Hermine Hartleben

Hermione Ida Auguste hard life ( born June 2, 1846 in Gemkenthal at Altenau / resin; † July 18, 1919 in Templin ) was a teacher and biographer of hieroglyphic Entzifferers Jean -François Champollion.

Life

Hermione hard life came from a resident in the Harz Family of mountain and forest people. Her father, Johann Heinrich Friedrich hard life, Ranger was near the former mining town in the Harz, first in Gemkenthal and later in peat house. The mother died when Hermione was three years old. She attended from 1859 to 1861 the Higher School for Girls in Clausthal- Zellerfeld and was after a long stay in her father's house shareholder of the baroness von Mengersen in Lemmie in Hanover. Here they remained until 1867 and then joined as a teacher in the house of the tenant domain Weichberger by Netra in Hesse.

From Michaelmas 1869 to Michaelmas 1871 she attended the teacher training college in Hanover, pulling, having qualified, they qualified for teaching at daughters schools with inclusion of English and French, as a teacher in the house of Gutspächters Giessler after Hoheneiche south of Eschwege. From Easter 1875 to Michaelmas 1876 she was a teacher at the girls' school in Stade. The next stage of their education was Paris, where she finally reached in 1879, the letter of appointment of the Greek school for girls in what was then Constantinople Opel, which still exists today in Istanbul as Zappeio High School for Girls and Zapeion Likio. Here they should teach French, German and music, and "stand for the rest of their time at school for educational supervision and on the conversation available ". A six -year stay in Egypt joined to her work as a teacher in Istanbul, where she in the house of the Pasha Khairi, an official of the Turkish viceroy, whose children lived and taught. During this time she had evidently opportunity to Egypt to tour the country for which they are " a very unusual interest " harbored since childhood.

After returning to Germany, Hermione hard life continued in 1889 in several letters for the study of Egyptian culture and history, and encouraged the establishment of an Egyptian Fund, the donor should provide money for excavations and the establishment of an archaeological- Arab Institute in Cairo. Objections that a woman such a company wanted to create, she gave a rebuff by referring to the English writer Amelia Edwards (1831-1892), who had the Egypt Exploration founded in 1882 in their homeland Fund.

Research on the life of Jean François Champollion

On December 9, 1891 Hartsleben received a letter of working in Paris German Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg ( 1870-1930 ). Through the description of his thoughts before the portrait in the Louvre Champollion he encouraged her interest in the CV of the great Frenchman in the following words: " We worship our master in it - from the people we unfortunately know nothing." And after Georg Steinsdorff (1861-1951), the hard life in front of a copy of Champollion - portraits in Berlin Egypt museum met, had drawn attention to the need for a memory of the founder of Egyptology, she went in search of traces of the life.

According to research at the Royal Library in Berlin Hartsleben published under the pseudonym Theodor Harten on 22 and December 23, 1891, two articles in the arts section of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, under the title Champollion. This article was read also in Paris and fell into the hands of the last name of the carrier family, Aimé Champollion. This organization was presented in 1892 by letter to contact hard life and provide it with material about his uncle available, that was the basis for another article, which appeared in late March and early April 1893 in the supplement to the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung. After she had initially assumed that their employment would be terminated with Champollion therefore, began their investigation, they should lead by Europe crisscross, so just beginning.

In the following years she researched in the library of the Institut de France and sifted the material in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. She got in touch with a niece of Champollion, they visited several times in the years 1895-1903 to reports submitted to many details of the life of the French Egyptologist in the context of their exceptional memory. She went to Figeac, birthplace, and to Grenoble, the first site of action of Champollion. She found support by Georges Perrot (1832-1914), the director of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and Gaston Maspero (1846-1916), the Director-General of the Service de Antiquité in Cairo. She visited archives, libraries and museums in Denmark, Sweden, Italy and Germany. Special help her let the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers and writer (1837-1898) be granted, who holds a professorship in Leipzig at that time.

1906 then appeared to her life's work Champollion, his life and his work in two volumes in the Weidmannsche bookstore in Berlin. In 1909 she in the Bibliothèque Égyptologique two letter volumes under the title Lettres de Champollion le Jeune follow. For this they received, awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres, the Bordin Prize, named after the French notary Charles Laurent Bordin. Apparently she planned also a translation of their Champollion 's biography into French, but this was no longer running. The translation by Denis Meunier appeared in 1983 under the title of Jean François Champollion. Sa vie et son oeuvre. 1790-1832 in Paris and was established in 1990 and reissued in 1997. 1986 appeared a new edition of her Letters Edition.

Last stage of life

Due to the absence or has not taken place finding other sources much remains enigmatic in life Hermione hard life. One of the key unresolved issues is their economic situation. As the unmarried teacher denied their livelihood and funded their travel, is unclear. The attempt at a Berlin writer at the Goethe-Schiller society to obtain an honorary content remained unsuccessful. The application shows that hard life had to go into debt for the issuing of its Champollion 's biography. Presumably she learned support from their family, which may explain their frequent change of residence or stay. Whether the profession of the teacher could still exert in addition to their research activities, is not known. His final years were spent in Templin in Brandenburg. In local Elisabethenstift she lived demonstrably October 1915 to July 1919, after it had been in 1913 again in Egypt.

On 18 July 1919, she died and was buried at the cemetery Templin quietly. Her grave stone bore the inscription: " Hermione hard life, biographer of Egyptologen Champollion, born 02/06/1846, died 07/18/1919 ".

Writings (selection )

• Champollion. His life and his work. 2 vols. Berlin, Weidmann 1906; Re: Champollion. Sa vie et son oeuvre from 1790 to 1832. Traduction et de documentation Denise Meunier selon l' adaptation du texte anglais de Ruth Schumann Antelme. Présentation de Christiane Desroches Noble Court. Pygmalion / Watelet, Paris 1983, 620 pp.; ISBN 2-85704-145-4
• Lettres de Champollion le Jeune. Paris 1909.