Hermann Parzinger receives the Reuchlin Prize 2011
Press release from 03/17/2011
The President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Hermann Parzinger, receives the 2011 Reuchlin Prize, which has been awarded every two years since 1955 for outstanding German-language achievements in the humanities.
The Reuchlin Prize has been awarded every two years since 1955 by the city of Pforzheim at the suggestion of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It is named after the Renaissance humanist Johannes Reuchlin, who was born in Pforzheim, and is endowed with 12,500 euros. Two years ago, the historian Gottfried Schramm received the coveted trophy. Other prize winners include the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1971), the historian Reinhart Koselleck (1974), the orientalist Annemarie Schimmel (2001) and the historian Christian Meier (2007).
One of the reasons given by the Heidelberg Academy for this year's choice was that Hermann Parzinger had opened up new territory in archaeology with his cross-temporal and cross-national research approach and strengthened the importance of the humanities in the public consciousness. Hermann Parzinger became known worldwide through the discovery of a Scythian princely tomb with around 6,000 gold artefacts in 2001 in the Republic of Tuva in southern Siberia. The finds were presented to the public in 2007 in the Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin) in the exhibition "Under the Sign of the Golden Griffin - Royal Tombs of the Scythians". He made another sensational find in 2006 with the discovery of the ice mummy of a Scythian warrior in the permafrost zone of the Altai Mountains.
From 2003 to 2008, Parzinger was President of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI). He was then appointed President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK). To this day, Parzinger is actively involved in various research projects, such as the Berlin Cluster of Excellence TOPOI. In addition to numerous articles, he has written 15 monographs, most recently a book on his excavations on prehistoric metal extraction in the Iranian highlands. The topics he deals with range from the 7th to the 1st millennium BC and relate in particular to cultural phenomena in contact zones.
Parzinger has already received several national and international honours, including the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (1998), an honorary professorship from the Free University of Berlin (1996), honorary doctorates and the Order of Friendship, the highest Russian award for foreign citizens.
The archaeologist will be presented with the Reuchlin Prize 2011 on Saturday, 9 July at 11 a.m. in the Pforzheim City Theatre.