August Böckh

Statut : Academic

1785-1867

Notes : Notes : August Böckh studied theology, philosophy and philology in Halle under F. A. Wolf and F. Schleiermacher. In 1809 he became a full professor in Heidelberg and in 1811 he was appointed to the chair of eloquence and of classical literature in the newly founded university of Berlin, where he taught for the rest of his life. His achievements in the administration and development of this institution were held in high esteem. Böckh taught and published on a wide range of authors in the field of Greek literature and philosophy including Plato, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In the footsteps of Niebuhr, to whom the “Staatshaushaltung der Athener” was dedicated, Böckh defended a historical and antiquarian approach in classical studies covering a wide range of subject areas and thus went beyond the text-based grammatical and critical approach advocated by his opponent Gottfried Hermann (1772-1848). His innovative research included work in astronomy, chronology, measurement systems and music. The “Staatshaushaltung” provides a systematic examination of Athenian financial administration and economic life as a whole. The second and third German editions have an appendix of inscriptions relating to the finances of Athens, and it was in the course of the preparation of this study that Böckh conceived the idea of a comprehensive collection of Greek inscriptions. The idea was supported by Niebuhr and Buttmann and accepted by the Berlin Academy. Böckh edited the first two folio volumes (1825-43) of the “Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum” himself. His work was continued by Johannes Franz, Ernst Curtius, Adolf Kirchhoff and Hermann Roehl, and the project, which laid the foundation for the modern epigraphy of the classical world, was completed in 1877.

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