The German Perspective and the German Archaeological Institute

Abstract

This year, two institutions whose work is exclusively devoted to archaeology are celebrating jubilees: The Archaeological Institute of America, of which I have the honor of being a Foreign Honorary Member, has been in existence for one hundred years; on this occasion I wish to extend to it my warmest congratulations and best wishes. The German Archaeological Institute, which I directed from 1960 to 1972, grew out of the original Archaeological Institute in Rome and celebrated its one hundred-fiftieth anniversary in the spring of this year. Thus, both institutions were founded during the nineteenth century, a century which saw the emergence of so many scholarly institutions of high rank. To speak only of archaeology, we mention the establishment, in Athens, of the &cole Frangaise d'Archeologie in 1846, of the German Archaeological Institute in 1874, and, not long thereafter, of the American and British Schools, also in Athens. In Rome, too, similar institutions sprang up, notably founded by the Italians themselves. The fact that archaeology found adequate representation also in the museums and universities of both the Old and New Worlds needs no elaboration. It is not hard to understand that all this development took place during the last century, most of it during its second half. It is true that even earlier achievements which may justly be called archaeological were made within the general study of antiquity. To these belong the interest which the Humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took in Roman relics and inscriptions found in many parts of the Empire in Europe, the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the Bourbons in the eighteenth century, and the admirable activities of the Society of Dilettanti of London. But these, and others one might add, were enterprises of either individuals or of groups united by common goals, devoted to specific monuments or aimed at making spectacular finds. Usually they lacked perspective in that they were not concerned with broader implications. Apart from coins and inscriptions, finds were mostly taken as illustrations of history as known from other sources, hardly ever as being in themselves means for reconstructing historical events. To be sure, there were some scholars who were ahead of their times and tried to understand the whole, the larger entity, beyond the individual find. Not the least of these scholars was Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who is regarded, especially in Germany, as the founder of archaeology, at least the archaeology of art. But the decisive step toward archaeology as scholarship in the proper sense (Wissenschaft im eigentlichen Sinne) was taken only in the nineteenth century, a century which is characterized, in this field as in many others, as representative of logical order and organization. One step in this direction was the foundation, on the 21st of April, 1829, of the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica on the Capitoline in Rome. It grew out of the conviction that only in a much wider framework would archaeology be able to meet the demands of true, modern scholarship. The new Institute was supported by scholars and artists from a number of nations. In the beginning it included, beside the center in Rome, a British, a French, a German and an Italian section. This was possible only at a time, the latter part of the Classic Revival Period, when the intellectual conjunction of the leading personalities of Europe was still unbroken, all of them united in the acceptance of the heritage of antiquity. More important for our theme is the program which was designed for the Instituto di Corrispondenza and which it strove to fulfill. Let me quote from a programmatic pamphlet written by Eduard Gerhard, the segretario fondatore of the Institute, and published in December 1832: