Max von Oppenheim

Max Freiherr von Oppenheim (July 15, 1860 - November 17, 1946) was a German ancient historian, and archaeologist. He has been called "the last of the great amateur archaeological explorers of the Middle East.".

Life

He was born in Cologne, in the Rhine Province of Prussia, a son of Albert von Oppenheim, personally liable partner of the Sal. Oppenheim bank, thereby a great-grandson of the banker Salomon Oppenheim (1772-1828). In 1858 his father had converted to Catholicism, and ten years later the family was ennobled as Prussian Freiherren by King William I. From 1879 Max von Oppenheim studied law at the University of Strasbourg, gained his doctorate in 1883 from Göttingen and graduated from the University of Cologne in 1891. He originally prepared for a diplomatic career in Cairo, where he studied the Arabic language and became attaché at the German consulate general in 1896.

Abandoning his diplomatic career, however, he financed his own excavations at Tell Halaf in Syria in 1911-13 and again in 1929. During World War I, Oppenheim led the German Intelligence Bureau for the East in Constantinople and was closely associated with plans to initiate and support a rebellion in the Indian Empire and in Egypt.

Oppenheim personally owned a large portion of his archaeological finds, as was then the custom. He had hoped the Prussian State Museums in Berlin would acquire his collection, as it included some of the most important Neo-Hittite sculptural reliefs. Disappointed in his negotiations with the State Museums, he opened his own museum in 1930 in an abandoned foundry near the Technical College in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Unfortunately, when measures were taken to protect the national collections during World War II, Oppenheim's Halafian relics were not included. His museum was obliterated in a RAF bombing raid on the night of 23 November 1943.

After German reunification, some fragments of Oppenheim's finds preserved in East Berlin's Pergamon Museum basements were recovered and reassembled. In early 2011, the museum opened a major exhibition of the reconstructed sculpture and other material from Oppenheim's collection.

Despite some harassment during the Nazi era due to his half-Jewish heritage, Max von Oppenheim outlived the Third Reich, and died in Landshut in 1946 at the age of 86.

Publications

• Vom Mittelmeer zum persischen Golf durch den Haurän, die syrische Wüste und Mesopotamien, 2 vols., 1899
• Rabeh und Tschadseegebiet, 1902
• Max von Oppenheim: Der Tell Halaf und die verschleierte Göttin. Leipzig: Hinrichs 1908.
• Max von Oppenheim: Die Revolutionierung der islamischen Gebiete unserer Feinde. 1914.
• Max von Oppenheim: Der Tell Halaf: Eine neue Kultur im ältesten Mesopotamien. F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1931.
• Tell Halaf I, 1943 (with Hubert Schmidt)
• Tell Halaf II, 1950 (with R. Naumann)

External links

• Bibliothek der Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Stiftung at www.uni-koeln.de
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