Full Name: Lippold, Georg
Gender: male
Date Born: 1885
Date Died: 1954
Place Born: Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany
Place Died: Erlangen, Bavaria, Germany
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, Classical, and Roman (ancient Italian culture or period)
Overview
Specialist in Greek and Roman Art. Lippold was the son of a German supreme court judge. He studied at Munich and Berlin (1903-1907) where he was one of the last students of Adolf Furtwängler who greatly influenced Lippold’s work. Initially Lippold worked as a volunteer at the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum in Mainz, 1908, and at the Martin von Wagner Museum in Wurzburg 1910-11. In 1912 he completed his Habilitationsschrift, allowing him to lecture in Munich, which he did in 1919. He moved to the university in Erlangen as a lecturer in 1920 and in 1925 as named Ordinarius professor which he held until 1953. In 1923 he published what would be one of his most important publications, Kopien und Umbildungen griechischer Statuen, a thorough treatment on the copy system in the ancient world.Throughout the years of the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany, Lippold retained his academic appointments in Germany despite his vocal opposition to national socialism and Hitler, as early as 1933. In 1936 he took over the cataloging of the Vatican collections from Walther Amelung, producing Die Skulpturen des Vatikanischen Museums (volume 1). Lippold also assumed the editorship of the Bruckmann (publisher) series on classical art following the death of Paul Arndt in 1937. This included Brunn-Bruckmann’s Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Sculptur (begun 1888) and Griechische und römische Porträts (begun 1891). His Griechische Plastik, a volume in the Handbuch der Archäologie (1950) was based on literary and artistic sources. He was made emeritus at Erlangen in 1954, but died following a traffic accident the same year. His second volume on the sculpture of the Vatican Museums appeared in 1956. According to Margarete Bieber, Lippold’s Griechische Plastik, volume 3 of the Handbuch der Archäologie was his finest work. The result of a lifetime of scholarship, incorporating his knowledge from his articles for the Pauly-Wissowa and the Arndt-Bruckmann publication. “There is hardly any sculptured Greek work of art missing,” she concluded.
Selected Bibliography
[dissertation:] Zu den Schildformen der Alten. Ph.D., Munich, 1907, published as “Griechische Schilde.” Münchener Archäologische Studien (1909): 399-504; [Habilitationsschrift:] Griechische Porträtstatuen. Munich: F. Bruckmann A. G., 1912; Kopien und Umbildungen griechischer Statuen. Munich: Oskar Beck, 1923; Griechische Plastik, volume 3 of: Otto, Walter Gustav Albrecht, and Herbig, Reinhard. Handbuch der Archäologie. Munich: Beck, 1950; Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, im Auftrage und unter Mitwirkung des Kaiserlich deutschen archäologischen Instituts (römische Abteilung), III, no. 1 (1936) and no. 2 (1956), Berlin: Kommission bei G. Reimer, 1930-1956; and Arndt, Paul, et al. Photographische Einzelaufnahmen antiker Sculpturen nach Auswahl und mit Text. Munich: Verlagsanstalt für Kunst und Wissenschaft vormals F.Bruckmann, etc., 1893-1920, series XIII-XV-B, XVI-A, XVI-B; Gemmen und kameen des altertums und der neuzeit. Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann,1922; Antike Gemäldekopien. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; in Kommission bei der C.H. Beck’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1951; Leda und Ganymedes. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1954. Our Organization: Mission & history
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 228-229; An Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 686;[obituary:] Bieber, Margarete. “Necrology.” American Journal of Archaeology 59 no. 1 (1955): 63-64.