All Scholars
IMMERWAHR, Heinrich Rudolf (later Henry Rudolph)
- Date of Birth: February 28, 1916
- Born City: Breslau
- Born State/Country: Germany
- Parents: Kurt and Johanna Freund I.
- Date of Death: September 15, 2013
- Death City: Chapel Hill
- Death State/Country: NC
- Married: Sara Anderson, March 4, 1944.
- Education:
Dottore in Lettere, U. Florence (Italy), 1938; postgrad fellow, ASCAS, 1939-40; Ph.D. Yale, 1943.
- Dissertation:
"Records of Entertainers from Dura" (Yale, 1943).
- Professional Experience:
Instr. classics, Yale, 1947-52; asst. prof. 1952-57; asst. prof. classics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1957-59, asso. prof., 1959-63, prof. 1963-75, Kenan Professor, 1970-71; Alumni Distinguished Professor, 1975-77; Senior Fellow, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC, 1965-?; vis. prof. ASACSA, 1970-71; member, managing committee, 1965-82; director, 1977-82; member, advisory board, GRBS , 1968-82; Guggenheim fellow, 1946-47; Morse fellow, Yale, 1955-56.
- Publications:
“Five Dedicatory Inscriptions from the North Wall of the Acropolis,” Hesperia (1942) 338-348; “Choes and Chytroi,” TAPA 77 (1946) 245-260 “An Athenian Wineshop,” TAPA 79 (1948) 184-190; “Historical Action in Herodotus,” TAPA 85 (1954) 14-65; “Aspects of Historical Causation in Herodotus,” 87 (1956) 241-280; “The Samian Stories of Herodotus,” CJ 52 (1957) 312-322; “Ergon, History as a Monument in Herodotus and Thucydides,” AJP 81 (1960) 261-290; “Book Rolls on Attic Vases,” in Classical, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies in Honor of B. L. Ullman, I, ed. C. Henderson, Jr. (Rome: Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 1964) 17-48; “Some Inscriptions on Attic Pottery, James Sprunt Studies in History & Political Science 46 (1964) 15-27; “Inscriptions on the Anakreon krater in Copenhagen,” AJA 69 (1965) 152-154; Form and Thought in Herodotus, Philolological Monographs of the American Philological Association XXIII (Cleveland: Western Reserve Univ., 1966). REVS: Helmantica XVIII 1967 435 Rodríguez | BAGB 1968 144-145 Weil | CW LXI 1968 402-403 Evans | AHR LXXIV 1968 121 Laix | Athenaeum XLVI 1968 385-386 Colonna | LEC XXXVI 1968 277 Delaunois | Mnemosyne XXI 1968 301-304 den Boer | Emerita XXXVII 1969 449-451 López | Gnomon XLI 1969 121-126 Erbse | AJPh XC 1969 89-92 Drews | Phoenix XXIII 1969 314-316 White | Gymnasium LXXVI 1969 539-541 Korzeniewski | RBPh XLVII 1969 90-93 Verdin | JHS XC 1970 206-207 Mazzarino | BIEH IV 1970 74-76 Ros | AC XXXIX 1970 210-212 Dunand | HZ CCXV 1972 381-383 Meier; “Attic Script and the Young Democracy (510-500 B. C.),” AJA 71 (1967) 190; “An Inscribed Terracotta Ball in Boston,” GRBS 8 (1967) 255-266; “Vase Inscriptions and Stone Inscriptions. The Problem of Attic Letter Forms,” AJA 72 (1968) 167; “A Projected Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions,” Acta of the Vth International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, Cambridge 1967 (Oxford, 1971); “A Purity Regulation from Therasia Purified,” Hesperia 40 (1971) 235-238; “Athenian Images in Euripides' Ion,” Hellenica 25 (1972) 277-297; “More Book Rolls on Attic Vases,” AK 16 (1973) 143-147; “Stesagoras II,” TAPA 103 (1972) 181-186; “Stesagoras II. Addendum,” TAPA 104 (1974) 167-168; “Pathology of Power and the Speeches in Thucydides,” The Speeches in Thucydides. A Collection of Original Studies with a Bibliography, ed. P.A. Stadter (Chapel Hill, 1973); “A Lekythos in Toronto and the Golden Youth of Athens,” Studies in Attic Epigraphy, History, and Topography Presented to Eugene Vanderpool by Members of the American School of Classical Studies (Princeton, 1982) 48-65; “The Signatures of Pamphaios,” AJA 88 (1984) 341-352; “An Inscribed Cup by the Ambrosios Painter,” AK 27 (1984) 10-13; “Aegina, Aphaia-Tempel: IX: An Archaic Abacus from the Sanctuary of Aphaia,” AA(1986) 195-204; “The Date of the Construction of Solon's Axones,” BASP 22 (1985) 123-135; Attic Script: A Survey (Oxford, 1990). REVS: REG CIII 1990 731-732 Irigoin ; CR XLI 1991 455-456 Woodhead ; AntJ LXX 1990 124-126 Osborne ; HZ CCLV 1992 725-727 A. Chaniotis ; RA 1992 144-147 H. P. Isler ; AJA XCVI 1992 385-386 Stroud ; XW LXXXV 1991-1992 739-740 Hedrick ; AHB 7 1993 28-36 M. Walbank ; Gnomon 65 (7) 1993 614-618 A. E. Raubitschek. ; RBPh 1993 71 (1) : 160-161 Yves Duhoux; “New Wine in Ancient Wineskins: the Evidence from Attic Vases Hesperia 61 (1992) 121-132; “Measuring the Wine,” ZPE no. 151 (2005) 100-104; “Nonsense Inscriptions and Literacy, Kadmos 45 (2006) 136-172; “Aspects of Literacy in the Athenian Ceramicus, Kadmos 46 (2007) 153-198; “Hipponax and the Swallow Vase,” AJP 131,4 (2010) 573-587.
- Notes:
Because of his family's Jewish heritage, Immerwahr left Germany after he graduated from his gymnasium to study with Girogio Pasquale at the University of Florence, where he wrote a thesis on Plato's concept of tyche. His fellowship at the ASCAS profoundly affected his academic and personal life. Driven from Athens by the onset of war, Immerwahr came to America in 1940 where he was able to continue his fellowship at Yale, completing his doctorate under Michael Rostovtzeff. He was naturalized in 1943, changed his given names, and served three years in the U.S. Army, during which he married Sara Anderson, whom he had met at the ASCSA. Following the war, he worked on Athenian vase inscriptions at Harvard on a post-war Guggenheim fellowship. He returned to Yale for a decade, during which his only daughter, Mary Elizabeth, was born, then moved to Chapel Hill. His wife was also employed teaching at UNC, part-time at first in classics, then full-time in the Art Department, rising to full professor in 1971. Following his retirement in 1977, Immerwahr became director of the ASCSA for a five-year term and remained an emeritus member of the Managing Committee. He continued his scholarship, publishing five articles while in his 90s. Sara died in 2008 after 64 years of marriage. In four major articles from 1954 to 1960, and then with his ground-breaking book, Form and Thought in Herodotus, Immerwahr changed the way scholars think about the first Greek historian: Immerwahr recognized him as not merely a source of a few facts and many preposterous stories, but a thinker who used the Persian Wars as a springboard to investigate the cultures and actions of peoples all around the Mediterranean, and consider the ebb and flow of human affairs. Another area , pursued throughout his life, was epigraphy, especially Attic vase inscriptions. His Attic Script: A Survey was based chiefly on a study of these inscriptions. His database, which he built up over a lifetime--indeed to within a few months of his death at the age of 97--shifting it from one computer platform to another as the years went by, became the "Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions." Immerwahr made the Corpus available on the internet and through the Beazley archive. It is being continued in Attic Vase Inscriptions (avi.unibas.ch/). Henry Immerwahr was a quiet, thoughtful pipe-smoker, very perceptive of the needs of his students, his colleagues and the Classics Department. His droll humor masked an understanding of underlying issues which he demonstrated also in his writings on Herodotus and Thucydides. He incarnated the truly humane scholar as much as nature permits.
- Sources:
WhAm 40 (1978-79) 1610.
- Author: Philip A. Stadter