Wilhelm Dorpfeld

File:Dfeld.jpg

Wilhelm Dörpfeld

Wilhelm Dörpfeld (or Doerpfeld) (December 26, 1853 – April 25, 1940) was a German architect and archeologist, the pioneer of stratigraphic excavation and precise graphical documentation of archaeological projects. He is famous for his work on Bronze Age sites in the Mediterranean, such as Tiryns and Hissarlik (city of Troy).

Life

Wilhelm Dörpfeld was born in Barmen, Wuppertal, in today’s Germany, the son of Christine and Friedrich William Dörpfeld. His father, a convinced Evangelist Christian and a famous pedagogue, tried to bestow deep religious sentiment to his family, so Dörpfeld attended religious schools, where he received basic education in Latin and Greek. He graduated from Barmer High School in 1872, the year after his mother died.

Dörpfeld enrolled in 1873 into the studies in architecture in Berlin, into the famous Academy of Architecture (Bauakademie). At the same time he started to work for the "Bergisch Bergisch-Maerki industrial company". His father could not finance his studies, so Dorpfeld’s sister Anna borrowed him money. During holiday breaks, Dörpfeld worked for the Rheini railway company, drawing for them sketches of buildings and different architectural objects. Dörpfeld graduated with honors in 1876.

In 1877 Dörpfeld became an assistant at the excavations of Olympia, Greece, conducted under Richard Bohn, Friedrich Adler, and Ernst Curtius. He later became the technical manager of the project. The group uncovered, among other artifacts, an intact statue of Hermes of Praxiteles, and the great altar of Pergamon. The excavations revived the memory of the ancient Olympics and contributed toward the establishment of modern Olympic Games, in 1896.

After the return from Olympia, Dörpfeld intended to take his architectural exam and settle down in Berlin. He needed a permanent source of income, as he prepared for the family life. He married in February 1883, to Anne Adler, the daughter of his university professor Friedrich Adler. The couple had three children. Around the same time, he met Heinrich Schliemann, who persuaded him to join his expedition.

In 1882 Dörpfeld joined Schliemann, who was then excavating Troy. The two eventually became good friends and continued the collaboration on other projects as well. They excavated in Tiryns, from 1884 to 1885, and at Troy again from 1888 to 1890. Dörpfeld also excavated at the Acropolis, Athens from 1885 to 1890, where he unearthed the Hekatompedon (the pre-Classical Parthenon). He continued excavations at the Pergamon (1900-1913, with Alexander Conze), and in the 1931 in the Agora of Athens.

In the year 1886 Dörpfeld founded the German School of Athens, which is later named after him, the "Dörpfeld Gymnasium". From 1887 to 1912 he was the director of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens. He published, in 1896, Das griechische Theater, which was the first study of Greek theater construction.

After his retirement in 1912, Dörpfeld engaged in numerous academic debates on different archaeological topics. For example, in the mid-1930's he took part in a celebrated debate with American archaeologist William Bell Dinsmoor on the nature of configuration of the three phases of the Parthenon. At the beginning of the 1920s, he started to lecture at the University of Jena, but was not satisfied with teaching as a profession and returned back to Greece.

<<this doesn't make so much senseDörpfeld died on April 25, 1940 on the island of Lefkada, Greece, where he had a house and for which he believed being the Homer’s Ithaca.>>

Work

Dörpfeld developed a method of dating archaeological sites through the strata in which objects were found and the type of materials used for the buildings. He corrected many of Schliemann's previous conclusions, including the shaft burial sites at Mycenae. Dörpfeld realized that the site was a "tholos" tomb, and not the Treasury of Atreus, as Schliemann claimed.

During the Kavvadias’ excavations, Dörpfeld was instrumental in correcting the previous belief that the temple of Athena, destroyed by the Persians in 480 B.C.E., was not beneath the Parthenon, but to the north of it. He suggested the three different structures build in the same place, speaking thus of Parthenon I, Parthenon II, and Parthenon III, applying the last term to the temple with which we are familiar. Besides only suggesting the existence of the two previous proto-Parthenons, he was able to reconstruct the dimensions of their ground plans.

After Schliemann's death in 1890, his widow hired Dörpfeld to continue where Schliemann stopped with the excavations of Troy. Dörpfeld found nine separate cities, one atop the other, at the Hissarlik site. He argued that the sixth of these was the legendary Troy, because it was larger than the first five cities and had high limestone walls, surrounding the city. Dörpfeld also found evidence for his claims in Mycenaean pottery, which he found in the same strata. The modern archaeologists however, think that it was probably the Troy VII that was the city Homer was talking about.

Dörpfeld spent lot of time and energy trying to prove that Homer’s epics were based on historical facts. He proposed that the island of Nidri, off the southwest coast of Lefkada, was Ithaca, home of Odysseus. Dörpfeld compared several passages from the Odyssey to the actual geographical location of the Lefkada, and concluded that it must be the Homeric Ithaca. He was especially convinced by the passage:

"I dwell in shining Ithaca. There is a mountain there,

high Neriton, covered in forests. Many islands

lie around it, very close to each other,

Doulichion, Same, and wooded Zacynthos—

but low-lying Ithaca is farthest out to sea,

towards the sunset, and the others are apart, towards the dawn and sun.

It is rough, but it raises good men." 13.21-27:

Modern geographers and hydrographers, however, claim that the ancient Lefkada was an island, and that the causeway that connects it to the mainland today is a recent product of silting in the channel. It thus cannot be the Ithaca Dörpfeld once claimed.

Legacy

William Dörpfeld was one of the seminal figures in classical archaeology. His method of dating archaeological sites based on the strata in which objects were found and the type of building materials remains at the core in archeological site analyses. His excavations, however, had many flaws, and his seeking to prove that Homer based his Odyssey on real places, was rather romantic. His fellow archeologists remarked that he overemphasized the importance of buildings in the dating of sites, and often neglected less visible artifacts, such as pottery. Dörpfeld however remains known as one who brought much order and integrity into archeology, and one who saved many archeological sites from Schliemann’s reckless excavations.

Publications

• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. 1896. Das griechische Theater. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung
• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. 1902. Troja und Ilion. Athens: Beck & Barth
• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. 1914. Olympia in römischer Zeit. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung
• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. 1927. Alt-Ithaka: Ein Beitrag zur Homer-Frage, Studien und Ausgrabungen aus der insel Leukas-Ithaka. München: R. Uhde
• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. 1935. Alt-Olimpia: Untersuchungen und ausgrabungen zur geschichte des ältesten heiligtums von Olympia und der älteren griechischen kunst. Berlin: E. S. Mittler & sohn
• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. 1937. Meine Tätigkeit für die griechische Archäologische Gesellschaft. Athenais: Archaiologikē Hetaireia
• Dörpfeld, Wilhelm, & Kolbe, Walther. 1937. Die beiden vorpersischen Tempel unter dem Parthenon des Perikles. Berlin: Verlag von E.S. Mittler & Sohn

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bittlestone, R.; D., James; & Underhill, J. 2005. Odysseus unbound: The search for Homer's Ithaca. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521853575
• DictionaryOfArtHistorians.org. Dörpfeld, Wilhelm. Retrieved on February 18, 2007, <http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/dorpfeldw.htm>
• Harris, E. C. 1989. Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy (2nd Ed.). Academic Press: London and San Diego. ISBN 0123266513
• Kawerau, Georg, & J. A. Bundgaard. 1974. The excavation of the Athenian Acropolis 1882-1890: The original drawings. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. ISBN 8700544914
• Schuchhardt, C. 1979. Schliemann's discoveries of the ancient world (with an Appendix on the Recent Discoveries at Hissarlik by Dr. Schliemann and Dr. Dörpfeld). Avenel Books. ISBN 0517279304
• Tolman H. Cushing. 1903. Mycenaean Troy: Based on Dörpfeld's excavations in the sixth of the nine buried cities at Hissarlik. American Book Co.
• Trigger, Bruce G. 2006. A history of archaeological thought. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521840767
• Wilhelm Dörpfeld Gymnasium. Wilhelm Dörpfeld. Retrieved on February 18, 2007, <http://www.wdg.de/schule/selbst/doerpfel.htm>

External links

• Biography – Dörpfeld’s biography in German
• Dörpfeld on the wall of Troy – Photo of Dörpfeld standing on Troy VI site
• Excavations of Troy – History of the excavations of Troy
• Map of Troy – Dörpfeld’s map of Troy, from his 1904 monograph Troja und Ilion
• The archeology of Hissarlik – History of the excavations of Troy conducted by Schliemann, Dörpfeld, and Blegen
• The theory of William Dörpfeld – Map of the world as Dörpfeld knew it
• Wilhelm Dörpfeld on Schliemann - Preface by Dörpfeld to the book "Schliemann Briefe" (1932), published by Ernst Meyer

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