{"id":758,"date":"2021-12-21T10:07:27","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T09:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/dai1\/?p=758"},"modified":"2024-01-25T13:10:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T12:10:30","slug":"eugen-petersen-1836-1919","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/2021\/12\/21\/eugen-petersen-1836-1919\/","title":{"rendered":"Eugen Petersen (1836\u20131919)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The classical archaeologist Eugen Petersen is known primarily as the long-serving director of DAI Rome. His name is not, however, necessarily associated with the DAI Athens: a good reason to remember him here and recount his time at the Athenian department. The Centraldirektion<\/em> (Executive Committee [EC]) of the DAI appointed Eugen Petersen First Secretary of the department in 1886. He thus succeeded Ulrich K\u00f6hler, when the latter left Athens to assume a professorship in Berlin after eleven highly meritorious years in office. When the official announcement (fig.\u00a01)<\/em> of the appointment of ‘Professor Dr. Eugen Petersen’ was sent to Athens on October 1, 1886, K\u00f6hler had apparently already departed, because the letter was addressed to Habbo G. Lolling, who was temporarily in charge of the department. These and other documents will soon be made available to the public via the project ARCHAthen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 1: On behalf of the Centraldirektion of the DAI, Adolf Kirchhoff informs H. Lolling of the appointment of Eugen Petersen as First Secretary. Archive of the DAI at Athens, Altregistratur<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Term in office in Athens<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the Executive Committee decided in favor of Eugen Petersen as its new, now third director of the Athenian department, he was an established, productive scholar with many years of professional experience \u2013 among other things, as professor at the universities of Dorpat (Tartu, Estonia) and Prague \u2013 with good connections in scholarly circles. In 1873, for example, he had composed a monograph on Greek art titled ‘Die Kunst des Pheidias am Parthenon und zu Olympia’ (‘The art of Pheidias on the Parthenon and at Olympia’). As leading secretary, he spoke at a total of five meetings of the Institute during the Winter of 1886\/1887; that is, he gave brief scholarly lectures. For example, on December 9, 1886 \u2013 on the occasion of the ‘Winckelmannfeier’ \u2013 celebrating the birthday of Johann Joachim Winckelmann \u2013 as one of the founders of classical archaeology in Germany \u2013 he delivered a talk about Archaic female sculpture on the Acropolis. As usual, several of these talks subsequently appeared in expanded form in the Institute\u2019s own journal, Athenische Mitteilungen<\/em>. As emerges clearly from them, he dedicated himself predominantly to the art and history of the Acropolis during his time at Athens.<\/p>\n

Petersen lived with his wife Ida (n\u00e9e Michaelis) in a faculty apartment (Sporn \u2013 Bilis 2018, 22 and fig. 29) in a building rented by the Institute at 31 Akadimias Street. His brother-in-law Adolf Michaelis had lived in a room there not long beforehand in September 1886 and, as he wrote in a letter to his family, anticipated that the couple\u2019s arrival would bring about a significant improvement to his surroundings: “My room is adequate, if small [\u2026] You can tell from the furnishings and everything else that only bachelors have ever lived here. That explains a certain lack of comfort [\u2026] Ida will find a grateful field for reforms here, likewise in an audit of the furniture.” (von Steuben 2004, 99). The First Secretary and his wife indeed seem to have taken pains to show hospitality: there are accounts of dinners hosted by the Petersens to which they invited younger archaeologists. In winter, however, the apartment nonetheless appears to have been very uncomfortable on account of poor heating.<\/p>\n

The experienced excavator Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld was appointed alongside Petersen as Second Secretary in Athens. In March 1887 \u2013 or more precisely, from March 1 to March 13 \u2013 Petersen and D\u00f6rpfeld undertook a joint excavation in Athens \u2013 between the Pnyx and the Theseion. Petersen apparently introduced a diary of finds, which was kept alongside the excavation diary (fig. 2).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Fig. 2: Flyleaf and title page of the find diary of the Petersen\u2013D\u00f6rpfeld excavation between the Pnyx and ‘Theseion’ in March 1887. D-DAI-Athen-Archiv-NL-D\u00f6rpfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Probably after this excavation, in the spring, the directors and recipients of the travel grant regularly awarded to two to four young archaeologists by the German Archaeological Institute took a trip to Olympia. It was on this trip that the only photograph of Petersen during his term in office in Athens was taken (for the identity of all the people in the photograph, see Brandt 2019, fig. 2 with caption) (fig. 3).<\/em>\u00a0As mentioned earlier, Petersen had written an important study of the art of Phidias in Olympia long before the trip, but Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld was presumably the actual leader of the trip on account of his longstanding familiarity with the site as the technical director of the early excavation in 1875\u20131881.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 3: Olympia, 1886\/1887: The Institute directors with travel-grant recipients in Olympia. First Secretary Eugen Petersen at left, Second Secretary Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld with light-colored cap center. Stadtarchiv Wuppertal ND 23 Nachlass Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld, photographer unknown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It apparently soon became clear that the personalities of the two men made smooth collaboration impossible. The Executive Committee, thereupon, seized the opportunity to appoint Petersen, after just nine months in office, to the position of First Secretary in Rome, which had unexpectedly become vacant after the death of Wilhelm Henzen (fig. 4)<\/em>. This decision amounted to a promotion and eased tensions in Athens, where D\u00f6rpfeld now rose to First Secretary.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 4: Announcement of the appointment of Eugen Petersen to First Secretary of the Rome department and of Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld to First Secretary of the Athens Department. Archiv DAI Athen, Altregistratur Verf\u00fcgungen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Lokroi Epizephyrioi Project<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interestingly, the end of Petersen\u2019s career in Athens was not the end of his collaboration with D\u00f6rpfeld. When Petersen began an excavation in Lokroi Epizephyrioi with Paolo Orsi, D\u00f6rpfeld traveled to Italy with the blessing of the Executive Committee<\/p>\n

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Fig. 5: Annual report by W. D\u00f6rpfeld from 1889\/1890 to the Executive Committee, in which he gives an account of his trip to “Lokri”. Archiv DAI Athen, Altregistratur Berichte<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(fig.\u00a05)<\/em> to draw plans of the temple discovered there and take a series of photographs of finds and contexts. D\u00f6rpfeld brought the photographs back with him to Athens, and there the glass negatives remain today as a physical part of the photographic archive in Athens and are available online via the photographic database of the DAI\u00a0 https:\/\/arachne.dainst.org\/entity\/8341<\/a>. On some of these photographs, the excavator Petersen can be seen, and the Italian archaeologist Paolo Orsi (Malacrino \u2013 Musumeci 2018), with whose permission and participation Petersen conducted the excavation.<\/p>\n

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Fig. 6: Lokroi Epizephyrioi, 1889, photograph of the excavator Eugen Petersen (right) and his colleague Paolo Orsi (left); D-DAI-ATH-Locri-Epizephyrii-0006_detail, photograph by Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Fig. 7: Locroi Epizephyrioi 1889, Eugen Petersen, D-DAI-ATH-Locri-Epizephyrii-0014_Detail, photograph by Wilhelm D\u00f6rpfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Fig. 8: Plan of the temple in Lokroi Epizephyrioi and its different construction phases (drawn by W. D\u00f6rpfeld in late 1889); D-DAI-ATH-Locri-Epizephyrii-0016, photographer unknown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These pictures include two that reproduce D\u00f6rpfeld\u2019s drawings of different construction phases of the temple. We can imagine a scenario in which D\u00f6rpfeld took his preliminary plans from the field back to Athens, completed them for publication, and subsequently made a photographic copy for the Institute before sending the plans to Petersen. As Petersen later told a colleague in a different context (Wickert 1979, 11) he found D\u00f6rpfeld extremely intense \u2013 almost frenetic \u2013 during their collaboration in Lokroi, but he nonetheless respected him and considered him an honest man.<\/p>\n

Retirement and work visit to Athens<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hence it is no surprise that in 1907, two years after Petersen had retired in 1905, during a final visit to Athens he was invited for dinner by D\u00f6rpfeld, and, as was the custom, signed D\u00f6rpfeld\u2019s guestbook. Now almost seventy years old, Petersen had made the trip to conclude studies that he had begun during his time in Athens. He thus composed the volume ‘Die Burgtempel der Athenaia’ \u00a0(‘The citadel temples of the Athenaia’), which appeared in 1907, in which he distanced himself from D\u00f6rpfeld\u2019s methodology in matter-of-fact terms and developed points of criticism that he had touched on in Athenische Mitteilungen 1887 as an appendix to D\u00f6rpfeld\u2019s article about the old temple of Athena. He then published a richly illustrated work on Athens intended for a wider audience in the series ‘Ber\u00fchmte Kunstst\u00e4tten’\u00a0 (‘Famous art sites’) in 1908; the Acropolis naturally featured in it prominently. Both volumes are late fruits of Petersen\u2019s time in Athens. He also wrote predominantly on Greek subjects in the following years until his death in 1919.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Petersen\u2019s bibliography, see https:\/\/zenon.dainst.org\/<\/a> author: Petersen, Eugen Adolf Hermann,\u200f \u200e 1836\u20131919<\/p>\n

\n

Works cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blanck 1988
H. Blanck, Eugen Petersen (1836\u20131919), in: R. Lullies \u2013 W. Schiering (eds.), Arch\u00e4ologenbildnisse \u2013 Portr\u00e4ts und Kurzbiographien von Klassischen Arch\u00e4ologen deutscher Sprache (Mainz 1988) 63 f.<\/p>\n

Brandt 2019
K. Brandt, Paul Wolters \u2013 in den Blickpunkt ger\u00fcckt, in: DAI AtheNea 2019, 96\u201397<\/p>\n

Malacrino \u2013 Musumeci 2018
C. Malacrino \u2013 M. Musumeci (eds.), Paolo Orsi \u2013 Alle origini dell\u2019archeologia tra Calabria e Sicilia, MArRC Catalogi 18 (Regio Calabria 2018)<\/p>\n

Petersen 1890
E. Petersen, Tempel in Lokri, RM 5, 1890, 11\u2013227<\/p>\n

Von Steuben 2004
H. von Steuben (ed.), Adolf Michaelis \u2013 Arch\u00e4ologische Reisen in Griechenland 1860 und 1886 (M\u00f6hnesee 2004)<\/p>\n

L. Wickert 1979
Wickert, Zur Geschichte der Abteilung Athen des Deutschen Arch\u00e4ologischen Instituts von 1879 bis 1929, Beitr\u00e4ge zur Geschichte des Deutschen Arch\u00e4ologischen Instituts, DAIGeschDok 2 (Mainz 1979)<\/p>\n\n\n

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The classical archaeologist Eugen Petersen is known primarily as the long-serving director of DAI Rome. His name is not, however, necessarily associated with the DAI Athens: a good reason to remember him here and recount his time at the Athenian … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,42,41,40,39,44,43,34,37,45,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dai-staff","category-dorpfeld-wilhelm","category-kirchhoff-adolf","category-kohler-ulrich","category-lolling-habbo-g","category-michaelis-adolf","category-orsi-paolo","category-people","category-petersen-eugen","category-petersen-ida-nee-michaelis","category-scientific-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2776,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/2776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/people-at-the-dai-athens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}