Full Name: Benndorf, Otto
Other Names:
- Otto Benndorf
Gender: male
Date Born: 13 September 1838
Date Died: 02 January 1907
Place Born: Greiz in Vogtland, Thuringia, Austria
Place Died: Vienna, Vienna state, Austria
Home Country/ies: Austria
Subject Area(s): Classical
Overview
Classicist art historian. Benndorf studied under the archaeologist/philologist Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784-1868), the pottery scholar Otto Jahn and the classicist Friedrich Ritschl (1806-1876) at Bonn. He wrote his habilitationschrift in 1868 under Friedrich Wieseler (1811-1892) in Göttingen. During a brief position teaching at Schulpforte, Germany, his pupils included the young Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He was appointed Extraordinarius professor of archaeology at the University of Zürich in 1869, moving to the University of Munich in 1871 and Prague the following year. He participated in the second Austrian archaeological expedition to Samothrace with Alexander Conze in 1875. Shortly thereafter he succeeded Conze for the chair in Vienna in 1877. At Vienna he founded the archaeology and epigraphy department. In 1881-1882 he excavated the Heroon of Gjölbaschi-Trysa in Lucia, sending the reliefs, entrance tower, sarcophagus, and more than one hundred boxes to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 1882. His students in Vienna included Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff, whom he taught archaeology; the Vienna-school historian Julius Alwin von Schlosser studied under him as well. He organized the first excavation of Ephesos along with Carl Humann, director of excavations for Prussia. Benndorf founded the österreichische Archäologische Institut (Austrian Archaeological Institute) in 1898 and was its first director until his death. His students included Franz Studniczka and son was the distinguished physicist Hans Benndorf (1870-1953).
Selected Bibliography
Griechische und sizilische Vasenbilder. Berlin: I. Guttentag, 1869-1883; Wiener Vorlegeblätter für archaeologische übungen. 5 vols. Vienna: A. Hölder, 1869-1891; Die Antiken von Zürich: Beschrieben von Otto Benndorf. Zürich: S. Höhr, 1872; Die Metopen von Selinunt. Berlin: I. Guttentag (D. Collin), 1873; Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepukralmasken. Vienna: K. Akademie der wissenschaften, 1878; Abhandlungen des Archäologisch-epigraphischen Seminars der Universität Wien. 15 vols. Vienna: Gerold’s Sohn, 1880-1913; Das Heroon von Gjölbaschi-Trysa. Vienna: Holzhausen, 1889; Forschungen in Ephesos. I. Veroeffentl. vom Oesterr. Archaeol. Inst. Vienna: Holder, 1905.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 67-68; Calder, William, III. “Otto Benndorf.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 150-151.
Contributors: Lee Sorensen