Wolfgang Helbig

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Portrait and signature of Helbig

Wolfgang Helbig (born February 2, 1839 in Dresden , † October 6, 1915 in Rome ) was a German classical archaeologist .

Live and act

Wolfgang Helbig, son of the grammar school teacher Gustav Helbig , graduated from the Kreuzschule in Dresden at Easter 1856 , where Franz Overbeck was one of his school friends. He then began his studies in Classical Philology and Classical Archeology at the University of Göttingen with Ernst Curtius and Gustav Albert Sauppe in 1856, but moved to the University of Bonn in 1857 . There he heard primarily from the classical philologists Otto Jahn and Friedrich Ritschl and the classical archaeologist Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker . During his studies in 1856 he became a member of the Hannovera Göttingen fraternity . In 1861 he received his doctorate with the thesis Quaestiones scaenicae at Welcker. This was followed by his probationary year for the higher teaching post, which he completed at the Joachimsthal School in Berlin. In the fall of 1862 he went to Rome for two years as holder of the travel grant of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) .

After Heinrich Brunn left for Munich, he was appointed second secretary of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome in 1865 . Long journeys took him all over Italy , to Greece and North Africa , to France and Russia . For his personal protection he was given diplomatic status and was appointed Legation Councilor. In 1887 he resigned from the service, which Bernard Andreae attributes to the fact that after the death of Wilhelm Henzen he did not become his successor as first secretary and director of the DAI Rome, as he had hoped, but Eugen Petersen was appointed to this position. In the following years he lived as a private scholar in Rome, not least because of his marriage to the Russian princess and pianist Nadejda Schakowskoy (1847-1922) in 1866, which gave him financial independence. At the same time he worked as an art dealer and brokered various works of art to foreign museums and private collectors, including numerous pieces for the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Their Etruscan department is called "Helbig Museum".

Helbig rented the Villa Lante al Gianicolo and devoted himself to research as well as the art and antiques trade. Helbig and his wife ran a famous salon in which musicians and writers, nobility and crowned heads of Europe frequented. His son Demetrio Helbig , chemist and general in the Italian Air Force, bought the villa in 1909, which he sold to the Republic of Finland in 1950 as the seat of the embassy at the Holy See .

Helbig was a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. In 1882 he became a corresponding member of the Society of Sciences in Göttingen ; in 1893 the Bavarian Academy of Sciences appointed him a corresponding member. From 1876 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

Helbig's most important scientific activities include his research on wall painting in Pompeii and his first publication of the Fibula Praenestina in 1887. This fibula excavated in Praeneste , the inscription of which is considered to be the oldest text in Latin, was in the meantime regarded as a forgery in the 20th century (and Helbig accused of forgery), but its authenticity is now considered proven. His main work, however, is the guide to the public collections of classical antiquities in Rome , the first edition of which appeared in 1892. A second edition followed in 1899, the third edition was taken care of by Walther Amelung in 1912/13. The fourth and completely revised edition from 1963 to 1972, organized by Hermine Speier with the collaboration of Helga von Heintze and numerous young archaeologists of this generation, appeared under his name and is still a standard work today as "Der Helbig".

Fonts

In addition to numerous essays and smaller writings, Helbig published the following extensive works:

  • Wall paintings of the cities of Campania buried by Vesuvius. Leipzig 1868; Text ( Bavarian State Library, Munich) , panel section (Bavarian State Library, Munich) .
  • Investigations into the Campanian wall painting. Leipzig 1873.
  • The Italians in the Po Valley. Leipzig 1879.
  • The Homeric epic, explained from the monuments. Leipzig 1884. 2nd edition 1887.
  • On the history of hasta donatica (= treatises of the Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen, philological-historical class. New series, volume X, number 3). Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1908.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Wolfgang Helbig  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Wolfgang Helbig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ Henning Tegtmeyer : Directory of members of the fraternity of Hannovera Göttingen, 1848–1998, Düsseldorf 1998, page 28
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Helbig: scaenicae Quaestiones. Henry & Cohen, Bonn 1861 ( digitized version )
  3. ↑ Bernard Andreae: Brief history of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome presented in the work of its leading scholars. In: Communications of the German Archaeological Institute, Roman Department. Volume 100, 1993, pp. 5-41, here p. 23 f. ( PDF ).
  4. ^ Carl Jacobsen - the great collector. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek website, accessed March 11, 2019.
  5. ^ History of the Foundation of the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae (English).
  6. ↑ http://www.lincei.it/
  7. ↑ 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, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 109.
  8. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Wolfgang Helbig. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed January 20, 2017.
  9. ^ Guide to the public collections of classical antiquities in Rome (digitized version of the 2nd edition) .
personal data
SURNAME Helbig, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1915
Place of death Rome