Post-War Identity and Scholarship: The Correspondence of Paul Jacobsthal and Gero von Merhart at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford

Abstract

Archives form a valuable but under-researched resource for mapping the development of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline in post-war Europe. New work on the previously un-catalogued archives of Professor Paul Jacobsthal at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, exemplify the opportunities offered by archival research. Here, we focus on the correspondence between Professor Jacobsthal of Marburg University, who sought refuge in Oxford before the war, and his colleague, Professor Merhart, who remained in Germany. The surviving personal correspondence between Germany and Oxford from 1936 to 1957 illustrates the complexities, uncertainties, and challenges to personal and academic identities in the aftermath of the war, and show how the individual responses of archaeologists to their personal experiences impacted on the directions taken by archaeological scholarship in Europe and beyond after the war.