chapter 23 , Elisa von der Recke and Georg Zoëga: Members of the ‘Universitas of Rome’1

Adelheid Müller

The Protagonists

As a member of the eighteenth century scientific community, Georg Zoëga played an active role in the developing international discourse of ­antiquarian-archaeological research around 1800, a time when studies of the Antiquity were starting to be differentiated and institutionalized. He was an incorruptible, precise observer, orientated closely to the material evidence, who analysed this tradition with new methodical approach. Also he was an important advocate of the knowledge he won from his many years of object studies. With his rejection of the chair for Classical Archeology, which was created especially for him in 1802 at the university of Kiel, he abstained from an academical career as a university professor. Nontheless he was in Rome a mediator of the Classical Antiquity in personal dialogues outside institutional teachings. This practice was unorthodox in two respects: teaching in the con- text of a private academy and the instruction of both male and female students. Both Friederike Brun (fig. 23.1) and Elisa von der Recke (fig. 23.2) chose a life which allowed them to follow their intellectual interests on Classical Antiquity with remarkeable social freedom and autonomy. As a member of the well- established Baltic nobility, Charlotte Elisabeth Konstantina von Medem was born in 1754 near Mitau, the capital of the Dutchy of Courland, today Latvia. At the request of her parents she married at the age of 17 the former officer and landowner Georg Peter Magnus von der Recke. Only five years later she separated from her husband. The painful marriage of convenience was dis- solved in 1781, although that divorce resulted in an economically tight situa- tion. The commoner Friederike Sophie Christiane Münter was born in 1765 in Gräfentonna, , as the younger sister of Friedrich Münter. The same

1 This article is based on the comprehensive study: A. Müller, Sehnsucht nach Wissen. Friederike Brun, Elisa von der Recke und die Altertumskunde um 1800, (Berlin: Reimer, 2012).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004290839_025 Friederike Brun, Elisa von der Recke and Georg Zoëga 249 year, their father, the graduated theologist Balthasar Münter was appointed as the principle preacher to the German St. Petri Diocese in . The family moved from to , where in 1783 the marriage to the wealthy and prosperous merchant took place. Despite mul- tiple dissonances, Friederike Brun kept up her marital bond. A part of both women’s classical education, of their generation of knowl- edge, was the study of available printed sources of information: writings on ancient history, mythology, art history and archaeology. Handed-down excerpts from Brun’s estate verify the readings of ancient authors such as Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos as well as an analysis of the works by art theorists and histo- rians such as Heinse, Moritz or Winckelmann. These handwritten records give evidence to the practice of scientific techniques such as exerpting, compiling and commentating as a form of memory organisation. Besides their knowl- edge of books didactically active specialists are constitutive for the scientific socialisation of both women. This has both social and cultural implications: on the one hand there was Copenhagen, the cosmopolitan climate of a protestant vicarage as the social centre of an urban German-Danish elite, to which Brun belonged, and on the other hand there was the restrictive, education-sceptical, class-orientated ambience of the rural nobility in the Baltic countries where Recke, sister-in-law of the last governing Duke of Courland, grew up. Beginning in the 1780s, extensive travelling activities of both women are revealed, inspired by the ambitous wish to increase their knowledge. Considering their participation in a complex culture of antiquarian knowl- edge, the heuristical understanding of these travels as a scholary practice permits their mobility to be described as a scholar’s journey, or Peregrinatio academica. Only travelling allowed them to become personally acquainted with leading scholars of the field of study, to become integrated in profes- sional communication circles and intellectual networks. At the same time their mobility was an essential requirement for the comparative observation of antique works of art, such as their visit to the collections of Potsdam, Dresden, Wörlitz or St. Petersburg which are generally regarded as great sources of knowledge. Object-based experience and therefore a practice-orientated adoption of knowledge, obtained by studies in the field, was equally important for Friedrich Münter, Aloys Hirt and Zoëga. Just as Münter in 1784, Zoëga also undertook an educational journey in 1782 after finishing his catalogue work in Copenhagen and receiving a scholarship from the Danish state. His priority was the ulterior absorption and systematisation of his numismatic acquire- ments by comparative studies and expert discussions for instance with Johann Joseph Hilarius Eckhel at Vienna. The fact that Zoëga retrospectively put “das