Heinrich Schliemann

Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890)

Heinrich Schliemann was born on January 6th, 1822 as son of a Protestant minister in Neubukow / Mecklenburg (Germany). He described his life in the autobiography »Heinrich Schliemann's Selbstbiographie« (Autobiography of Heinrich Schliemann). On December 26th, 1890 he died after an ear surgery in Naples.
In 1870 he married the 18 year old Greek girl Sophia Engastromenos. On the photo below she wears the famous gold jewelry from the so-called »Treasure of Priam«, which Heinrich Schliemann had discovered in Troy.
The couple had two children, Andromache (1871-1962) and Agamemnon (1878-1954).

Sophie Schliemann (1852-1932)

Troy

Already as little boy Heinrich Schliemann was obsessed by the idea that Homer had given an account of true history in his great epic poems - the Iliad and the Odyssey, and that Troy had really existed. He did all to find this famous place. And he achieved one of the greatest sensations of archaeology: The discovery of Troy and Mycenae.
Read an excerpt (in German language) from his autobiography, how as child he made up his mind to discover Troy.

Excavation of the Athena temple in Troy
This drawing had been made by Heinrich Schliemann himself.

Mykene und Tiryns

But not only the discovery of Troy we owe to his good archaeological nose and his indefatigable efforts, but he also explored Mycenae and Tiryns and made tremendous finds there.
At all his undertakings he was supported by his wife Sophie, a Greek by birth.

Heinrich Schliemann has been and is still reproached by archaeologists that he had destroyed many things of great value during his tremendous excavations. But just his boundless inquiring mind was the cause for these great discoveries! Only because of his complete dedication for this goal and by spending a lot of his own money he could achieve such great archaeological sensations. Also the backward time and the underdeveloped methods of archaeological research must be taken into consideration. So it is very unfair to reproach Heinrich Schliemann with many failings because at projects of those dimensions - he employed up to 200 workers at the same time - mistakes are inevitable.
Although he had not studied archaeology, he achieved the greatest discovery in the history of archaeology, and because of this we have to pay tribute to him!