Cecile Horner
What does Schliemann have to do with the beginnings of Classical Archaeology at the University of Basel in Switzerland? In a lengthy and informative article published in the latest issue of Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde (vol. 114, 2014, pp. 191-234) Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann describes the lives of a number of learned men, who contributed to the establishment and growth of the discipline by building the collections of the Basel Antikenmuseum.
One of them, Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815-1887), professor of Roman law at the University of Basel, but best known for his book about the religious and juridical character of matriarchy (Das Mutterrecht), was the owner of a private collection of antiquities, primariy Roman, except for a small number of Greek objects (fragments from loutrophoroi, a Boeotian idol, and two Corinthian aryballoi). And here enters Heinrich Schliemann. In his notes about the provenance of the Greek objects, Bachofen writes that Cecile Horner (1851-1941) had brought them from Athens and that they had been given to her by Schliemann. Bachofen was Cecile’s godfather. By conducting research in the Heinrich Schliemann papers (housed in the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens), Kaufmann-Heinimann discovered that Horner had been hired by the Schliemanns to be their daughter’s tutor. Since it was Schliemann’s habit to rename anyone who worked for his family, Cecile took the name of Καλυψώ (Calypso). There are references to a Καλυψώ in three letters sent to Schliemann from his wife Sophia in 1875 (E. Bobou-Protopappa, Σοφία Εγκαστρωμένου-Σλήμαν. Γράμματα στον Ερρίκο, Athens 2005, pp. 101, 104, 105), although she may be an earlier Calypso. It seems that the Schliemanns kept their Swiss connections because later Heinrich sent his adolescent daughter Andromache to a boarding school in Lausanne. But Sophia, over her husband’s objections, pulled her out soon afterwards because she objected to the school’s relaxed moral code.
From this little piece of information Kaufmann-Heinimann was able not only to trace the provenance of a number of antiquities in the Basel Antikenmuseum, but also to gain insight into the life of an otherwise inconspicuous woman, who, by earning her life as a private secretary and pedagogue in the employ of wealthy European families, came to be associated with a handful of important men and women. These included writer Malwida von Meysenbug, and composer Richard Wagner.
