Hermann Parzinger inducted into the Order Pour le mérite
Press release from 07/13/2011
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, was elected as a new member at this year's assembly of the Order Pour le mérite for Sciences and Arts. The ceremonial induction into the Order will take place at its public annual meeting in 2012 in the presence of the Federal President. According to its statutes, the Order is awarded to persons "who have earned an outstanding reputation through widespread recognition of their services to science and the arts". have acquired an excellent name."
After completing his doctorate in archaeology and history in Munich, Saarbrücken and Ljubljana in 1985, Parzinger initially worked as a university assistant at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. After his habilitation, he held various management positions at the German Archaeological Institute, of which he was president from 2003 to 2008. During this time, he led numerous excavations in Spain, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan and Mongolia. The discovery of a Scythian princely tomb with almost 6000 gold objects in 2001 and the ice mummy of a Scythian warrior in the Altai in 2006 also made him famous beyond the specialist world. His main scientific interest has always been cultural change in contact zones. He has pursued these questions in very different cultural areas in Europe and Asia, with the case studies he has investigated ranging from the sedentarisation of humans in the 7th millennium BC to the early historical cultures of the Iberians, Celts and Scythians in the 1st millennium BC. To this day, he is interested in the emergence of nomadic equestrian life and culture and the formation of elites in prehistoric and early historical societies.
In 1998, Parzinger was the first archaeologist to receive the Leibniz Prize of the German
Research Foundation. In 2009, Russian President D. Medvedev awarded him the "Order of Friendship", the highest Russian honour for foreign citizens. In 2011, he received the Reuchlin Prize for special services to the humanities at the suggestion of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He is a member of numerous academies in Russia, China, Spain, Great Britain, Romania, the USA and Germany, including the British Academy and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Hermann Parzinger has been President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation since 2008.
The origins of the Order Pour le mérite, which was initially awarded exclusively to officers, lie in an endowment by Frederick the Great in 1740 for outstanding military and civilian achievements. On the advice of the natural scientist and Prussian State Councillor Alexander von Humboldt, Frederick William IV founded a peace class of the order in 1842. This was intended to establish a close connection and constant exchange between the sciences and the arts. Its first chancellor was Alexander von Humboldt. The Peace Class survived the end of the monarchy, but was unable to continue its tradition of free meetings and elections of German and non-German scientists and artists during the National Socialist era. 1952 saw Theodor Heuss initiate the reconstitution of the Order and its personnel renewal. Since 1954, the Federal President has assumed the protectorate of the Order.
The Order accepts a maximum of 40 German and an equal number of foreign men and women. It currently has 40 German and 35 foreign members. The round neck medal is made of gold. It shows the Prussian eagle in the centre and the initials of Frederick the Great eight times.