Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/991

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074

SCHLESWIO-HOLSTEIN— SCHLIEMANN.

hia '* Four Seasons " on the Briihl Terrace at Dresden, his Schiller statue at Vienna, his Maximilian statue at Trieste, and his War Memorial at Hamburg, not to men- tion other creations, which were all surpassed and crowned by the Grand National Monument, on the edge of tJie Niederwald, overlooking the Ehine. This was unyeiled by the Emperor William, Sept. 28, 1883.

SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, Pbincb or. (See Christian,

SCHLIEMANN, Dr. Hbtnrich, F.S.A., was born at Ankershagen in Mecklenburg, in 1822, being the son of a Lutheran pastor, who in- spired him at an early age with an enthusiastic admiration of the heroes of ancient Greece, whose exploits have been immortalised by Homer. On his mother's death, which occurred when he was nine years old, he went to live with his uncle, a clergyman of Ealkhorst, where he remained two years. When the lad was fourteen years old, the elder Schliemann lost his parish, became miserably poor, and could no longer pay for his son's schooling. The result was that young Schliemann had to enter a grocer's shop in the little town of Fiirstenburg, instead of following a career of letters, for which he felt a strong inclination, but he always preserved for the glories of antiquity the same love which he showed in his early infancy. In this shop he passed five and a half years of his life, occupied in selling herrings, butter, brandy, mUk, and salt, in grinding potatoes for the distillery, and in other similar pur- suits. He only came in contact with the lower classes of society, and as he was forced to work from five in the morning until eleven at night, he rapidly forgot the little learning he had previously ac- quired. At last, through the mediation of friends, he obtained a place as correspondent and book- keeper in the Ajnsterdam firm of

Messrs. B. H. Schroeder & Co., who engaged him with a salary of 600 florins, which, seeing hia zeal, they shortly afterwards raised to 1000. In 1846 he was sent to St. Peters- burg by his firm as their local agent, and a year later he estab- l^hed himself in business there on his own account. In the coarse of his busy life he has visited most parts of Europe and America, and has learned many languages, in- cluding Russian, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portogueae. Dutch, Polish, Swedish, ancient and modern Greek, and Arabic. Having amassed a fortune, he com- menced his archaeological investi- gations and excavations in the East, and recorded the results in a work written in French in 1869, and en- titled " Ithaque, Le P^lopon^se, Troie. RecherchesArchfelogiques." Previously he had published in the same lang^iage, "La Chine et le Japon au temps present" (1867). In 1874 he published "Troy and its Remains," which contains a full account of the researches and dis- coveries made by him at Hissarlik, the site of ancient Troy, and in the Trojan Plain. In Feb., 1874, he obtained permission from the Greek (jK)vemment to excavate Mycenae, where, in 1877, he discovered the five royal tombs which local tradi- tion pointed out to Pausanias as those of Agamemnon and his com- panions, who were murdered by JSgisthus. The treasures of gold and silver brought to light denote great artistic perfection, and de- monstrate the existence of a school of domestic artists entirely inde- pendent of oriental influence. Coming now to England, Dr. Schliemann met with a most flat- tering reception. He was elected an honorary member of the Gro- cer's Company, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a member of the Boyal Institute of Brilish Architects, and of the Arch»olo- gioal Institute. Many of the anti- quities discovered by Dr. Schlie-