron. Only recently have modern techniques been able to provide information about the material composition of the statuette itself: examinations of the surface using spatially resolved μ- X-ray fluorescence and μ- X-ray diffractometry clearly show a somewhat different alloy of the figure and the base plate and suggest that this probably only began in of modern times.
literature
- Kathrin B. Zimmer: The Tübingen gun runner. A Greek masterpiece from the time of the Persian Wars , Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT 2015 (Small Monographs of MUT, Volume 2), ISBN 978-3-9816616-7-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Kathrin B. Zimmer: Treasure of the month January: The gun runner is a well-known Tübingen highlight - little athlete as a masterpiece. Tagblatt, January 5, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e cultural property . Retrieved October 23, 2011. Accessed October 23, 2011. See: TÜpedia .
- ↑ Carol C. Mattusch: Greek Bronze Statuary: From the Beginnings Through the Fifth Century BC Cornell University Press, 1988, p. 115.