Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (4 November 1784 – 17 December 1868) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 classical

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 philologist and archaeologist.

Biography

Welcker was born at Grünberg

Grünberg

Grünberg is a town in the district of Gießen, in Hesse, Germany.- Neighbouring communities :To the north Grünberg borders the municipality Rabenau and the town Homberg , to the east the municipality Mücke , to the south the town Laubach and to the west the municipality Reiskirchen.- Constituent...

, Hesse-Darmstadt

Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt

The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was a member state of the Holy Roman Empire. It was formed in 1567 following the division of the Landgraviate of Hesse between the four sons of Philip I, the last Landgrave of Hesse....

. Having studied classical philology at the University of Giessen

University of Giessen

The University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...

, in 1803 he was appointed master

Schoolmaster

A schoolmaster, or simply master, once referred to a male school teacher. This usage survives in British public schools, but is generally obsolete elsewhere.The teacher in charge of a school is the headmaster...

 in the high school, an office which he combined with that of lecturer at the university. In 1806 he journeyed to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, and was for more than a year private tutor at Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in the family of Wilhelm von Humboldt

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...

, who became his friend and correspondent.

Welcker returned to Giessen in 1808, and resuming his school-teaching and university lectures was in the following year appointed the first professor of Greek literature

Greek literature

Greek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...

 and archaeology at that or any German university. After serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1814

War of the Sixth Coalition

In the War of the Sixth Coalition , a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States finally defeated France and drove Napoleon Bonaparte into exile on Elba. After Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia, the continental powers...

 he went to Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 to edit the posthumous papers of the Danish archaeologist Georg Zoega

Jörgen Zoega

Jørgen Zoëga was a Danish archaeologist and numismatist; born at Daler near Tønder, near the west coast of northern Schleswig.-Biography:...

 (1755-1809), and published his biography, Zoegas Leben (Stutt. 1819).

His liberalism in politics having brought him into conflict with the university authorities of Giessen, he exchanged that university for Göttingen in 1816, and three years later received a chair at the new University of Bonn

University of Bonn

The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...

, where he established the art museum and the library, of which he became the first librarian

Librarian

A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...

.

In 1841-1843 he travelled in Greece and Italy (cf. his Tagebuch, Berlin, 1865), retired from the librarianship in 1854, and in 1861 from his professorship, but continued to reside at Bonn until his death.

Work

Welcker was a pioneer in the field of archaeology, and was one of the first to insist, like Böckh

Philipp August Böckh

August Böckh was a German classical scholar and antiquarian.-Biography:He was born in Karlsruhe, and educated at the local gymnasium; in 1803 he left for the University of Halle, where he studied theology. F.A...

 and his pupil Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller

Karl Otfried Müller , was a German scholar and Philodorian, or admirer of ancient Sparta, who introduced the modern study of Greek mythology.-Biography:...

, on the necessity of co-ordinating the study of Greek art

Greek art

Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan prehistorical civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the ancient period...

 and religion with philology, in opposition to the methods of the older Hellenists, like Gottfried Hermann, which they perceived as too narrow. The later workers took as their aim the complete reconstruction of the ancient life, in contrast with members of the school of Hermann, who were disposed to limit the field to the language and text of the Greek and Roman writers. Welcker was thoroughly imbued with the harmony of the whole Greek conception, whether expressed in art, literature, or religion, and it was to the presentation of this as a complete whole that he devoted his efforts.

Besides early work on Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

, Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

, and Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

, whose character he vindicated, he edited Alcman

Alcman

Alcman was an Ancient Greek choral lyric poet from Sparta. He is the earliest representative of the Alexandrinian canon of the nine lyric poets.- Family :...

 (1815), Hipponax

Hipponax

Hipponax of Ephesus and later Clazomenae was an Ancient Greek iambic poet who composed verses depicting the vulgar side of life in Ionian society in the sixth century BC...

 (1817), Theognis

Theognis of Megara

Theognis of Megara was an ancient Greek poet active sometime in the sixth century BC. The work attributed to him consists of gnomic poetry quite typical of the time, featuring ethical maxims and practical advice about life...

 (1826) and the Theogony of Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

 (1865), and published a Sylloge epigrammatum Graecorum (Bonn, 1828). His Griechische Götterlehre (3 vols., Göttingen, 1857-1862) may be regarded as the first scientific treatise on Greek religion

Greek religion

Greek religion can refer to several things, including*Ancient Greek religion**Greek hero cult**Eleusinian Mysteries**Hellenistic religion**Platonic idealism*Greek Orthodox Church*Religion in Greece*Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism...

. Among his works on Greek literature the chief are Die Äschyleische Trilogie (1824, 6), Der epische Zyklus oder die Homerischen Geschichte (2 vols. 1835, 49), Die griechischen Tragödien mit Rücksicht auf den epischen Zyklus geordnet (3 vols., 1839-1841). His editions and biography of Zoega, his Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Auslegung der alten Kunst (Göttingen, 1817, 8) and his Alte Denkmäler (5 vols., 1849-1864) contain his views on ancient art.