Libri di Wilhelm Dorow - libri Johan & Levi Editore
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Wilhelm Dorow

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Johan & Levi
Wilhelm Dorow (22 March 1790 - 16 December 1845) was a German diplomat, archaeologist, historian, author of biographical texts and founder of the Museum Rheinisch-Westfälischer Alterthümer in Bonn. After the premature death of his father, Dorow was taken in by Hans Jakob von Auerswald in Marienburg, where he also went to school. In 1806 he returned to Königsberg. On the advice of his uncle Johann Friedrich Reichardt, he obtained a commercial position at a trading house in Königsberg, but continued his philosophical and mathematical studies under the guidance of war advisor Karl Gottlieb Bock (1746–1830), a pupil of Kant and friend of Herder. In the long run, however, business did not appeal to him. Dorow began to study archaeology. Without specialized knowledge but with a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit, he embarked on fruitful excavations in Wiesbaden. In May 1818 a plan for the central management of antiquities efforts in the new Rhine-Westphalian parts of Prussia was developed and approved by Chancellor Hardenberg. On 11 January 1819, Dorow was appointed Hofrat, in October 1819 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg, and on 4 January 1820, he was appointed director of the administration for the archaeology of Rhineland and Westphalia. After settling in Bonn, he planned to move his collection to Cologne along with possessions scattered throughout the province, but met with resistance from the academic community and the Ministry of Education, emboldened by Hardenberg’s waning influence. Due to a negative assessment of his professional qualifications by an academic committee, he was relieved of his duties on 29 July 1822, and following Hardenberg’s death on 19 December 1822, he retired with half his salary Notwithstanding his brief mandate, he had the lasting merit of being a founder of the Museum Rheinisch-Westfälischer Alterthümer, now the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn.

 

Author's books

Viaggio archeologico nell'antica Etruria
The travel dairies of esteemed figures who took the Grand Tour, such as the explorer and Etruscan scholar George Dennis, the watercolour artist Samuel James Ainsley, and Elizabeth Hamilton Gray, a pioneering nineteenth-century female scholar of Etruria, still contribute to the study of Etruscan civilisation and the sites that were its cradle. But before these illustrious individuals came Wilhelm Dorow, a diplomat at the court of Frederick William III of Prussia, an historian, a man of letters and an orientalist, but first and foremost an archaeologist and collector of antiquities. In fact, he was one of the first to visit the cities of ancient Etruria with a scholarly focus, documenting the artistic and archaeological treasures of the hinterlands of Siena and Arezzo, between Cortona, Chiusi and Arezzo.Dorow’s notebook, published almost twenty years in advance of George Dennis’s celebrated The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, is a key source for the history of Etruscan studies and the collection of antiquities. This Italian edition, translated from the French version of 1829, comes complete with the sixteen original prints. Dedicated to Bertel Thorvaldsen, with whom Dorow corresponded over the years, and who had words of praise for his collection, the notebook documents a trip that Dorow began from Florence in the summer of 1827.Accompanied by Squire Francesco Inghirami - author of, among other works, the imposing illustrated volume Monumenti Etruschi - and by the artist Giuseppe Lucherini, whose task it was to portray the ancient artefacts, Dorow’s in-depth knowledge of the Italian context sets his account apart from those of his English contemporaries, thanks to sharp, precise insights that, even today, are of great use to archaeologists. His descriptions of visits to the places where the most important Etruscan artefacts are found, and to the leading private collections of Etruscan antiquities, are rendered all the more thorough by Lucherini’s painstakingly detailed drawings. What emerges is an overview of Etruria in the 19th century, highlighting Dorow’s invaluable contribution to reconstructing the history of the collections and their destinies, and all this in the decisive years when mere curiosity for Etruscan antiquities was evolving into serious scholarship.
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Viaggio archeologico nell'antica Etruria

Wilhelm Dorow

pages: 164 pages

The travel dairies of esteemed figures who took the Grand Tour, such as the explorer and Etruscan scholar George Dennis, the watercolour artist Samuel James Ainsley, and Elizabeth Hamilton Gray, a pioneering nineteenth-century female scholar of Etruria, still contribute to the study of Etruscan civilisation and the sites that were its cradle. But b
 

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