HIRSCHFELD, GUSTAV

HIRSCHFELD, GUSTAV (1847–1895), German archaeologist. Hirschfeld, who was born in Pyritz, Pomerania, was a specialist in Greek and Roman epigraphy. One of the first Jewish scholars to become a fellow of the important Institute of Archaeological Correspondence in Rome, he worked in Italy, Greece, and Asia in the early 1870s and from 1875 to 1877 directed the German government's excavations at Olympia which uncovered the Heraion and the Temple of Zeus. He helped to raise the immortal Hermes of Praxiteles and the statue of Nike by Paionios. It was he who first proposed the excavation of Pergamum, which was eventually carried out by other German archaeologists. Baptized in 1877, Hirschfeld was given an appointment by the University of Koenigsberg, where he was made professor of archaeology in 1879. His writings include De Cn. Manlii Consulis Itinere ex Pamphylia in Galatiam Facto (1879) and Aus dem Orient (1897). He wrote the section "Knidos, Halikarnassos, and Branchidae" in the Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum (part 4 section 1, 1893) and articles for the publications of the Prussian Academy for Science.

add. bibliography:

ADB, vol. 50, 367–72; ndb, vol. 9, 225; R. Lullies, Archaeologenbildnisse – Portraets und Kurzbiographien von klassischen Archaeologen deutscher Sprache (1988), 88–89; N.T. de Grummond, Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology, vol. 1 (1996), 592–93.

[Penuel P. Kahane /

Bjoern Siegel (2^nd ed.)]