Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann (6 January 1822 – 26 December 1890) was a German businessman and pioneer in the field of archaeology.
Biography[]
Schliemann was born January 6, 1822, in Neubukow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin (part of the German Confederation) to Luise Therese Sophie Schliemann and Ernst Schliemann, a Lutheran minister where today a museum called the "Heinrich Schliemann-Gedenkstätte" is placed.
He was an advocate of the historicity of places mentioned in the works of Homer and an archaeological excavator of Hisarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer's Iliad reflects historical events. Schliemann's excavation of nine levels of archaeological remains has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artifacts, including the level that is believed to be the historical Troy.
Schliemann smuggled the treasure out of the Ottoman Empire into Greece. The Ottoman Empire sued Schliemann in a Greek court, and Schliemann was forced to pay a 10,000 gold franc indemnity. Schliemann ended up sending 50,000 gold francs to the Constantinople Imperial Museum, and got the permission for further excavations at Hissarlik.
In 1881, his collections ended up in Berlin, housed first in the Ethnographic Museum, and then the Museum for Pre- and Early History, until the start of WWII. In 1939, all exhibits were packed and stored in the museum basement, then moved to the Prussian State Bank vault in January 1941. In 1941, the treasure was moved to the Flakturm located at the Berlin Zoological Garden, called the Zoo Tower. Dr. Wilhelm Unverzagt protected the three crates containing the Trojan gold when the Battle for Berlin commenced, right up until SMERSH forces took control of the tower on 1 May. On 26 May 1945, Soviet forces, led by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Antipenko, Andre Konstantinov, deputy head of the Arts Committee, Viktor Lazarev, and Serafim Druzhinin, took the three crates away on trucks. The crates were then flown to Moscow on 30 June 1945, and taken to the Pushkin Museum ten days later. In 1994, the museum admitted the collection was in their possession.
On August 1, 1890, Schliemann returned reluctantly to Athens, and in November travelled to Halle, where his chronic ear infection was operated upon, on November 13. The doctors deemed the operation a success, but his inner ear became painfully inflamed. Ignoring his doctors' advice, he left the hospital and travelled to Leipzig, Berlin and Paris. From the last, he planned to return to Athens in time for Christmas, but his ear condition became even worse. Too sick to make the boat ride from Naples to Greece, Schliemann remained in Naples but managed to make a journey to the ruins of Pompeii. On Christmas Day 1890, he collapsed into a coma; he died in a Naples hotel room the following day; the cause of death was cholesteatoma.