Otfried Deubner (born 19 December 1908 in Königsberg, Germany, died 16 March 2001) was a German classical archaeologist and diplomat.[1] During World War II, Otfried Deubner worked as a linguist in Pers Z S, the signals intelligence agency of the German Foreign Office (German: Auswärtiges Amt).[2]

Early life and education

Deubner was the son of the classical philologist and religious historian Ludwig Deubner.[3] He attended the Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main and the Berthold-Gymnasium in Freiburg im Breisgau.[3] In Easter 1926 he successfully passed the university-preparatory school-leaving qualification Abitur. Subsequently, he studied for one semester each at the University of Stuttgart and Technical University of Munich, before he studied Classical Archeology, Classical Philology and Ancient History in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Berlin, Koenigsberg and Munich.[3]

Career

On 17 December 1931 he was promoted by the archaeologist and translator Ernst Buschor in Munich. For 1932-1933 he received the travel scholarship of the German Archaeological Institute. From Autumn 1933-1935 he worked as an employee of the excavation of Pergamon in the Asclepeion. From 1935 to 1936 he was employed as an assistant to the Department of Rome of the German Archaeological Institute. From November 1937 to February 1938, he served his military service. From 1 April 1939, he worked as a scientific assistant at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. From 11 July 1940, he worked as a research assistant in the intelligence and communications department of the Foreign Office.

After the war, he was briefly interned by the Americans, before he taught at the University of Marburg as Deputy Assistant, from 1 November 1945 to 31 March 1949. He received his Habilitation as a professor in classical archeology on 18 December 1946.[3] Since April 1946 he had been active in the Hessian debt service and passed the State exam on 26 July 1946. From May 1949, he was a teacher at the boarding school of Schule Schloss Salem. In 1949, he rejected a call to take the chair for Classical archaeology at the University of Jena.

On 7 December 1950, he was reemployed in the Foreign Office and was initially placed in the headquarters in Bonn. From 1953 until his retirement, on 31 December 1971, he served as cultural adviser in the German agencies in Lisbon, Dublin, Damascus, Bern and at the Holy See. He last lived in Munich.

Deubner was a member of the Archaeological Society of Berlin until 1975.

Publications

References

  1. ^ Johannes Hürter, Martin Kröger, Rolf Messerschmidt, Christiane Scheidemann (Bearbeiter): Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945, Band 1 A–F (= Auswärtiges Amt – Historischer Dienst – Maria Keipert, Peter Grupp [Hrsg.]: Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn München Wien Zürich 2000, ISBN 978-3-506-71840-2, S. 417–418, Abschnitt Deubner, Ottfried (mit Bild).
  2. ^ "Foreign Office Cryptanalytic Section" (PDF). NSA. p. 2. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d Auerbach, Inge (1979). Catalogus professorum Academiae Marburgensis = Die akademischen Lehrer der Philipps-Universität in Marburg. Von 1911 bis 1971. Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen, 15-II. (in German). Vol. 2. Marburg: N.G. Elwert. pp. 487–488. ISBN 3770805801. OCLC 444612853.
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