The egyptologist Georg Steindorff: A heritage in letters and its scientific exploration
The self-reflexion of a discipline is always a reflection of the
consciousness of the time dependence of scientific research too. The
possibility of a substantiated description of historical science
cultures stands and falls admittedly with suitable, sufficient explicit
and complex source-situations. Archive documents are not of interest
because of their anecdotal statement, the quality always depends much
more on the possibility of a many-sided view, which allows a control of
the studies.
These
aspects obtain outstanding importance, if biographies with a good
situation of proofs bridge big breaks of history. Hardly one biography
of an Egyptologist in the 19. – 20. Century is documented and suitable
to reflect the field of Egyptology from the height of the German Empire,
trough the 1. World War and the German Revolution, the Weimar Republic,
the Nazi-era and the 2. World War to reorganisation of the post-war
period under the sign of redemocratisation of the western societies and
is thereby comprehensible in varying roles in a multitude of archives
with different characters like the one of Georg Steindorff.
Georg Steindorff is born in 1861 in the Duchy of Anhalt to a Jewish
family of the middle class in Dessau. He evolves into a typical
representative of the dynamic pioneers in the time of the Second
Industrial Revolution in the German Empire and maintains friendly
contact with the royal family of Saxony. For a membership in the First
World War he is already too old. In the Weimar Republic he gains, thanks
to his role in Egyptology as publisher of the most important
professional journal, the Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und
Altertumskunde (ZÄS), and thanks to his close connection with the doyen
of German Egyptology, Adolf Erman, an inviolable position in the Saxon
Academy of Sciences, the central management of the German Archeological
Institute and the University of Leipzig, of which he is principal in
1923/24. Steindorff already converted to Protestantism during his
studies in the 80ies of the 19. Century, but due to his Jewish origin he
soon comes to the fore of the national-socialist race ideology. After
the employment ban in 1934 and other following repressions, he emigrates
to the USA in 1939.
Steindorffs diaries and letters always make, besides scientific
questions, the political processes in Germany and Europe a subject of
discussion. Immediately after the end of the war the contact by letter
to plenty of academic carriers of responsibility in Egyptology in
Germany reinstates. The international recognized, now 84 year-old
Scientist becomes an active commentator of the Nazi-dictatorship and the
entanglement of individual exponents. At the same time he carefully
observes from distance the development of his old domain and academy in
the soviet-occupied zone and the just founded GDR until his death in
summer of 1951.
Steindorffs curriculum vitae is an impressive example for the way of a
member of the emancipated Jewish middle class, who managed his way to
the top of the institutions with his engagement, talent and enthusiasm
and of whom is no getting around in Egyptology in time before and
between the two World Wars. His active lecturing activities, also in
front of notinternal audiences, today appear as almost modern. With the
single-minded construction of also this very day’s biggest academic
teaching-collection at a German university he provided importance to the
science-location Leipzig, out of the German borders. The same applies
for his directional role in conflicts of his generation about the
primacy of the egyptological methodology and the theory-charged concepts
of the 1920ies and 30ies, whose effects are disappeared from the
awareness today, although they significantly characterized Egyptology in
the post-war time.
The importance of this personality is especially documented with his
complex heritage of letters. The research and publication in ARACHNE was
made possible by the donation of the private correspondence of Georg
Steindorff by his grandson Thomas Hemer to the Leipzig University.
Therefore, he owes the biggest debt of gratitude. The bundle of archival
documents includes more than 6000 single sheets of the years 1884-1951.
The research was made within the project "Wissenshintergründe und
Forschungstransfer am Beispiel des Ägyptologen Georg Steindorff" from
2013 – 2015 with support from the German Research Foundation. The
publication of the results will appear in 2016: Susanne Voss und
Dietrich Raue (Hgg.), Wissenshintergründe und Forschungstransfer am Beispiel des Ägyptologen Georg Steindorff, Beihefte der Zeitschrift für
Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 3, Berlin: De Gruyter 2016.
They represent a first step of development, in which contributed,
besides the publishers, Alexandra Cappel, Thomas Gertzen and Kerstin
Seidel. To put the archive online to ARACHNE shall enable a broad circle
of a scientifically interested audience to work out more research
focuses.
Susanne Voss – Dietrich Raue
View the Steindorff letters
Posts
Stumble It!
No comments:
Post a Comment