Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (German:[ˈʃliːman]; 6 January 1822 – 26 December 1890) was a German businessman and an influential amateur archaeologist. He was an advocate of thehistoricity of places mentioned in the works ofHomer and an archaeological excavator ofHisarlik, now presumed to be the site ofTroy, along with theMycenaean sitesMycenae andTiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer'sIliad reflectshistorical events. Schliemann's excavation of nine layers of archaeological remains has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artefacts, including the layer that is believed to be the Homeric Troy.[1]
Heinrich's father was a poor pastor. His mother died in 1831, when Heinrich was nine years old, and his father sent Heinrich to live with his uncle Friedrich Schliemann, also a pastor. When he was eleven years old, his father paid for his enrollment in theGymnasium (grammar school) atNeustrelitz, but he had to leave it after three months. Heinrich's interest in history was initially encouraged by his father, who had schooled him in the tales of theIliad and theOdyssey and had given him a copy of Ludwig Jerrer'sIllustrated History of the World for Christmas in 1829. Schliemann claimed that at the age of 7 he had declared he would one day excavate the city ofTroy.[3][4]
Heinrich had to transfer to theRealschule (vocational school) after his father was accused of embezzling church funds[5]: 15 and made his exams in 1836. His family's poverty made a university education impossible. In his archaeological career, there was often a division between Schliemann and the educated professionals.[citation needed][6]
At age 14, after leaving Realschule, Heinrich became an apprentice at Herr Holtz's grocery inFürstenberg. He later said that his passion for Homer was born when he heard a drunken miller reciting it at the grocer's.[5]: 70 He laboured for five years until he was forced to leave because he hurt his chest, lifting a heavy barrel and coughing up blood.[7] In 1841, Schliemann moved toHamburg and became acabin boy on theDorothea, abrig bound forVenezuela. After twelve days at sea, the ship foundered in a gale. The survivors washed up on the shores of theNetherlands.[5]: 25 Schliemann became a messenger, office attendant, and later, a bookkeeper inAmsterdam.[8]
On 1 March 1844, 22-year-old Schliemann took a position with B. H. Schröder & Co., an import/export firm. In 1846, the firm sent him as aGeneral Agent toSt. Petersburg.[citation needed]
In time, Schliemann represented a number of companies. He learned Russian and Greek, employing a system that he used his entire life to learn languages; Schliemann claimed that it took him six weeks to learn a language[5]: 30 and wrote his diary in the language of whatever country he happened to be in. By the end of his life, he could converse in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Greek, Latin, and Arabic, besides his native German.[9]: 28–30
Schliemann's ability with languages was an important part of his career as a businessman in the importing trade. In 1850, he learned of the death of his brother, Ludwig, who had become wealthy as a speculator in the California gold fields.[10][11]
Schliemann went to California in early 1851 and started a bank inSacramento buying and reselling over a million dollars' worth of gold dust in just six months. When the local Rothschild agent complained about short-weight consignments, he left California, pretending it was because of illness.[12] While he was there, California became the 31st state in September 1850, and Schliemann acquiredUnited States citizenship. Schliemann propounded this story in his autobiography of 1881, though he clearly was in St Petersburg that day, and "in actual fact, ...obtained his American citizenship only in 1869."[13]
According to his memoirs, before arriving in California he dined inWashington, D.C., with PresidentMillard Fillmore and his family,[14] but W. Calder III says that Schliemann didn't attend but simply read about a similar gathering in the papers.[15]
Schliemann also published what he said was an eyewitness account of theSan Francisco Fire of 1851, which he said was in June although it took place in May. At the time he was in Sacramento and used the report of the fire in theSacramento Daily Journal to write his report.[16]
On 7 April 1852, he sold his business and returned to Russia. There he attempted to live the life of a gentleman, which brought him into contact with Ekaterina Petrovna Lyschin (1826–1896), the niece of one of his wealthy friends, whom he married on 12 October 1852.[citation needed] Schliemann next made a good profit trading inindigo dye.[12]
By 1858, Schliemann was 36 years old and wealthy enough to retire. In his memoirs, he claimed that he wished to dedicate himself to the pursuit of Troy.[citation needed]
Heinrich Schliemann was an amateur archaeologist. He was obsessed with the stories of Homer and ancient Mediterranean civilizations. He dedicated the second part of his life to unveiling the actual physical remains of the cities of Homer's epic tales. Many refer to him as the "father of pre-Hellenistic archaeology".[17]
In 1868, Schliemann visited sites in the Greek world, and published his second bookIthaka, der Peloponnesus und Troja in which he described ancient sites in Greece and the Ottoman Empire and asserted that Hissarlik was the site of Troy. He submitted this book as a dissertation to theUniversity of Rostock. In 1869, he was awarded a PhDin absentia[18] from the university for that submission.[12] David Traill wrote that the examiners gave him his PhD on the basis of his topographical analyses ofIthaca, which were in part simply translations of another author's work or drawn from poetic descriptions by the same author.[19] Other researchers who worked with documents from the university archives clearly contradict Traill's statements.[20]
Schliemann's first interest of a classical nature seems to have been the location of Troy. At the time he began excavating in Turkey, the site commonly believed to be Troy was atPınarbaşı, a hilltop at the south end of the Trojan Plain.[22] The site had been previously excavated by English amateur archaeologist and local expertFrank Calvert. Schliemann performed soundings at Pınarbaşı but was disappointed by his findings.[22] It was Calvert who identifiedHissarlik as Troy and suggested Schliemann dig there on land owned by Calvert's family.[23]
Schliemann was at first sceptical about the identification of Hissarlik with Troy but was persuaded by Calvert.[24] In 1870, Schliemann begandigging a trench at Hissarlik, and by 1873 had discovered nine buried cities.
Schliemann found pure copper and metal molds as well as a lot of other metal tools, cutlery, shields, and vases which were found at around 28 to29+1⁄2 feet deep at the site.[25]
The day before digging was to stop on 15 June 1873, which was the day he discovered gold, which he took to bePriam's Treasure trove.[9]: 36–39 [26]: 131, 153, 163–213 Recent research has confirmed several settlements on the site spanning 3,600 years.[27] The layer that Schliemann referred to as "the Burnt City"[28] and believed to be Troy is now thought to be from 3,000 to 2,000 BCE,[29] too early to be the location of the Trojan War as Homer describes it.
He later wrote that he had seen the gold glinting in the dirt and dismissed the workmen so that he and Sophia could excavate it themselves; they removed it in her shawl. However, Schliemann's oft-repeated story of the treasure being carried by Sophia in her shawl was untrue. Schliemann later admitted fabricating it; at the time of the discovery, Sophia was in fact with her family in Athens, following the death of her father.[30]
Schliemann smuggled the treasure out of the Ottoman Empire into Greece. The Ottoman Empire sued Schliemann in a Greek court, and Schliemann was forced to pay a 10,000 goldfrancindemnity. Schliemann ended up sending 50,000 gold francs to theConstantinople Imperial Museum, and got permission for further excavations at Hissarlik.[citation needed] In 1874 Schliemann publishedTroy and Its Remains. Schliemann at first offered his collections, which included Priam's Gold, to the Greek government, then the French, and finally the Russians. In 1881, his collections ended up in Berlin, housed first in the Ethnographic Museum, and then the Museum for Pre- and Early History, until the start ofWWII. In 1939, all exhibits were packed and stored in the museum basement, then moved to the Prussian State Bank vault in January 1941. In 1941, the treasure was moved to theFlakturm located at theBerlin Zoological Garden, called theZoo Tower. Dr.Wilhelm Unverzagt protected the three crates containing the Trojan gold when theBattle of Berlin commenced, right up untilSMERSH forces took control of the tower on 1 May. On 26 May 1945, Soviet forces, led by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Antipenko, Andre Konstantinov, deputy head of the Arts Committee,Viktor Lazarev, and Serafim Druzhinin, took the three crates away on trucks. The crates were then flown to Moscow on 30 June 1945, and taken to thePushkin Museum ten days later. In 1994, the museum admitted the collection was in their possession.[9][26][31]
In 1876, he began digging atMycenae, under the supervision ofPanagiotis Stamatakis, a Greek archaeologist attached to the excavation as a condition of Schliemann's permit.[32] There, he discovered theShaft Graves, with their skeletons and more regal gold, including the so-calledMask of Agamemnon. These findings were published inMycenae in 1878.[9]: 57–58 [26]: 226–252, 385
Although he had received permission in 1876 to continue excavation, Schliemann did not reopen the dig site at Troy until 1878–1879, after another excavation in Ithaca designed to locate a site mentioned in theOdyssey.Emile Burnouf andRudolf Virchow joined him there in 1879.[33]
From 1882 to 1883 Schliemann made a sixth excavation at Troy, in 1884 an excavation ofTiryns withWilhelm Dörpfeld, and from 1889 to 1890 a seventh and eighth excavation at Troy, also with Dörpfeld.[35]
After learning that his childhood sweetheart Minna had married, Schliemann married Ekaterina Petrovna Lyschin (1826–1896) on October 12, 1852. She was the niece of one of his wealthy friends in St Petersburg and they had three children; a son, Sergey (1855–1941), and two daughters, Natalya (1859–1869) and Nadezhda (1861–1935).[12] As a consequence of his many travels, Schliemann was often separated from his wife and children. He spent a month studying at theSorbonne in 1866 while moving his assets from St. Petersburg to Paris to invest in real estate. He asked his wife to join him, but she refused.[36]
Schliemann threatened to divorce Ekaterina twice before doing so. In 1869, he bought property and settled inIndianapolis for about three months to take advantage ofIndiana's liberal divorce laws, although he obtained the divorce by lying about his residency in the U.S. and his intention to remain in the state. He moved to Athens as soon as an Indiana court granted him the divorce and married again two months later.[37]
A former teacher and Athenian friend, Theokletos Vimpos, the Archbishop of Mantineia and Kynouria, helped Schliemann find someone "enthusiastic about Homer and about a rebirth of my beloved Greece...with a Greek name and a soul impassioned for learning." The archbishop suggested the 17-year-oldSophia Engastromenos, daughter of his cousin. They were married by the archbishop on 23 September 1869. They later had two children, Andromache andAgamemnon Schliemann.[26]: 90–91, 159–163
On 1 August 1890, Schliemann returned reluctantly toAthens, and in November travelled toHalle, where his chronic ear infection was operated upon, on 13 November. The doctors deemed the operation a success, but his inner ear became painfully inflamed. Ignoring his doctors' advice, he left the hospital and travelled toLeipzig,Berlin andParis. From the last, he planned to return toAthens in time for Christmas, but his ear condition became even worse. Too sick to make the boat ride fromNaples toGreece, Schliemann remained in Naples but managed to make a journey to the ruins ofPompeii. OnChristmas Day 1890, he collapsed into a coma; he died in a Naples hotel room the following day; the cause of death wascholesteatoma.[citation needed]
His corpse was then transported by friends to theFirst Cemetery in Athens. It was interred in amausoleum shaped like a temple erected in ancient Greek style, designed byErnst Ziller in the form of anamphiprostyle temple on top of a tall base. Thefrieze circling the outside of the mausoleum shows Schliemann conducting the excavations at Mycenae and other sites.
Schliemann's magnificent residence in the city centre of Athens, theIliou Melathron (Ιλίου Μέλαθρον, "Palace ofIlium"), today houses theNumismatic Museum of Athens.
Along withSir Arthur Evans, Schliemann was a pioneer in the study of theAegean civilization in theBronze Age. The two men knew of each other, Evans having visited Schliemann's sites. Schliemann had planned to excavate atKnossos but died before fulfilling that dream. Evans bought the site and stepped in to take charge of the project, which was then still in its infancy.[38]
Further excavation of theTroy site by others indicated that the level Schliemann named the Troy of theIliad was inaccurate, although they retain the names given by Schliemann. In a 1998 article forThe Classical World, D.F. Easton wrote that Schliemann "was not very good at separating fact from interpretation"[39] and claimed that, "Even in 1872 Frank Calvert could see from the pottery that Troy II had to be hundreds of years too early to be the Troy of the Trojan War, a point finally proven by the discovery of Mycenaean pottery in Troy VI in 1890."[39] "King Priam's Treasure" was found in the Troy II level, that of the Early Bronze Age, long before Priam's city of Troy VI or Troy VIIa in the prosperous and elaborate Mycenaean Age. Moreover, the finds were unique. The elaborate gold artefacts do not appear to belong to the Early Bronze Age.
His excavations were condemned by later archaeologists as having destroyed the main layers of the real Troy.Kenneth W. Harl, in the Teaching Company'sGreat Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor lecture series, sarcastically claimed that Schliemann's excavations were carried out with such rough methods that he did to Troy what the Greeks could not do in their times, destroying and levelling down the entire city walls to the ground.[40]
In 1972, Professor William Calder of theUniversity of Colorado, speaking at a commemoration of Schliemann's birthday, claimed that he had uncovered several possible problems in Schliemann's work. Other investigators followed, such as Professor David Traill of the University of California.[41]
A 2004 article of theNational Geographic Society called into question Schliemann's qualifications, his motives, and his methods:
In northwestern Turkey, Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site believed to be Troy in 1870. Schliemann was a German adventurer andcon-man who took sole credit for the discovery, even though he was digging at the site, called Hisarlik, at the behest of British archaeologist Frank Calvert. [...] Eager to find the legendary treasures of Troy, Schliemann blasted his way down to the second city, where he found what he believed were the jewels that once belonged to Helen. As it turns out, the jewels were a thousand years older than the time described in Homer's epic.[1]
A 2005 article presented similar criticisms when reporting on a speech by University of Pennsylvania scholar C. Brian Rose:
German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was the first to explore the Mound of Troy in the 1870s. Unfortunately, he had had no formal education in archaeology, and dug an enormous trench "which we still call the Schliemann Trench," according to Rose, because in the process Schliemann "destroyed a phenomenal amount of material." [...] Only much later in his career would he accept the fact that the treasure had been found at a layer one thousand years removed from the battle between the Greeks and Trojans, and thus that it could not have been the treasure of King Priam. Schliemann may not have discovered the truth, but the publicity stunt worked, making Schliemann and the site famous and igniting the field of Homeric studies in the late 19th century. During this period he was criticized and ridiculed of claims to fathering an offspring with a local Assyrian Girl sparking infidelity and adultery which Schliemann did not confirm or deny. '[42]
Schliemann's methods have been described as "savage and brutal. He ploughed through layers of soil and everything in them without proper record keeping—no mapping of finds, few descriptions of discoveries."[43] His rough excavation, conclusory interpretation and appropriation of artifacts were criticised by contemporary antiquarians, among them Spyridon Comnos andStephen Salisbury III.[44] The fame of his discoveries overshadowed such criticism through most of the twentieth century, such thatCarl Blegen excused his recklessness: "Although there were some regrettable blunders, those criticisms are largely colored by a comparison with modern techniques of digging; but it is only fair to remember that before 1876 very few persons, if anyone, yet really knew how excavations should properly be conducted. There was no science of archaeological investigation, and there was probably no other digger who was better than Schliemann in actual field work."[45]
In 1874, Schliemann also initiated and sponsored the removal of medieval edifices from theAcropolis of Athens, including the greatFrankish Tower. Despite considerable opposition, including fromKing George I of the Hellenes, Schliemann saw the project through.[46] The eminent historian ofFrankish Greece,William Miller, later denounced this as "an act of vandalism unworthy of any people imbued with a sense of the continuity of history",[47] and "pedantic barbarism".[48]
In his excavations at Troy, Schliemann found manyswastikas adorned on pottery[25] and consulted with Aryan nationalistÉmile-Louis Burnouf to identify the symbol. Claiming that the symbol was connected with the Aryans, Burnouf adopted and popularised the swastika as a symbol of Aryan nationalism.[49]
Mykena (1878). Translated into English asMycenae: A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns (1878) (reissued byCambridge University Press, 2010.ISBN978-1-108-01692-6)
Tiryns: Der prähistorische Palast der Könige von Tiryns (1885) (reissued byCambridge University Press, 2010.ISBN978-1-108-01720-6). Translated into EnglishTiryns: The Prehistoric Palace of the Kings of Tiryns (1885)
^abLovgren, Stefan (14 May 2004)."Did Troy really exist?".National Geographic News. National Geographic Society. Archived fromthe original on 15 May 2004. Retrieved18 December 2012.
^William M Calder; David A Traill (1986).Myth, scandal, and history: the Heinrich Schliemann controversy and a first edition of the Mycenaean diary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.ISBN978-0814317952.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Heinrich Schliemann; William M Calder; David A Traill (1986).Myth, scandal, and history : the Heinrich Schliemann controversy and a first edition of the Mycenaean diary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.ISBN0814317952.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Christo Thanos and Wout Arentzen,Schliemann and The California Gold Rush,Leiden, Sidestone Press, 2014,ISBN978-90-8890-255-0, pp. 46–47
^Leo Deuel,Memoirs of Heinrich Schliemann: A Documentary Portrait Drawn from his Autobiographical Writings, Letters, and Excavation Reports, New York: Harper, 1977,ISBN0-06-011106-2,p. 67; he also mentions meeting PresidentAndrew Johnson, p. 126.
^W. Calder III, "Schliemann on Schliemann: A Study in the Use of Sources," GRBS 13 (1972) 335-353.
^Traill, David A. "Schliemann's Mendacity: Fire and Fever in California." The Classical Journal 74, no. 4 (1979): 348-55. Accessed 23 April 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/3297144.
^Duchêne, Hervé (1996).The Golden Treasures of Troy: The Dream of Heinrich Schliemann. Thames & Hudson.
^Wilfried Bölke: Promotion an der Rostocker Universität. In: Bölke 1996, S. 160–168 Richter 1980a: W. Richter, „Ithaque, le Péloponnèse et Troie“ und das Promotionsverfahren Heinrich Schliemanns. In: Ethnogr. Archäol. Zeitschrift 21, 1980, S. 667-678. Richter 1980b: W. Richter, Die „altgriechisch geschriebene Dissertation“ Heinrich Schliemanns und die Darstellung seiner Promotion im biographischen Schrifttum. In: Antikerezeption, Antikeverhältnis, Antikebegegnung in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Schriften der Winckelmann-Gesellschaft, Bd. 6, S. 671-691.
Baelen, Jean (1959). "L'Acropole pendant la guerre d'Indépendance [II. Le drame de la Tour Franque]".Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé (in French).1 (2):240–298.doi:10.3406/bude.1959.3856.
Poole, Lynn; Poole, Gray (1966).One Passion, Two Loves.Crowell.OCLC284890..
Silberman, Neil Asher (1990).Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East. New York:Doubleday.ISBN978-0-385-41610-8.
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