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Friedrich Münzer (22 April 1868 – 20 October 1942) was a Germanclassical scholar noted for the development ofprosopography, particularly for his demonstrations of how family relationships inancient Rome connected to political struggles. He died inTheresienstadt concentration camp.
He was born at Oppeln,Silesia (nowOpole, Poland), into aJewish merchant family, went toLeipzig University and then in 1887 toBerlin University, where he wrote histhesisDe Gente Valeria under the supervision ofOtto Hirschfeld. In 1893 he traveled toRome, whereGeorg Wissowa recruited him to write biographical articles for theRealencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. From there he went toAthens and participated in excavations on theAcropolis. He also met Clara Engels there; they were married two years later, on 4 September 1897.
Meanwhile, Münzer had been appointed as an unsalaried lecturer atUniversity of Basel in 1896; he and Clara were supported by their parents and his article-writing. (When applying for the job, he reported himself as a member of theEvangelical Lutheran Church; three years earlier his CV had said he was of Jewish faith.) He was promoted to the second chair in classicalphilology in 1902. In 1912 he accepted a post atKönigsberg, which made him an official in the Germancivil service.
Clara died in theSpanish flupandemic on 15 December 1918; and in 1921, the widower took up a post at theUniversity of Münster. His greatest work,Römische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien (Roman noble parties and noble families") had appeared in 1920 and brought him fame for the first time.
He was appointed adean at the university in 1923, and in 1924 married a widow,Clara Lunkenée Ploeger, becoming a stepfather to two teenagers.
Münzer was generally apolitical, but politics began to catch up with him in 1933 in the form of the law that sought to dismissCommunists,"non-Aryans", and opponents of theNazi Party. Civil servants appointed before 1914 were officially exempt, but his biographers attribute his continued employment to the intercession of influential colleagues and former students. In January 1935 a new law required the removal of all lecturers and professors over the age of 65 (a move to make available more posts forNazi sympathizers), and Münzer formally retired on 23 July 1935.
His wife died in 1935 as well, and on 14 November of that year he was officially classified as Jewish, upon which many colleagues and acquaintances distanced themselves from him. Nevertheless, he continued to write biographical articles for Pauly-Wissowa, and they continued to accept them, in spite of a law forbidding Jews to publish. In 1938 a new law compelled him to adopt a Jewish middle name, and he became officially known as "the Jew Friedrich Israel Münzer". In a letter of 12 December 1938 toRonald Syme, he wrote that the changed situation "deeply depressed" him, but that he still considered himself better off than many others.
Despite the urgings of some friends, he refused to emigrate. But in July 1942 he was taken by theGestapo to theTheresienstadt concentration camp. His adopted daughter Margerete won some privileges for him, such as the right to send and receive letters, and to receive his suitcase intact, and ultimately a release from Theresienstadt. But an epidemic ofenteritis had been sweeping through the camp, and he succumbed to it the very same day that Margerete received the notice that her father was to be released.
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