Full Name: Blümner, Hugo
Gender: male
Date Born: 1844
Date Died: 1919
Place Born: Berlin, Germany
Place Died: Zürich, Switzerland
Home Country/ies: Germany
Subject Area(s): archaeology and Classical
Overview
Classical archaeologist, art historian and successor to Karl Dilthey as professor at the University of Zürich, 1887-1919. Born the son of a policeman, Blümner studied archaeology at the University in Bonn under Otto Jahn, whose philology deeply influenced him. He taught initially at Breslau and Königsberg. In 1887 he succeeded Karl Dilthey as professor of classics at the university in Zürich. His most influential art-historical book appeared beginning in 1874 on the useful (or industrial) arts of Greece and Rome, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei Griechen und Römern. In it, Blümner organized massive archaeological evidence on vases and other objects. He also wrote linguistic works on Pausanias (1896) and even a book on the metaphorical language of Otto von Bismarck. His examination of the private lives of the Greeks is an important work demonstrating both his deep knowledge of antiquity and powerful skills of analysis.
Selected Bibliography
Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei den Griechen und Römern, 4 vols in 3. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1875-1887; Die gewerbliche Thätigkeit der Völker des klassischen Alterthums. Preisschriften, Fürstlich Jablonowski’sche Gesellschaft zu Leipzig, number 15, 1869; Leben und Sitten der Griechen. Leipzig:G. Freytag, 1887, English, The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks. London: Cassell and Company, 1893.
Sources
Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 86-87;Calder, William. “Blümner, Hugo.” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 1, p. 164.