Ernst Curtius

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Ernst Curtius
Ernst Curtius
Ernst Curtius
Born September 2, 1814
Lübeck
Died July 11, 1896
Berlin
Nationality German
Fields archaeology
Known for Olympia

Ernst Curtius (September 2, 1814 – July 11, 1896) was a German archaeologist and historian.

He was born in Lübeck; his brother was the noted philologist Georg Curtius. On completing his university studies he was chosen by C. A. Brandis to accompany him on a journey to Greece for the prosecution of archaeological researches. Curtius then became Otfried Müller's companion in his exploration of the Peloponnese, and on Müller's death in 1840 he returned to Germany. In 1844 he became an extraordinary professor at the University of Berlin, and in the same year he was appointed tutor to Prince Frederick William (afterwards the Emperor Frederick III), a post which he held till 1850.

After holding a professorship at Göttingen and undertaking a further journey to Greece in 1862, Curtius was appointed (in 1863) ordinary professor at Berlin. In 1874 he was sent to Athens by the German government and there concluded an agreement by which the excavations at Olympia were entrusted exclusively to Germany. Curtius died in Berlin.

His best-known work is his History of Greece (1857-1867; Eng. trans. by AW Ward, 1868-1873). It presented in an attractive style what were then the latest results of scholarly research, but it was criticized as wanting in erudition. It is now superseded. His other writings are chiefly archaeological. The most important are:

  • Die Akropolis von Athen (1844)
  • Naxos (1846)
  • Peloponnesos, eine historisch-geographische Beschreibung der Halbinsel (1851)
  • Olympia (1852)
  • Die lonier vor der Ionischen Wanderung (1855)
  • Attische Studien (1862-1865)
  • Ephesos (1874)
  • Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia (1877, etc.)
  • Olympia und Umgegend (edited by Curtius and F Adler, 1882)
  • Olympia. Die Ergebnisse der von dem deutschen Reich veranstalteten Ausgrabung (with F Adler, 1890-1898)
  • Die Stadtgeschichte von Athen (1891)
  • Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1894).

His collected speeches and lectures were published under the title of Altertum und Gegenwart (5th ed., 1903 foll.), to which a third volume was added under the title of Unter drei Kaisern (2nd ed., 1895).

A full list of his writings will be found in L Gurlitt, Erinnerungen an Ernst Curtius (Berlin, 1902); see also article by O Kern in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xlvii. (1903), to which may be added Ernst Curtius. Em Lebensbild in Briefen, by F Curtius (1903); Thomas Hodgkin, Ernest Curtius (905).

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