German archaeologist and scholar who taught himself thirteen languages. He was a highly successful businessman, and used his accumulated wealth to finance an expedition to find ancient Troy. He managed to locate the city, but his unsystematic excavation methods unfortunately destroyed and jumbled the remains of the ancient city. Nevertheless, the developments arising from his work led to the creation of modern techniques of scientific archaeology.
Heinrich Schliemann (Born: January 6, 1822 in Neubukow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin; Death: December 26, 1890, Naples) was a German archaeologist, an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer, and an important excavator of Troy and of the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns, lending material weight to Homer’s Iliad and Vergil’s Aeneid as reflecting historical events.
Childhood, youth, and life as a businessman
Schliemann was born in Neubukow in 1822. His father was a poor Protestant minister named Ernst Schliemann. Heinrich’s mother, Luise Therese Sophie, died in 1831, when he was just 9. After her death, Heinrich was sent to live with his uncle. He was enrolled in the Gymnasium (grammar school) at Neustrelitz at age 11 with his attendance paid for by his father. He attended the grammar school for at least a year. He would later show interest in history. This had been encouraged by his father, who had schooled him in the tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey and had given him a copy of Ludwig Jerrer’s Illustrated History of the World for Christmas in 1829. Schliemann later claimed that at the age of 8 he had declared he would one day excavate the city of Troy. Schliemann’s interest in the classics continued throughout his time at the Gymnasium, so it is likely that he would have been further exposed to Homer. However, he was transferred to the vocational school, or Realschule, after his father was accused of embezzling church funds, and had to quit the vocational school in 1836 when his father was no longer able to pay for it. According to his diary, his interest in ancient Greece was conceived when he overheard a university student reciting the Odyssey of Homer in classical Greek; Heinrich was taken by the language’s beauty. Unfortunately, his family’s poverty left Schliemann unable to afford a university education, and as such it was Schliemann’s early academic experiences that established the fundamental character of his later life. He was a highly original person with unconventional thinking and methods which appeared to have given him a lot of admirers as well as enemies. He wanted to return to the educated life, to reacquire all the things of which he was deprived in childhood. Yet in his archaeological career, there was often a division between him and the educated professionals.
