7 ‘More feared than loved’: interactional strategies in late-nineteenth-century Classical archaeology: the case of Adolf Furtwängler Ulf R. Hansson Knowledge production in archaeology and elsewhere in academia is naturally dependent on the interaction between actors who connect, cluster and collaborate on fieldwork or other projects, and exchange information or test out new discoveries and ideas with colleagues within the various institutional and informal structures of the discipline such as university departments, professional societies, museums, congresses, workshops, journals, networks, etc. The strong social nature of these creative processes has long been acknowledged and applies to the whole field, including its so-called ‘instrumental’ actors. We all build on the achievements of others in our field and seek contact and exchange with colleagues working on similar material. Most of us are grateful for the opportunity to meet face to face, and we often stress the importance of collegiality and interaction for our own professional development. But not all of us are socially skilled; quite a few dread the pressure that the social arenas of the discipline generate and reproduce, while others are viewed as ‘toxic’ controversialists creating unwanted friction within the community. Tension and friction are constant presences, and perfectly legitimate professional disagreements that constitute a vital part of any healthy scientific or scholarly process can easily deteriorate into open conflict, even lifelong feuds, of a more personal kind that risk destabilising the dynamics of these institutional and informal structures, disrupting communication channels and forcing actors to rethink their positions and interactional modes and strategies. Much has been said about collegiality and the benefits of archaeologists coming together, but structural and interpersonal friction or conflict within the community, whether potentially constructive or mainly counterproductive, and the Ulf R. Hansson - 9781526134561 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/25/2021 05:40:47PM via free access ROBERTS 9781526134554 PRINT.indd 128 03/12/2019 08:56 ‘More feared than loved’ 129 various effects on the dynamic processes of knowledge production and dissemination, constitute equally important aspects that have been less studied. The environments in which we operate inform, stimulate and restrict our work, speech and actions, regardless of whether they are per- ceived as mostly positive or negative in character (Montuori and Purser, 1995: 83; Livingstone, 2003; Bourdieu, 2004). Conflicts and disputes potentially impinge on where, why and how research is planned, con- ducted, presented and received. Based on a fairly well-documented but little studied case from the formative period in the modern history of Classical archaeology, this chapter explores how dynamic scholarly processes can be affected when a so-called ‘key actor’ in the community feels excluded, disrupts or withdraws from certain social aspects of the profession while at the same time is struggling to maintain, even reinforce his (in this case) shifting positions and strategic moves within its overlapping networks and clusters. The professional career and scholarly production of Adolf Furtwängler (1853–1907; see Figure 7.1) constitute an interesting case of such dis- ruptive dynamics. Focusing on Furtwängler’s problematic relations and interaction with the scholarly community, of which he neverthe- less saw himself as an undisputed member throughout his professional trajectory, this chapter addresses the problem of individual–collective tension in networks and knowledge production. When examining such interaction – what is being said and done by various actors as well as the reaction of their audience – the crucial importance of the physical and social spaces where all this is taking place has been acknowledged (e.g. Goffman, 1959; Livingstone, 2003; Bourdieu, 2005: 148). The social space, or ‘field’ to use Bourdieu’s terminology, in which knowledge is generated and negotiated, is both structuring and structured by its insti- tutions, networks, clusters and individual actors, and further regulated by specific protocols and practices recognised by its actors. A scholar’s professional trajectory occurs within this ‘dynamic ever-shifting rela- tional structure of positions and unfixed boundaries’ (Lipstadt, 2007: 40) and can thus be said to consist of a series of negotiated relational positions and relocations or moves that are strategic and both require and confer ‘capitals’ of various sorts. This is an account of one such negotiated trajectory. Furtwängler is today fairly well-known as a pioneer of Classical archaeology. During his lifetime he was almost equally known within the scholarly community for his ill temper and propensity for polemic. In the surviving testimonies and documentation he comes across as a man for whom friction characterised much of his interaction with colleagues at institutions in Berlin and Munich, where he was active for most of his career, but also with the scholarly community at large. At the Ulf R. Hansson - 9781526134561 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/25/2021 05:40:47PM via free access ROBERTS 9781526134554 PRINT.indd 129 03/12/2019 08:56 130 Communities and knowledge production in archaeology 7.1 Adolf Furtwängler (1853–1907). Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Zentralarchiv (used by kind permission). Copyright © Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Zentralarchiv. All rights reserved and permission to use the figure must be obtained from the copyright holder. same time, the awkward work situation that resulted from this friction seems to have somehow spurred his own creativity and productivity, or perhaps these were strangely unaffected by it. A combination of person- ality traits, negative work experiences and strategic positioning seems to Ulf R. Hansson - 9781526134561 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/25/2021 05:40:47PM via free access ROBERTS 9781526134554 PRINT.indd 130 03/12/2019 08:56 ‘More feared than loved’ 131 have made Furtwängler place himself outside and at times even in open conflict with sections of this community and some of its key members, and he was in turn socially isolated by many of his colleagues (Reinach, 1907b; Bissing, 1907; Hauser, 1908; Church, 1908; Furtwängler, 1965: 231f.). But he was never or rarely marginalised as a scholar, rather the opposite: Furtwängler in fact managed to be both ‘feared and respected by all’ (Reinach, 1907b) or rather, ‘more feared than loved’ (Perrot, 1900), and his work was mostly well received. The creative urge into which he seems to have channelled much of these perceived negative experiences and resentment resulted in a series of highly focused projects and widely influential books, several of which were later canonised as milestone publications (e.g. Furtwängler, 1890, 1893, 1900). The popular histories of the discipline mention Furtwängler only in passing, if at all. Still, in many respects he perfectly embodies the eccen- tric, exceptionally gifted, restless and feverishly working but socially handicapped and temperamental ‘Great Man’ that their readers love to hear about. This ‘lone genius’ type of scholar that to some extent still prevails in the popular imagination is often perceived as someone who manages to be creative by struggling against or at least rising above the constraining forces of the field’s institutions and its conforming masses. This creates the unfortunate impression that actors identified as ‘instru- mental’ are able to produce something new and original not as a result of interaction with the collective, but rather in spite of it. In the case of such creative people, schizoid or deviant behaviour is often romanticised and even viewed as synonymous with ‘genius’ (Montuori and Purser, 1995: 74). Such tendencies to decontextualise individual actors who are identified as ‘instrumental’ are highly problematic. Furtwängler is no exception. A French colleague claimed in his obituary of Furtwängler that his work ‘bore the mark of genius’, and asked why we should leave it to posterity to use this word for it (Reinach, 1907b). What perhaps makes his case somewhat peculiar is that the negative aspects of his personality and his aggressive mode of interaction had been foregrounded and famously ventilated in public during his lifetime (see especially Perrot, 1900; Gardner, 1907; Hauser, 1908; Reinach, 1928). They were woven into the dense and rather successful mythology of ill-tempered genius that was in fact created around his persona from very early on, by himself and others, and this has no doubt affected the reception of his substantive and wide-ranging contribution to the dis- cipline. An English colleague, Percy Gardner, suggested in his obituary that ‘of the many thousands of pages which he printed, perhaps not one does not contain something of value’ (1907: 252). To his favourite student and later colleague Ludwig Curtius, Furtwängler’s achievements and importance for the discipline of Classical archaeology were fully Ulf R. Hansson - 9781526134561 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/25/2021 05:40:47PM via free access ROBERTS 9781526134554 PRINT.indd 131 03/12/2019 08:56 132 Communities and knowledge production in archaeology comparable to those of Mommsen for Roman history and Wilamowitz for Classical philology (Curtius, 1958: 224, often repeated by later authors, e.g. Calder, 1996). These were views that were shared by many of his contemporaries, who