Der Tell Halaf und sein Ausgraber Max Freiherr von Oppenheim: Kopf hoch! Mut hoch! und Humor hoch!

• Author: Beckman, Gary

By NADIA CHOLIDIS and LUTZ MARTIN. Mainz: PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 2002. Pp. 72, illus. 20.50 [euro].

Freiherr Max von Oppenheim, who lived until 1946, was the last of the great amateur archaeological explorers of the Near East. Scion of a wealthy banking family, he abandoned a career in diplomacy to devote his life to the excavation, study, and publication of the remains of Tell Halaf (ancient Guzana) in Syria.

Having financed expeditions in 1911-13 and 1929 with private funds, von Oppenheim personally owned a large portion of the finds. He hoped that this material, which included some of the most important pieces of "Neo-Hittite" sculpture and bas-reliefs ever recovered, would be acquired by the Staatliche Museen. When a series of negotiations toward this end broke down, he opened his own museum in an abandoned factory in Berlin in 1930.

As a private collection, the Tell Halaf-Museum was not covered by the measures taken by German authorities to protect museum holdings during the Second World War, and in November 1943 it was obliterated in an air raid. Belatedly, the fragments of the antiquities were removed to the sub-basements of...