Hermann Parzinger receives the "Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Academy Prize for the Humanities"
Press release from 02/27/2013
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, receives the "Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose Academy Prize for the Humanities". The prize, endowed with 25,000 euros, is awarded by the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz and was presented for the first time in 2013.
Parzinger is to be honoured as "a scholar who has left a lasting mark on his specialist field of prehistory and early history, and Eurasian archaeology in particular, and who has also earned a high reputation as President of the German Archaeological Institute and subsequently as President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation".
The award ceremony will take place on 6 September 2013 at the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. In future, the prize will be awarded every two years in Mainz to outstanding scientists from the entire spectrum of the humanities for their life's work.
Prehistorian Hermann Parzinger has been President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, one of the world's largest cultural institutions, since March 2008. After completing his habilitation, he was the second director of the Roman-Germanic Commission of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Frankfurt/Main from 1990, and then the first director of the Eurasia Department of the DAI in Berlin from 1995. From 2003 to 2008, Parzinger was President of the German Archaeological Institute. He has also been a private lecturer at various universities since 1991. Hermann Parzinger has also led numerous excavations in Spain, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan and Mongolia. The discovery of a Scythian princely tomb with almost 6000 gold artefacts in 2001 and the ice mummy of a Scythian warrior in the Altai in 2006 also made him famous beyond the specialist world.
Hermann Parzinger is a scientist who has received many honours. In 1998, he was the first archaeologist to receive the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. In 2009 he was awarded the "Order of Friendship" and in 2012 the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2011, he received the Reuchlin Prize for special services to the humanities at the suggestion of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Parzinger is a member of the Order Pour le mérite for Sciences and Arts. He is also a member of numerous academies in Russia, China, Spain, Great Britain, Romania, the USA and Germany, including the British Academy, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina - National Academy of Sciences and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.